by Paul Gallico
His light showed him the plain steel of the plated tube and the circle of darkness where it ended. With an effort, he pieced together his splintered thoughts. The tunnel would lead to the central shaft that gave access to all decks on liners of this design. What was in the shaft? Since it ran the depth of the ship, the bottom part must be under water. There would be—there must be—a ladder running the full depth of the ship for the engineers and crew.
He spurted along towards the growing circle of darkness ahead.
Behind him he heard a crash and frantic yelping sounds. Jason spun and pointed the light back up the tube. It was Anton. His gross frame seemed to pack the duct and even at that distance he looked like a misshapen portrait of terror. He too had taken the only possible way out. Then Jason heard the pitiful mewling of Anton fade under a deluge of sound. It rolled and rumbled down the hollow duct, a dreadful, vivid booming that seemed to shake sanity itself. It sank then swelled again, stampeding all reason.
The tiger was coming down after both of them.
The surging tide of noise seemed to bowl Jason along before it. Fast as he went, Anton was catching up with all the power in that vast body.
The end came up like a precipice. Jason did not pause, but only seemed to hesitate as he poised at the mouth, then dived away to his right. In that atom of time, he had seen the service ladder. There was a second of nothingness, when, unanchored, he seemed to whirl in a blackness without space or time. Then his fingers felt the hospitable cold steel of the rungs, and his agitating feet secured on another. His light was still in his hand. He looped one arm through the ladder and shone the light back on the black hole of the cylinder, perhaps two feet away.
If Anton saw him or the glow, he gave no indication. He appeared in the circle and gazed unbelievingly into the gaping depths below him. Then he turned with his legs tucked under him, and the roaring filled the shaft. Jason saw those blinding colors again, the angry snarling face and the paw plucking at the squatting figure in its way.
Anton was smashing profitless punches at the great cat’s head. Jason could hardly believe it. He was trying to fight the tiger with his hands. He was pitting his only gift, the unnatural brawn of his body, against the animal. Time after time his heavy fists landed. Twice the beast pulled back its face from the savage pounding.
Then it jumped. In a silence somehow more violent than the tumult of the fight, Jason saw the two figures, the animal and half-animal, drop into the depths locked together. His light could not reach them. He heard only the splash, a last gurgling groan from Anton, and then the pained roaring too finally stopped.
It was only then that Jason realized what he had seen. When Anton had been flung back by the tiger’s charge, he had sensed the first primitive fear—the fear of falling. It had even overwhelmed his fear of the tiger. For he had hugged the fearsome beast as he fell to his death.
Moments passed. The cold silence of the wide shaft made Jason shiver. He shook himself. Then he began to climb upwards.
THE PURSE
11
Her relationship with the rest of the group had changed. At first, Hely could not understand why, and she watched in silence, searching for the explanation, as they gathered again in the passageway they called Broadway, and reconstructed the sequence of events.
The nurse again explained to the policeman how she had been the only survivor of the score or more passengers who were led by the doctor towards the ship’s bow—the wrong direction. She also examined Martin’s foot. “Oh my,” she exclaimed, gently testing it. “He must have broken nearly every bone!”
They spoke very little to Hely, and when they did it was always concerning Jason. “Don’t worry,” Klaas told her, “He’s a very capable young man, that one. He’ll be back all right.” Even Martin, whose interest now seemed centered on the Dutch girl, offered her some consolation. “Anton won’t stand a chance with him,” he said, cockily. “He’ll soon catch up with us.”
Coby spoke then, but it was to Martin. “Well, you certainly stood up to Anton, James. No one could have been braver than you. You were wonderful.”
Martin blushed, despite the pain. He was still uncomfortable with the memory of how Coby had saved him when Anton had seized his foot. She was obviously not going to mention it. He was grateful. He replied, “I wouldn’t have been able to do anything without you.” He bit his lips in agony as he tried to pull his sock over his injured foot. He looked up at Hely and said, “Your Jason would sure have been proud of us.”
“I’m sure he would,” Hely said. She realized now what it was. In the short time they had been together, she had become established as Jason’s woman. She was an adjunct to the mysterious American. They were treating her like a wife. She was not sure what her reaction ought to be. In all her life she had never surrendered a scrap of her independence. She had always stood alone. Yet now she was being treated like a woman whose husband is away on a business trip. The thought amused her. She decided she liked it after all.
But how incomplete the group was to her without Jason. They were standing in a close circle in the corridor, their faces shining in the light of two flashes. The policeman looked haggard. His eyes were a tired white against his oily, dirt-caked face, and his clothes were rags. Martin, who had abandoned his sock and shoe now, was balanced on one leg, his arm round Coby, and he too looked beyond the point of exhaustion. The keenness had been struck from his face by pain. The nurse had now regained her professional composure, but she too was a filthy scarecrow of a figure, her hair hanging in greasy strings. Klaas and Coby were almost elegant in this company, but the strain showed in the father’s face as he talked.
“We have been on board something like an hour,” Klaas said, glancing at his watch. “I estimate it will take a flotilla of rescue and salvage boats about two hours to get here, and I don’t think the Poseidon can stay afloat that long.”
Rogo ran thick fingers through his matted hair. “I’d like to know how the hell a so-called big-time cruise liner like this can get turned over anyway.”
“Perhaps no one will ever know,” Klaas replied. “But one thing I can tell you, Mr. Rogo. This is no longer the great liner it once was. The Greek owners are not men of probity. They are little more than gangsters. But that is not our concern. I think we must apply our minds to getting back to the Magt as quickly as we can.”
“What about Jason?” Hely put the point quickly.
With a shrug, Klaas said, “He is a man who can look after himself. Look, I don’t want to leave him here, but there is my daughter to think of. There is Martin. He’s badly injured. Anyway, Jason can find his way back as easily as we can.”
It was the nurse who spoke next. “I don’t know him,” she said, “but I don’t see how we’re helping anyone standing around here.”
They were all looking at Rogo. He weighed their words. Then, with a snap of the head, he said, “Yeah, you’re right. He’s a tough monkey okay. I’m gonna try to get you back up there. But I stay here with the gold. You people can go.”
He held the gun out on his open palm. “We only got one gun. If that Bela guy has got any more trained gorillas . . .”
Klaas intervened. “I feel sure he will have many more men. For his sort of salvage work, you would normally have a crew of thirty. Even more.”
“Sufferin’ Jeezus!” Rogo threw back his head. “If those other guys are anything to go by, the next bunch’ll be armed with bazookas. Even if Jason gets back we only got two hand guns.”
Martin cut in, “One, Mr. Rogo.”
Rogo glared at the one-legged figure. “Two. Jason got one from the guy he bopped.”
“That’s what I mean,” Martin went on. “Anton knocked it right out of his hand. I heard it go into the water.”
“For Chrissakes!” Rogo beat the palm of his hand on his forehead. “The stupid bastard! What a helluva time to go lose a gun! I mighta known he’d screw it up. Goddamn freak!”
Klaas noted the policeman’s temper with
concern. The situation was difficult enough.
“One thing we can do is see if the boiler room is clear,” he said. “Then perhaps we can escape from this death trap.”
Rogo did not sound very interested. “Okay, Klaas, take my flash and go give a look.”
The Dutchman took the light and headed back to Broadway. Rogo watched him go. “That lousy freak!” He was still thinking about Jason and the lost gun. His anger was directed more against their misfortune than Jason himself, but even so Hely felt she must say something.
“You were glad enough of his help,” she reminded him. “But for him Bela would have shot you.”
He turned his head and gave Hely a look that contained no gratitude. “I coulda made it without him,” he said. “Anyway, I still ain’t happy about you, lady. That phony line you gave us. What the hell are you doing here? And don’t give me more crap.”
His eyes had gone cold. He was turning his frustration against her. Hely realized how vulnerable she was without Jason there. She was alone. She looked around the rest of the group. Martin was engrossed in the Dutch girl. Coby had disliked her from the first. The nurse plainly regarded Rogo as the person in command.
“I told you all that,” she said. “I explained before. We were looking for survivors.”
It sounded weaker than ever. Somehow Hely felt she had lost confidence in her ability to deceive. What had once come to her quite naturally, now seemed unmanageable. She felt exposed and deserted before the policeman’s bristling assault. The purse on her belt suddenly began to weigh a ton.
She said weakly, “I don’t know why you’re picking on me now. You daren’t do it if Jason were here.”
“Oh no?” Rogo came back. “You kidded him by switching your ass at him. I seen it all a million times. You’re a doll. Okay, so the world’s full of ’em. My Linda . . .”
He stopped in mid-sentence. The nurse stepped in politely, “Where is your wife, Mr. Rogo? Did she get off the boat all right?”
He turned his paralyzed face toward her. She did not know. How could she? The nurse rattled along blindly: “My, she really was having a bad time of it with seasickness, wasn’t she? I came to see her in your cabin, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.” Rogo’s voice was a whisper. “She’s dead. She fell. It was . . .” Hours and days had become blurred and it was only with an effort he could work it out. “It was today, I guess. Early today.” He slipped his thumb under his suspenders and looked down at those horses. Classy, just like Linda.
The sigh of relief almost whistled from Hely’s lips. She could not have resisted the policeman’s tenacious questioning much longer. The purse now seemed to have swollen. It seemed to be transparent. She felt sure everyone was staring at it. She must get rid of its contents immediately.
She cast about for a sympathetic face. “What is it you Americans say—I’m just going to the powder room?” Martin nodded. Hely had trilled it with a glistening smile. It rang completely false. She was trying too hard. She walked off as casually as she could down the corridor, knowing that her anxiety showed through the thin flippancy. Martin had not noticed. Rogo was too stunned. But the Dutch girl’s quick eyes had been watching and Hely could feel them on her back.
She turned through the first door. It was a storeroom. She stepped into the darkness and her frenzied fingers tore at the fastening on the purse. Once she got rid of what was in it she had nothing to fear. Rogo could suspect what he liked, but he could prove nothing. That was all that stood between her and a new life with Jason. She pushed her hand down inside and scooped it around the cold rubber to enclose all the hard richness of her haul. A few hours ago she would have died to defend her bounty: now she was throwing it away. What would Jason have thought if he had ever known?
“What are you doing?”
The question came like a shot. Her heart plummeted. It was the girl Coby. She was watching from the doorway. She spoke again. “What have you got in there?”
No words came. Hely scoured the girl’s face for some understanding or sympathy, but found only suspicion and distrust.
The girl called over her shoulder, “Mr. Rogo! She’s got something in that funny rubber purse!”
Hely heard Rogo’s heavy tread and saw him appear in the doorway. He had sensed the gravity in the atmosphere, for he said quietly, “Okay, Coby, I’ll see to this.” When he spoke to Hely, the anger was completely gone. He sounded somber.
“Tell us now, lady. We gotta know sometime.”
It was all going to be snatched away from her. Her future, transformed by Jason, was to be destroyed by this one wicked hangover from her life before. There was nothing in the world she could say or do that would move this granite-faced man. She dug back into her old life and could find only one hope. She looked Rogo straight in the eyes.
“Leave me alone and I’ll do anything.”
There was nothing sexual in how she said it. It was not the vamp act with which she had lured the Komarevo man into the room. It had none of the sensuality she had often used to beguile men. It was a direct offer, stark and emotionless. It was a trade.
“Anything,” she repeated. But she knew from the open-mouthed shock on his face that he understood perfectly already.
The silent tension snapped as Klaas burst into the room. He noticed nothing, and the words cascaded from him. “Mr. Rogo!” he shouted. “They’ve gone. I’ve been up as far as the engine room and it’s completely empty. We can go. Let’s get off this ship now, before they come back, or before it sinks. It’s our last chance!”
Rogo’s thumbnail rasped on his unshaven chin. Klaas could not understand why he was hesitating.
“For God’s sake, don’t you realize?” he babbled on. “I’ve got a daughter out there. There are women on board. Miss Hely and the nurse. You have a responsibility to get them off, whatever you choose to do yourself.”
Rogo made his decision. He quietened the Dutchman with extended palms. “Okay, okay. I get you, Klaas.”
He gave Hely a long, significant look. “This ain’t over, you know. I gotta sort it out, but not right now. First we gotta get off this tub.”
He ushered her out before him, and then roared, “C’mon then, for Chrissakes! Watcha all waiting for? Move it!”
The ragged, limping column began to thread its way back up through the ship. Hely wondered why being honest was so much more difficult than being dishonest. Rogo could have had her. One last time would have made no difference. It was nothing. It was a thing she’d done a million times. Suddenly she wanted to be sick. She did not know what Rogo’s answer would have been.
There was always home to go back to. That had been the one reassurance he had allowed himself throughout the whole nightmare of Vietnam. Jason remembered that quite clearly as he climbed. He went at an even pace up the ladder which scaled the inside of the shaft. Hand over hand, step by step, rung after rung. It was a long way. The silver stripes of the rungs stretched beyond his flashlight’s range.
One day, he recalled telling himself, it would all be over and he would be back in the sure and sunlit world he knew. It had been quite exciting at first. He had tried to imagine what it would be like in Vietnam. Truckloads of American soldiers surging into small towns, the streets lined with people, bouquets of flowers, the cheering, the hero’s welcome.
And there had been crowds. Crowds of whores and pimps and buyers and sellers and wheeler-dealers, and every smile had a price tag on it. The girls all loved him. By the hour, at the going rate. It was hard to feel like a hero then.
And it was hard too to understand why he was there. It had been so clear before he came. Democracy and freedom, the things he had known in abstract all his life. Patriotism was as simple as baseball. It was different when the black leaves blotted out the wicked blue of the Vietnamese skies, and the silence was itself a conspiracy. Then the unheard whispering among the leaves turned into the mad gossip of gunfire. Then, at his feet, a tiny, twisted body and an anonymous brown face. Afte
r that, they fell from the trees like ripe apples, because this was the will of the American people. Then it wasn’t the will of the American people anymore. Helicopters dropped from the skies and plucked them off the surface of that suffering land, and all that remained was the memory of one brown face, the only one that never had a price tag on it.
The rungs felt cold in his hands. He remembered thinking in the helicopter that it was all over. He was going home. Back to normality, back to clean streets; back to old friends and old habits, and the warmth of familiarity would strike the shivers from his bones. But his own father could not lift his eyes. He gripped his hand hard and said something about a terrible mistake. The soothing peace of home became a searing shame. No one would talk about Vietnam. They tried to protect him from his own guilt, and his presence only served to stab their own consciences.
“Hi, where’ve ya been all this time? Must be two years, nearly. Oh. Gotta be going now. See ya again . . .” They called it Away. “While you were Away . . .” The same word some people use for jail.
So after that Jason flung himself into everyone’s battles. In Cyprus, in Lebanon, in Africa. He became an amateur mercenary, a soldier of misfortune, and he took on the grief of the world to assuage his own.
He had been wrong. He was sure of that, as he neared the top of the ladder. But this time at least, he was right. Just for one day the truth was clear. Rogo’s rough-hewn integrity must not fall before the unalloyed wickedness of Bela. There was Hely too. Jason had at last found a cause, and a reward.
