Beyond the Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico Page A

hell with a goddamn tiger that would be dead anyway. The retired naval officer explained the factors that determined the Battle of Trafalgar; the producer wondered if he would last until the next bulletin. Mike Rogo’s wife was described, charitably, by one newspaper as “an ex-show-biz girl.” Mr. Manny Rosen’s next door neighbor told her sister that Manny must have returned for his wife. “They were never apart, those two old lovebirds,” she said. The New York cop considered his colleague’s statement and replied, “The way that bastard Rogo rides everybody, I hope he’s got lead in his boots.”
    The readjustment of the boat’s position came as a heavy, rocking lurch to those inside. The alteration of angle, about three degrees, threw the wreckage of the engine room into a terrifying cacophony, and the two stinking pools, one similarly dark, the other still violently ablaze with hellish fires, drained suddenly. The waters vanished with a hideous gulping sound, and the flames died.
    The seven people were flung against the bulkhead. Rogo twisted his arm around a chain across the front of the hold, and locked his other arm around Manny Rosen’s waist. A wrecked catwalk came hurtling out of the darkness and crashed on the floor inches away from Klaas as he and Coby, hanging on to each other, skidded and toppled into a heap of bent handrails. Martin rolled over and over, landing on the Dutchman. Instinctively, Jason seized the girl in the wet suit, flung her against a girder, and locked powerful arms around it as the flying debris crashed and clattered about them.
    The last echoes died. Three lanterns, mercifully unbroken, had also been thrown after Martin and the Dutch couple, and all three were illuminated in a crazy tangle, like some extraordinary floor show. Manny Rosen was sobbing. Rogo spoke to him gently as he released him, “It’s okay, Manny. It’s over now.” It was what he called his New Widow’s Voice, the one he used for bad news.
    One by one, they disentangled themselves. Coby, surprisingly cool, helped her father to his feet. “You’re very brave,” Martin was saying to her, but she only nodded and saw that Jason and the fair-haired woman were still safe against the girder. The woman was a liar: she wished she could tell Jason.
    Her arms around the American’s waist, Hely felt her earlier excitement rise to a fine, high ecstasy. Her body sang with the frightening sexuality that for some people comes with the nearness of death. Storms of fear and courage and danger and fire engulfed her, and his body seemed to burn her where they touched. She turned her face up and tore a cannibal’s kiss from his mouth. “I want you,” she said, clear enough for the others to hear, and they watched in astonishment. “I want you, and I shall have you.”
    Jason leaned back to see her face. “You,” he said, with measured words, “are one hell of a woman.”
    “Whaddya think this is, a stinking petting party?” Rogo reintroduced reality. “What in God’s name is this tub doing?”
    Klaas was holding his ribs where Martin had landed on him. He winced a little, and picked up his captain’s cap and dusted it on his leg. “You’ll have to be quick now, Mr. Rogo. That must have been the last major pocket of air to go. Next time she will go down.”
    In the wet soundless gloom, they all realized the import of his words. It had seemed hard to believe the Poseidon was sinking when it was so firm beneath their feet. Now they sensed the death throes of the old liner, and everyone knew the end could not be far away.
    Slumping to the floor, Manny Rosen felt spent. Over where the pool had been, the waters had vanished and revealed the steps of the companionway. They led through into the boiler room and the corridors beyond that they had traversed in their flight for survival. That was where Belle had saved them all with her sacrificial underwater swim. Now Belle’s body had gone. The lurch must have thrown it