Valhalla Rising (14 page)

McDermott turned to his first mate, Arle Brown. “Well, I guess we’d best get to work.”

“At least the sea is flat,” said Brown, nodding through the windshield of the bridge.

McDermott stared for several seconds at the wreck. “I have a feeling a flat sea may be all we have going for us.”

M
cDermott wasted no time. After circling the derelict and seeing that the rudder looked to be set in the flat zero-degree position, he brought the
Audacious
to within two hundred feet of the
Emerald Dolphin’s
bow. He could only hope the rudder was frozen in place. If it moved, the hulk would shear off to the side and become impossible to control.

The tug’s motor launch was lowered into the water. Brown and four of the tug’s crew motored toward the wreck until they were directly under the great overhanging bow. They had visitors. The waters around the hull were teeming with sharks. Through some primeval instinct, they knew that if the ship went down there might be some tasty edibles left floating on the surface.

Climbing aboard the hulk wasn’t going to be easy. She was still too hot to come aboard amidships, but the bow remained free from the worst of the fire. There were at least thirty ropes hanging from the railings above. Luckily, two of them were Jacob’s boarding ladders with wooden rungs. As the boat’s helmsman angled the launch under one of the ladders hanging from above, he kept the bow aimed into the waves to maintain better control.

Brown went first. Keeping a wary eye on the sharks, he firmly planted his feet on the gunnels and balanced his body. He stretched out his arms, grabbed the ladder and pulled it toward him. As the launch rose on the crest of the wave, he stepped onto a rope rung and climbed steadily upward, covering the vertical height of nearly fifty feet in less than three minutes. At the top, he caught the railing and pulled himself over onto the forepeak. Next, he swung one of the lines the survivors had thrown off the bow until it was caught by one of the men in the boat. The line was then tied to the end of another line that the launch had towed from the tug.

After three of his crew had ascended the Jacob’s ladder to the forepeak, the line was pulled up and slipped around an enormous round towing bollard whose designers never expected it to be used this way. Then the end was passed back down to a man in the launch, who tied it off. Brown watched the launch as it returned to the tug, where the heaving line was passed up and secured to the end of a cable wound around a huge winch. Before Brown gave the signal to engage the winch, he watched as one of his crew smeared grease around the bollard.

With no power on board the
Emerald Dolphin,
it was no small chore to lift aboard the tug’s massive eight-inch-diameter tow cable that weighed one ton per hundred feet. By using the bollard as a pulley, the winch was engaged and began pulling the line running between the two ships around a small drum attached to the main winch. A two-inch cable that had been attached to one end of the line soon began winding itself around the bollard and back to the tug again. The other end of this cable was connected to the big eight-incher, which was then pulled up to the bow of the cruise ship and clamped with a series of U-bolts to the anchor chains because the big liner did not have a capstan on the foredeck. It was mounted below on a deck that was burned and unreachable.

“Cable secured,” Brown notified McDermott over his portable radio. “We’re coming back aboard.”

“Acknowledged.”

Ordinarily, a small crew would remain on board a derelict under tow, but without knowing to what extent the fire had ravaged the hull, there was too great a danger for the men to remain on board the
Emerald Dolphin.
If she should abruptly head for the sea floor, they might not have time to escape and would be sucked down with her.

Brown and his men dropped down the ladder into the launch. As soon as the launch and its crew were taken aboard the tug, McDermott gave the order for dead slow ahead. Brown, who was operating the gigantic tow winch, paid out the cable until the cruise ship was a good quarter of a mile astern. Then he set the brake, the slack went out of the cable and the winch took up the strain as the
Audacious
began to inch forward.

Every man on the tug held his breath to see how the
Emerald Dolphin
would act. Slowly, inch by inch, foot by foot, like an obedient elephant led by a mouse, her bow began to part the water. Nobody moved, still anxious, but the immense liner came arrow-straight into the tug’s churning wake and stayed there. At seeing the still-burning hulk under way without shear, everyone on board the tug began to relax.

T
en hours later, the
Audacious’s
big engines were towing the enormous hulk at a respectable two knots. Most of the fire was out. Only a few flickers of flame could still be seen amid the twisted wreckage of the superstructure. There was no moon, and overcast clouds covered the sky. The night was so black it was impossible to tell where sea left off and the sky began.

The tug’s big searchlight was beamed on the
Emerald Dolphin,
illuminating her bow and gutted forward superstructure. The crew took turns on watch, making sure the big tow followed behind as planned. After midnight, the ship’s cook took his turn. He settled in a folding deck chair he carried on board to enjoy the sun when he wasn’t busy in the galley. It was too hot and humid for coffee, so he drank Diet Pepsi, the cans nestled in a small bucket of ice. With a soft drink in hand, he lit a cigarette and leaned back, gazing dutifully at the ponderous mass following astern.

Two hours later, he was barely awake, fighting off drowsiness with his tenth cigarette and third Pepsi. The
Emerald Dolphin
was still where she was supposed to be. The cook sat up and tilted his head when he heard what sounded like a deep rumble come from within the hulk. It reminded him of thunder over the distant horizon, not one but a series of booms, as if they were timed a few seconds apart. He sat up and squinted his eyes. He was about to write it off to his imagination when he noticed that something had changed. It took a moment for him to realize that the ship was sitting lower in the water.

The scorched cruise ship sheared her starboard slightly before wallowing back on a straight course. Under the searchlight, a huge billow of smoke issued from the wreckage forward of amidships before spiraling into the darkness outside the searchlight’s beam. Then the cook’s face froze in horror.

The
Emerald Dolphin
was foundering, and she looked to be going down fast.

In shock, the cook ran up onto the bridge to shout, “She’s sinking. Holy mother, she’s going under!”

McDermott heard the commotion and burst from his cabin. He asked no questions of the cook. One look was enough to tell him that if they didn’t cut the tow cable, the sinking liner would take the
Audacious
and her crew down twenty thousand feet to the sea floor with her. He was joined by Brown, who also took in the situation with a glance. Together, they ran to the giant winch.

Frantically, they struggled to release the brake, paying out the massive cable, watching it unreel into the abyss, rapidly falling from a near-horizontal angle to vertical as the cruise ship buried her bow in the water. The great cable that was wound around the winch’s drum began to unreel ever faster until it became a blur. McDermott and Brown could only hope that when the cable finally unwound, its end would rip from its connectors. If not, the
Audacious
would be pulled under by the stern.

The dead cruise ship was plunging deeper with uncanny speed. Already her bow was diving beneath the surface. She was sinking on a shallow fifteen-degree angle, but sinking fast. An awful groaning sound came from the battered hull as her fire-tortured bulkheads contorted and twisted apart from the strain. Her rudder and the great jet thrusters lifted out of the water into the night. The stern hung there for a few seconds, and then slowly it followed the bow into the black sea, faster and faster until the entire ship plummeted out of sight, leaving a great swelling of air bubbles.

Only one row of cable remained wound around the reel, but suddenly it became taut and the stern of the tug dipped abruptly, jerking the bow out of the water. Every man on board stood stock-still, staring at the unwinding drum, seeing the jaws of death close. Then the drum spun for the last time as the cable’s entire length was yanked sharply into the abyss. The drama had reached its climax.

There came an earsplitting shriek, and then the end of the cable shot off the drum and whipped out of sight into the sea. Released from the strain, the tug’s bow came down hard as she righted herself, rocking on her keel forward and aft before settling down. The crew stood in stunned silence at their narrow brush with death.

Finally, Brown muttered, as the trauma of the last minutes slowly faded, “I never believed a ship could sink in the blink of an eye.”

“Nor I,” McDermott agreed. “It’s as though her entire bottom dropped out.”

“There goes a million pounds’ worth of cable. The company directors aren’t going to be too happy.”

“It was beyond our control. It all happened too fast.” Then McDermott paused and held up a hand. “Listen!” he said sharply.

Everyone gazed at the spot where the
Emerald Dolphin
had vanished. Out of the night, a voice was shouting, “Help me!”

McDermott’s first thought was that one of the crew had fallen overboard during the excitement, but a quick scan of the deck showed him they were all present. The shout came again, only this time it was weak and barely perceptible.

“Somebody’s out there,” said the cook, pointing in the direction of the voice.

Brown ran over to the searchlight, swung it around and played its beam on the water. The dark face of a man could barely be seen against the ebony of the sea less than a hundred feet off the stern. “Can you swim to the boat?” Brown yelled.

There was no answer, but the man did not appear exhausted. He stroked strongly and evenly toward the tug.

“Throw him a line,” Brown ordered a crewman, “and haul him in before the sharks get him.”

A rope was heaved over the side. The man caught it, and two crewmen pulled him to the stern and heaved him aboard.

“He’s an aborigine,” said Brown, a native Aussie.

“Not with curly hair,” observed McDermott. “More like African.”

“He’s wearing a ship’s officer’s uniform.”

Hardly expecting to see a survivor this late in the game, McDermott looked at the man questioningly. “May I ask where you came from?”

The stranger unleashed a wide-tooth smile. “I thought that was obvious. I am, or rather was, the
Emerald Dolphin’s
passenger relations officer.”

“How come you remained on board after all the survivors were taken off?” asked Brown. He found it hard to believe the man was free of injuries, and except for his soaking-wet uniform he looked none the worse for his experience.

“I fell and struck my head while helping passengers abandon ship onto the research vessel. Everyone must have thought I was dead and left me. When I woke up, you had the ship under tow.”

“You must have been unconscious for the better part of twenty-four hours,” said McDermott skeptically.

“I must have.”

“Seems incredible you weren’t burned to death.”

“I was extremely lucky. I fell into a companionway that was spared by the fire.”

“You speak with an American accent.”

“I’m from California.”

“What’s your name?” asked Brown.

“Sherman Nance.”

“Well, Mr. Nance,” said McDermott, “you’d better get out of that wet uniform. You’re about the same size as Mr. Brown, my first officer. He can loan you dry clothes. Then go to the galley. You must be dehydrated and famished after your ordeal. I’ll see that our cook gives you something to drink and fixes a hearty meal.”

“Yes, thank you, Captain …”

“McDermott.”

“I
am
pretty thirsty.”

After Nance was escorted below by the cook, Brown peered at the captain. “Uncanny that he survived a fire of such magnitude without a singed eyebrow or a burned finger.”

McDermott rubbed his chin doubtfully. “Yes, uncanny.” Then he sighed. “It’s not our concern. I now have the distasteful duty of notifying the directors that we lost our tow and their expensive cable.”

“She shouldn’t have done it,” Brown growled absent-mindedly.

“Done what?”

“One minute she’s floating high in the water, the next she’s on her way to the bottom. She shouldn’t have gone and sunk so fast. It ain’t natural.”

“I agree,” McDermott said with a shrug. “But it’s out of our hands.”

“The insurance underwriters won’t be happy, with nothing left to investigate.”

McDermott nodded wearily. “Without evidence, it will always have to remain another one of the sea’s great mysteries.”

Then he walked over to the big searchlight and switched it off, casting the lost cruise liner’s watery burial shroud into stygian blackness.

A
s soon as the
Audacious
reached Wellington, the man that McDermott had pulled from the sea after the
Emerald Dolphin
sank disappeared. The dockside immigration officials swore that he hadn’t left the ship down the gangway or they would have detained him for the inquiry proceedings into the cruise ship’s fire and loss. McDermott decided the only way for Sherman Nance to have left the ship was over the side when they pulled into harbor.

After McDermott gave his report to insurance investigators, he was told that no crewman or officer named Sherman Nance was listed as having served on board the
Emerald Dolphin.