Valhalla Rising (4 page)

“If I didn’t know better,” said Hunt, “I’d say the sun is reflecting off some kind of window or port.”

“No sea monster has glass built into it,” Ellis muttered.

The gun crew reloaded and fired another shot that struck with a great splash between fifteen and twenty yards forward of the monster. Still no reaction. It continued as if the
Kearsarge
was little more than a passing annoyance. It was near enough now that Captain Hunt and his crew could make out a triangular housing atop the monster, with large round quartz ports.

“She’s a man-built vessel,” gasped Hunt in amazement.

“I can’t believe it’s possible,” Ellis said vaguely. “Who could have built such an incredible contraption?”

“If not the United States, it has to be of British or German origin.”

“Who can say? She flies no flag.”

As they watched, the strange object slowly slid beneath the waves until it vanished from view. The
Kearsarge
passed directly over the spot where it sank, but the crew could detect no sign of it in the depths.

“She’s gone, Captain,” one of the seamen called to Hunt.

“Keep a sharp eye out for it,” Hunt shouted back. “Some of you men take to the rigging for a better view.”

“What do we do if she reappears?” asked Ellis.

“If she won’t heave to and identify herself, we’ll pour a broadside into her.”

The hours passed and sunset came, as the
Kearsarge
cruised in ever-widening circles in a fading hope of finding the monster again. Captain Hunt was about to break off the pursuit when a lookout in the rigging shouted down to the deck.

“Monster off the port beam about a thousand yards, heading our way.”

The officers and crew rushed to the port railing and stared out over the water. There was still enough light to see it clearly. It appeared to be coming directly toward the
Kearsarge
at a very rapid rate of speed.

During the search, the gun crews had stood patiently, their great muzzle-loaders primed and ready to fire. The gunners on the port side quickly ran out their guns and sighted on the approaching apparition. “Allow for her speed and aim at that projection aft of her bow,” Merryman instructed them.

Adjustments were made and the gun muzzles depressed as the monster loomed in the sights. Then Hunt yelled, “Fire!”

Six of the
Kearsarge’s
eight guns roared, their explosive blasts shattering the air as fire and smoke spouted from their muzzles. Staring through his binoculars, Hunt could see the shells from the two big eleven-inch pivot guns smash the water on each side of the baffling thing. The nine-inch smoothbores added to the geysers erupting around the target. Then he saw the shell from the twenty-pounder rifled gun strike the monster’s back, bounce into the air and ricochet across the water like a skipping stone.

“She’s armored,” he said, stunned. “Our shot glanced off her hull without making a dent.”

Unfazed, their nemesis aimed its bow unerringly amidships of the
Kearsarge’s
hull, increasing its speed and gathering momentum for the blow.

The gun crews frantically reloaded, but by the time they were ready for another broadside, the thing was too close and they could not depress their muzzles low enough to strike it. The detachment of Marines aboard the ship began firing their rifles at the assailant. Several of the officers stood on the railing, grasping the rigging with one hand while firing their revolvers with the other. A typhoon of bullets merely glanced off the armored hull.

Hunt and his crew stared in disbelief at the nightmare that was about to ram the ship. Transfixed by the long cigar-shaped vessel, he gripped the railing to brace himself for the inescapable collision.

But the expected shock never came. All any of the crew felt was a slight shudder beneath decks. The impact seemed little different from a slight bump against a dock. The only sound was the faint crunch of shredding wood. In that frozen moment of time, the unearthly thing had slashed between the
Kearsarge’s
great oak ribs as cleanly as a murderer’s knife thrust, penetrating deep inside the hull just aft of the engine room.

Hunt gaped in shock. He could see a face through the large transparent view port on the pyramid-shaped housing on top of the underwater ram. The bearded face had what seemed to Hunt to be a sad and melancholy expression, as if the man inside felt remorse for the disaster his strange and bizarre vessel had caused.

Then the mysterious vessel quickly backed off and fell away into the depths.

Hunt knew the
Kearsarge
was doomed. Down below, seawater poured into the
Kearsarge’s
aft cargo hold and galley. The gaping wound was almost a perfect concave hole through the hull planking six feet below the waterline. The torrent increased as the warship slowly began to list on her port side. The only thing that saved her from immediately foundering was the bulkheads. In keeping with naval regulations, Hunt had ordered them sealed as if the ship were going into battle. The inrush of water was contained, but only until the bulkheads gave way to the crush of tremendous pressure.

Hunt swung around and stared at a low coral island not two miles away. He turned to the helmsman and shouted. “Steer for that reef off the starboard beam.” Then he called down to the engine room for full speed. His main concern was for how long the bulkheads could hold back the flood of water from gushing into the engine room. While the boilers were still able to make steam, he just might have time to run his ship aground before she sank.

Slowly, the bow came around, as the ship picked up speed and set a course for shallow water. First Officer Ellis did not need a command from Hunt to prepare the boats and the captain’s gig to be lowered. Except for the engine-room gang, all crew members were assembled on deck. To a man, they focused their eyes on the low, barren coral reef that was nearing with agonizing slowness. The propeller thrashed the water as the boilers were fired by the stokers in a near frenzy. They shoveled coal with one eye on the open grate and the other aimed at the creaking bulkhead, all that stood between them and a horrible death.

The single screw thrashed the water, driving the ship toward what everyone hoped was salvation. The helmsman called for help in fighting the wheel as the ship became sluggish with the escalating weight from the incoming flood and the list to port that had increased to six degrees.

The crew stood at the boats, ready to board them and abandon ship at Hunt’s expected command. They shifted uneasily as the deck sloped ominously beneath their feet. A leadsman was sent to the bow to throw out a lead weight and sound the bottom. He called out the depth in fathoms.

“Twenty fathoms and rising,” he yelled out with the barest trace of optimism.

They needed another hundred-foot rise in depth before the
Kearsarge’s
keel would strike bottom. It seemed to Hunt that they were approaching that tiny strip of coral with the pace of a drunken snail.

Kearsarge
was settling deeper in the water with each passing minute. Her list was nearly ten degrees, and it was becoming almost impossible to sustain a straight course. The reef was coming closer. They could see the waves striking the coral and bursting in a glistening spray under the sun.

“Five fathoms,” the leadsman called out, “and rising fast.”

Hunt wasn’t going to risk the lives of his crew. He was about to give the order to abandon ship when the
Kearsarge
drove onto the coral bottom, her keel and hull gouging a path through the reef until she came to an abrupt stop and rolled over until she rested on a list of fifteen degrees.

“Praise the Lord, we’re saved,” murmured the helmsman, still gripping the spokes of the wheel, his face red from the effort, his arms numb with exhaustion.

“She’s hard aground,” Ellis said to Hunt. “The tide is ebbing, so the old girl won’t be going anywhere.”

“True,” Hunt acknowledged sadly. “A pity if she can’t be saved.”

“Salvage tugs might pull her off the reef, providing the bottom isn’t torn out of her.”

“That damnable monster is responsible. If there’s a God, it will pay for this travesty.”

“Maybe she has,” Ellis said quietly. “She sank pretty fast after the collision. She must have damaged her bow and opened it to the sea.”

“I can’t help but wonder why she didn’t simply heave to and explain her presence.”

Ellis stared thoughtfully over the turquoise Caribbean water. “I seem to remember reading something once, about one of our warships, the
Abraham Lincoln,
encountering a mysterious metal monster about thirty years ago. It tore her rudder off.”

“Where was this?” asked Hunt.

“I believe it was the Sea of Japan. And at least four British warships have disappeared under mysterious circumstances over the past twenty years.”

“The Navy Department will never believe what happened here,” said Hunt, looking around his wrecked ship with growing anger. “I’ll be lucky if I don’t get court-martialed and drummed out of the service.”

“You’ve got a hundred and sixty witnesses who will back you up,” Ellis assured him.

“No captain wishes to lose his ship, certainly not to some unidentifiable mechanical monstrosity.” He paused to look down into the sea, his mind turning to the job at hand. “Start loading supplies into the boats. We’ll move ashore and wait for rescue on firm ground.”

“I’ve checked the charts, sir. It’s called Roncador Reef.”

“A sorry place and a sorry end for such an illustrious ship,” he said wistfully.

Ellis threw an informal salute and began directing the crew to shuttle food, canvas for tents and personal belongings onto the low coral cay. Under the light of a half-moon, they labored all night and into the next day, setting up camp and cooking the first of their meals ashore.

Hunt was the last man to leave the
Kearsarge.
Just before he climbed down the ladder to a waiting boat, he paused to stare down into the restless water. He would take to his death the sight of the bearded man staring out of the black monster at him. “Who are you?” he murmured under his breath. “Did you survive? And if so, who will be your next victim?”

In the next several years, until he died, whenever a report reached him of a warship that had vanished with all hands, Hunt could not help but wonder if the man in the monster was responsible.

K
earsarge’s
officers and men existed without hardship ashore for two weeks before a trail of smoke was sighted on the horizon. Hunt sent out a boat with First Officer Ellis, who stopped a passing steamer that took Hunt and his men off the cay and carried them to Panama.

Strangely, when Hunt and his crew returned to the United States, there was no board of inquiry, a very unusual circumstance. It was as if the secretary of the Navy and the admirals wanted to sweep the incident quietly under the carpet. To Captain Hunt’s surprise, he was elevated in rank to full captain before his honorable retirement. First Officer Ellis was also promoted and given command of the Navy’s newest gunboat,
Helena,
and saw service during the Spanish-American War in Cuban waters.

Congress authorized $45,000 to raise the
Kearsarge
from Roncador Reef and tow her home to a shipyard. But it was found that natives from nearby islands had set her on fire to salvage her brass, copper and iron. Her guns were removed, and the salvagers returned to port, leaving her hulk to disintegrate in a coral tomb.