Beyond the Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico Read Free Book Online

promised, “There and back, Hely,” and Hely noted with satisfaction the brief scowl that touched Johnny’s lips at the encouragement of another contender.
    Hely resumed her instructions. “Oh, and another thing. Those bodies have been in there eight hours or so and their fingers might be swollen. Don’t waste time wrestling.” She slipped her diver’s knife from the sheath she was strapping to her leg and made a small dropping motion with the blade that required no explanation. Grins gone, the diving crew agreed with somber nods.
    “I’ll come.” Roland’s statement was flat and his face pale and grim, but Hely rewarded him with a birthday smile that seemed to belie all her earlier goading. “I didn’t like this from the start, when we heard the Mayday call. But I’ll come.”
    It’s so easy, she thought. The lessons of the slums operated with the same efficacy here or anywhere. She had administered the scare that Roland needed. She had teasingly half-promised Johnny, and then, when he became a little too confident, pushed him down a couple of rungs and warmed up the English boy. If they all died tomorrow, she thought, she would not waste a second’s grief on them. They were men, just men, easily found, easily fooled, easily dropped, and there was a whole world full of them. Then the old thought, the one that sometimes troubled her, swam into her mind. Was there one man in the whole world who was worthy of her respect? Even more, was there one man who could inspire in her the pathetic combination of adoration and lust which she saw in the faces around her? She provided herself with the answer, as she always did. No. Never. Even if there was, Hely’s ascent from the gutter to the stars could not be slowed for so intangible and profitless a business as love. It was an emotion that was best left to shopgirls in their blind dash to the miseries of motherhood that always ended in ugly, corseted middle age and anxiety over paying the rent. For Hely, the supreme emotion was power.
    She twisted the heavy ring off her finger and handed it to Yves. “Look after this for me, will you, Yves? Pierre will stay with you. We have an hour and a half of air. I don’t expect any complications. We will return before the time is up. If we do not, we have encountered something unexpected. Give us an extra ten minutes, and after that you are under orders to up anchor and get out.” She looked at Roland sweetly and added, “Where do you suggest, darling? Morocco? Tunis? Algeria? I should think they wouldn’t ask too many questions in Algeria.”
    Gratefully Roland grabbed the chance to exert at least half his authority, and agreed, “Algeria, I would think. Sell the yacht and split what you can get.”
    Hely’s beam of warm approbation swept the semicircle of men as they rose to their feet, oxygen cylinders in place, flippers on feet. “Good. Allons! Hely’s Heroes swim at five meters below the surface.”
    It was Hely who was the first to drop her face mask and slip over the side, and as the six other divers in their impersonal black uniforms followed, their thoughts shared a highly personal but also uniform vision. Glittering jewels dancing in the light, and a silky ribbon wrapped round a brown body.
    Klaas himself took the wheel to bring the Magt up under the lee of the wreck. It was eight-thirty in the morning. Then he handed it over to Piet, and climbed down to join Jason and Coby on the deck.
    “Did you send the wire?” Jason asked.
    Klaas nodded. He produced the sheet of paper from his pocket and read out loud: “Today, January first at eight twenty-seven, I, Captain Klaas van Zeevogel, master of the fifteen-hundred-ton freighter Magt van Leiden registered in Amsterdam, have made fast a line to the wreck of the Poseidon. I hereby claim rights of prime salvor.”
    “Great,” Jason grinned. “That’s a smart move, Klaas. If you can’t help anyone here, you might as well have the benefit of salvage