The Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico Read Free Book Online Page B

glazed again. But it was now some two feet higher and closer to the surface of the dining-room level than it had been before.
    None of them were exactly certain what they had seen. What Acre then said came as even more of a shock to them, 'Mr Kyrenos ought to have known. The engine room isn't down any more. It's up.'
    Scott put his hand on Shelby's arm and looked about for a moment. The fixed, half-fanatic, half-supremely concentrated glaze the older man had so often noticed in his eyes had faded and he looked utterly composed. He said, 'Hold them all together here, Dick. Try to keep them quiet for a minute, while I see if there's anything I can do for some of those people over there.' He gave Shelby's arm a squeeze of encouragement and strode off, his feet propelled by his powerful legs pushed aside the glass shards littering the floor with the clinking sound as of Christmas sleigh bells.

CHAPTER IV
    The Adventurers

    The ceiling of the dining-saloon of the S.S. Poseidon had consisted of squares of frosted glass inset into alternating steel and copper bands, the lights located behind the squares. Now reversed to become the floor, it resembled a battlefield with the bodies of the dead or unconscious scattered about in pathetic heaps of clothing that looked as though there was no one in them. They were dead of broken necks and broken backs; unconscious from concussion or skull fracture. Some of the heaps moved feebly, protesting against the pain of shattered limbs and internal injuries. Only those few who, like the group towards the stern had been close to the port side of the vessel, were on their feet.
    The ship's surgeon, old Dr Caravello, had lost his thick-lensed spectacles, without which he could not see two feet in front of his face. Half in shock himself, he had begun to function by instinct but for the moment was unable to do little more than grope about and peer muzzily at the nearest injured. He still had his napkin in his hand and reached over to a man with a head injury from contact with the arm of a chair as he fell, trying to staunch the bleeding, the while crying out for his assistant, 'Marco! Marco! Where the devil are you? Can't you see I need help?'
    A figured loomed up at his side. Dr Caravello asked, 'Is that you, Marco? Get me some more dressings.'
    Scott said, 'No, Marco isn't here. But I'll do what I can,' and he began picking up napkins and tearing them into strips for bandages. 'Is there much we can do?' he asked.
    Dr Caravello said, 'I can't see without my glasses. God knows. If the ship has turned over, in a minute we may all be dead.'
    Scott said, 'If God knows and we don't behave like cowards, He'll see us through.'
    'I can't see without my glasses!' Dr Caravello repeated, and began to grope amongst the debris.
    'There they are,' Scott said and picked them up for him. A young Fourth Officer, who was a Yugoslav just out of training school, had managed to regain his feet, bracing himself and shaking his head to try to clear it. He said and then kept repeating, 'Kip carm, everyboody, plis. Everysing going to be ollright.' Nobody paid any attention to him.
    Of the five waiters who had been serving in the dining-room at the time, one was dead, two were unconscious and two others in shock like the rest, responded to the automatism of their jobs by picking up napkins and pieces of broken crockery and trying to clear a path through the debris by pushing it with their feet.
    Scattered in helpless groups were some twenty uninjured passengers, which included Greeks, French, Belgians, the German Augenblick family and an American couple in their seventies.
    A woman suddenly began to scream hysterically, her voice piercing to an unbelievable pitch, and simultaneously the children of the Germans began to cry. Then the woman's screams stopped abruptly as though someone had struck her, but the crying of the children continued.
    One of the two British junior pursers was unconscious. When the Doctor and Scott came