The Poseidon Adventure Read Online Free PDF

chiffon in contrasting shades of lilac. The men, with the exception of Scott, wore dinner jackets. The Minister was in a dark-blue suit and the flamboyant Princeton orange and black tie. Martin's dinner-jacket was tartan plaid in blue and green. In spite of the perfect fit of Rogo's clothes, his stocky body made him look like a bouncer in a night club. The two stewards, Acre and Peters, as usual were in their stiff shirts and white mess-jackets. Across the room, The Beamer and his girl were at his table, beginning to drink their evening meal. Pamela's mother was still ill.
    Robin Shelby ordered, 'I'll have the Lobster Newburg.'
    'No you won't!' said his mother. 'Not at night.'
    Her husband said, 'Turkey hash is practically obligatory the day after Christmas.'
    Miss Kinsale asked for Salmon Timbales, and hoped they would be like the fishcakes she was used to at home. The Rosens opted for the Devilled Chicken; the Rogos never ate anything but steak or hamburgers.
    Stewards with their food trays made their way through the aisles of deserted tables of the nearly empty dining-room and in between the shaking of the ship as she drove through the early evening, one could hear the occasional clink of fork and plate. It was rather a silent meal, for denied the covering hum and clatter of a full restaurant, the diners kept their voices and laughter down.
    In the engine room, the temporary double watch, their voices drowned out by the thunder of their machinery revolving at top speed, hovered over bearings, dials and gauges and wondered how long the Skipper intended to keep her driving at that pace. One of the oilers was sent to fetch a couple of dozen cokes. The boiler-room crew kept an equally anxious eye on temperature gauges and fuel consumption.
    Topside in the radio room on the sun deck, the night wireless operator was getting off a backlog of messages.
    On the bridge, the Captain, thanking his stars that he had got off so lightly, nevertheless was still apprehensive. He had discarded as unnecessary as well as dangerous the idea of taking on water ballast under way, even in a calm ocean through which his ship was sailing normally again. Should there be a hurricane warning, there would still be ample time to do so to enable his ship to ride out a storm. But from all reports, high-pressure zones were holding. Once again he made the decision not to ballast. If he pushed his engines to their capacity, he would be able to make up some of the lost time and bring her in no more than a day late already provided for. Yet no skipper is ever truly comfortable when his vessel is going all out. He operated therefore with the sixth sense of the veteran seaman: weather good, forecast holding, sea track clear, nerve ends uncomfortable.
    With nightfall, the sky had become overcast and the surface of the flattened sea had an oily quality which was distasteful to the Master, as though a leaden-coloured skin had formed over it. When his ship entered the zone of total darkness he sent a second man up into the Crow's nest and posted two young officers permanently at the radar screen, whose revolving arm lit up not a single blip on a fifty-mile range.
    The executive, who was second-in-command and a more stolid person, could not imagine what was bugging the skipper or keeping him striding nervously. Thrice he had asked whether the second lookout had been posted. Each time he passed the radar screen, he glanced into it. He was like a man driving a car who, checking his rear vision mirror before making a turn, does not quite believe it when he sees there is no one behind him.
    From time to time he went out on to the port bridge wing, which projected out over the water and looked down upon the oily sea, reflecting the speeding string of lights of his ship keeping pace with him on its surface. The news of the minor quake had made him conscious of what lay below. His charts showed that the submerged mountain peaks of the Mid Atlantic Ridge, extending in a