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"The ship must have been traveling in ballast," Pitt speculated out loud.
"It would appear so," said Dover.
"Now where?"
"Up one more ladder to the alleyway that runs between the fresh water tanks into the ship's storerooms."
Slowly they made their way through the bowels of the Pilottown, feeling like gravediggers probing a cemetery at midnight. Around every corner they half expected to find the skeletons of the crew.
But there were no bones. The crews living quarters should have looked like an anniversary sale at Macy's-clothes, personal belongings, everything that should have been strewn about by a crew hastily abandoning ship. Instead, the pitch-black interior of the Pilottown looked like the tunnels and chambers of a desert cavern.
All that was missing were the bats.
The food lockers were bare. No dishes or cups lined the shelves of the crew mess. Even the toilets lacked paper. Fire extinguishers, door latches, furnishings, anything that could be unbolted or was of the slightest value was gone.
"Mighty peculiar," muttered Dover.
"My thought too," Pitt said. "She's been systematically stripped."
"Scavengers must have boarded and carried away everything during the years she was adrift."
"Scavengers leave a mess," Pitt disagreed. "Whoever was behind this job had a fetish for neatness."
It was an eerie trip. Their shadows flitted on the dark walls of the alleyways and followed alongside the silent and abandoned machinery. Pitt felt a longing to see the sky again.
"Incredible," mumbled Dover, still awed by what they'd found, or rather not found. "They even removed all the valves and gauges."If I was a gambling man," said Pitt thoughtfully, "I'd bet we've stumbled on an insurance scam."
"Wouldn't be the first ship that was posted missing for a Lloyd's of London payday," Dover said.
"You told me the crew claimed they abandoned the Pilottown in a storm. They abandoned her all right, but they left nothing but a barren, worthless shell."
"Easy enough to check out," said Dover. "Two ways to scuttle a ship at sea. Open the sea cocks and let her flood, or blow out the bottom with explosive charges."
"How would you do it?"
"Flooding through the sea cocks could take twenty-four hours or more. Time enough for a passing ship to investigate. I opt for the charges. Quick and dirty; put her on the seafloor in a matter of minutes."
"Something must have prevented the explosives from detonating."
"It's only a theory."
"Next question," Pitt persisted. "Where would you lay them?"
"Cargo holds, engine room, most any place against the hull plates so long as it was below the waterline."
"No sign of charges in the after holds," said Pitt. "That leaves the engine room and the forward cargo holds."
"We've come this far," Dover said. "We might as well finish the job."
"Faster if we split up. I'll search the engine room. You know your way around the ship better than I do-"
"The forward cargo holds it is," Dover said, anticipating him.
The big Coast Guardsman started up a companionway, whistling the Notre Dame fight song under his breath. His bear like gait and hulking build, silhouetted by the wavering flashlight in his hand, grew smaller and finally faded.
Pitt began probing around the maze of steam pipes leading from the obsolete old steam reciprocating engines and boilers. The walkway gratings over the machinery were nearly eaten through by rust, and he treaded lightly. The engine room seemed to come alive in his imagination-creaks and moans, murmurings drifting out of the ventilators, whispering sounds.
He found a pair of sea cocks. Their hand wheels were frozen in the closed position.
