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There was a pause, then Amelia said resolutely, "I guess we'll have to break out the marshmallows."
Pitt looked up to the bow, squinting against the spray thrown by the wind. "You're a very intrepid lady. I hope we can meet when this is over. Dinner is on me."
"Maybe . . ." There was a hesitation. "You'll have to tell me your name first."
"My name is Dirk Pitt."
"A strong name. I like that. Over and out."
McFerrin grinned wearily. "She's a gorgeous creature, Pitt. And quite independent when it comes to men."
Pitt grinned back. "I wouldn't want it any other way."
The rains came like a glistening solid wall, not gradually, but in a sudden deluge. And still the Emerald Dolphin burned. Her sides were glowing red as the rain struck the ferocious heat, quickly covering the flaming ship in a vast cloud of steam.
"Bring her within two hundred feet of the hull slow and easy," Burch ordered the helmsman. He was troubled at the pitching and rolling of his ship as she was pounded by the rising waves. He became even more troubled when Chief Engineer House called the bridge.
"The old girl is being hammered down here," he reported. "The leaks are getting worse. I can't guarantee how much longer the pumps can keep up, even with the auxiliaries adding to the discharge."
"We've come under the hull of the cruise ship," replied Burch. "I'm hoping her bulk will protect us from the worst of the storm."
"Every little bit helps."
"Do the best you can."
"It's not easy," grumbled House. "Not when you're climbing over bodies packed tighter than an anchovy jar."
Burch turned to Pitt, who was peering into the wet gloom with the binoculars. "Any sign of the containership or the Aussie frigate?"
"The heavy rain has cut visibility to a bare minimum, but radar has the containership closing within a thousand yards."
Burch took out an old bandanna and wiped the moisture from his brow and neck. "I hope the captain is a good seaman, because he's going to need all the experience he's got."
Captain Malcolm Nevins, master of the Collins and West Shipping Lines containership Earl of Wattlesfield, sat in an elevated swivel chair with his feet propped on the bridge counter and contemplated the radar screen. Just ten minutes earlier, the burning ship was in visual contact, but then the storm closed in with phenomenal swiftness and the accompanying deluge had curtained off all view. With an air of practiced indifference, he eased a platinum cigarette case from his pants pocket, lifted out a Dunhill and placed it between his lips. Incongruously, he lit the expensive cigarette with an old scratched and dented Zippo lighter that he had carried since serving in the Royal Navy during the war of the Falklands.
Nevins's ruddy features, usually humorous and pleated, were set in concentration; his limpid gray eyes squinting and uneasy. He wondered what kind of hell he was about to find. The radio reports from the American survey vessel were morbid with descriptions of over two thousand people trying to escape the blazing cruise ship. In all his thirty years at sea, he could not recall a disaster of such magnitude.
"There," shouted his first officer, Arthur Thorndyke, pointing ahead off the starboard bow through the bridge windshield.
The falling sheets of rain parted for a minute, as though they were drapes, revealing the blazing cruise ship enshrouded by smoke and steam. "Engines on SLOW," Nevins ordered.
"Aye, sir."
"Are the boat crews standing by?" asked Nevins, as the huge liner materialized out of the downpour.
"Boat crews standing by and ready to lower away," answered Thorndyke. "I must say, I don't envy them floating on a sea with twelve-foot swells."
"We'll lay to as close as we can to save them time and distance between ships." He picked up a pair of binoculars and peered at the water around the cruise ship. "I don't see anyone swimming, and there is no sign of lifeboats."
Thorndyke nodded at the torched remains of the ship's lifeboats. "Nobody left the ship in those."
Nevins stiffened, his mind picturing a blazing hulk carrying thousands of dead. "The loss of life must be horrendous," he said darkly.
"I don't see the American survey vessel."
Nevins read the situation instantly. "Come around the ship. The Americans must be on her sheltered side."
The Earl of Wattlesfield lumbered steadily through the chaotic waters, as if disregarding all dire threats from the sea and daring the elements to throw their best at her. At 68,000 tons, she was more than a city block long and her decks were piled several stories high with boxed units filled with freight. For ten years she had sailed every ocean in the world through every kind of sea without losing one container or one life. She was considered a lucky ship, especially by her owners, who had profited millions of pounds from her reliable servic
