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The Kearsarge was settling deeper in the water with each passing minute. Her list was nearly ten degrees, and it was becoming almost impossible to sustain a straight course. The reef was coming closer. They could see the waves striking the coral and bursting in a glistening spray under the sun.
"Five fathoms," the leadsman called out, "and rising fast."
Hunt wasn't going to risk the lives of his crew. He was about to give the order to abandon ship when the Kearsarge drove onto the coral bottom, her keel and hull gouging a path through the reef until she came to an abrupt stop and rolled over until she rested on a list of fifteen degrees.
"Praise the Lord, we're saved," murmured the helmsman, still gripping the spokes of the wheel, his face red from the effort, his arms numb with exhaustion.
"She's hard aground," Ellis said to Hunt. "The tide is ebbing, so the old girl won't be going anywhere."
"True," Hunt acknowledged sadly. "A pity if she can't be saved." • "Salvage tugs might pull her off the reef, providing the bottom isn't torn out of her."
"That damnable monster is responsible. If there's a God, it will pay for this travesty."
"Maybe she has," Ellis said quietly. "She sank pretty fast after the collision. She must have damaged her bow and opened it to the sea."
"I can't help but wonder why she didn't simply heave to and explain her presence."
Ellis stared thoughtfully over the turquoise Caribbean water. "I seem to remember reading something once, about one of our warships, the Abraham Lincoln, encountering a mysterious metal monster about thirty years ago. It tore her rudder off."
"Where was this?" asked Hunt.
"I believe it was the Sea of Japan. And at least four British warships have disappeared under mysterious circumstances over the past twenty years."
"The Navy Department will never believe what happened here," said Hunt, looking around his wrecked ship with growing anger. "I'll be lucky if I don't get court-martialed and drummed out of the service."
"You've got a hundred and sixty witnesses who will back you up," Ellis assured him.
"No captain wishes to lose his ship, certainly not to some unidentifiable mechanical monstrosity." He paused to look down into the sea, his mind turning to the job at hand. "Start loading supplies into the boats. We'll move ashore and wait for rescue on firm ground."
"I've checked the charts, sir. It's called Roncador Reef."
"A sorry place and a sorry end for such an illustrious ship," he said wistfully.
Ellis threw an informal salute and began directing the crew to shuttle food, canvas for tents and personal belongings onto the low coral cay. Under the light of a half-moon, they labored all night and into the next day, setting up camp and cooking the first of their meals ashore.
Hunt was the last man to leave the Kearsarge. Just before he climbed down the ladder to a waiting boat, he paused to stare down into the restless water. He would take to his death the sight of the bearded man staring out of the black monster at him. "Who are you?" he murmured under his breath. "Did you survive? And if so, who will be your next victim?"
In the next several years, until he died, whenever a report reached him of a warship that had vanished with all hands, Hunt could not help but wonder if the man in the monster was responsible.
Kearsarge's officers and men existed without hardship ashore for two weeks before a trail of smoke was sighted on the horizon. Hunt sent out a boat with First Officer Ellis, who stopped a passing steamer that took Hunt and his men off the cay and carried them to Panama.
Strangely, when Hunt and his crew returned to the United States, there was no board of inquiry, a very unusual circumstance. It was as if the secretary of the Navy and the admirals wanted to sweep the incident quietly under the carpet. To Captain Hunt's surprise, he was elevated in rank to full captain before his honorable retirement. First Officer Ellis was also promoted and given command of the Navy's newest gunboat, Helena, and saw service during the Spanish-American War in Cuban waters.
Congress authorized $45,000 to raise the Kearsarge from Roncador Reef and tow her home to a shipyard. But it was found that natives from nearby islands had set her on fire to salvage her brass, copper and iron. Her guns were removed, and the salvagers returned to port, leaving her hulk to disintegrate in a coral tomb.
Part One
INFERNO
1
JULY 15, 2003
THE SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN
If the disaster had been planned months in advance with meticulous insight and judgment, it could not have been more catastrophic. Everything that could go wrong did so beyond imagination. The luxurious cruise ship Emerald Dolphin was on fire and no one on board had an omen, a premonition, not even the slightest trace of suspicion of the danger. Yet flames were slowly devouring the interior of the ship's wedding chapel, located amidships just forward of the sumptuous
shopping village.
