The Poseidon Adventure

Poseidon was now farther down by the head, so that the upturned keel slanted perceptibly. Only the indomitable Germans still held connection with her. Their lifeboat towing the strand of rope, now doubled, had reached the side of the freighter and was being taken aboard. There was something ridiculous yet courageous about that absurd line snubbing her sternpost.
The sight only irritated Rogo who said, ‘I hope she takes ’em all with her when she goes. They murdered my buddy at Bastogne.’

The great and potent deity, Bacchus, had looked after his own again.

I wasn’t meaning to open any cans of peas

He crept closer to her so that the others would not hear

a pillow under one’s head and a book in hand to make one drowsy

Thus, shortly before noon Mr James Martin, proprietor of a men’s haberdashery shop in Evanston, Illinois, travelling alone and unaffected by the movement, telephoned to Mrs Wilma Lewis, a widow from Chicago.

At seven o’clock, the morning of the 26th day of December, the S.S. Poseidon, 81,000 tons, homeward bound for Lisbon after a month-long Christmas cruise to African and South American ports, suddenly found herself in the midst of an unaccountable swell, 400 miles south-west of the Azores, and began to roll like a pig.
The Poseidon, formerly the R.M.S. Atlantis, the first of the giant transatlantic liners to become outmoded, sold and converted to a combination of cargo and cruise trade, entered the area with her fuel tanks two-thirds empty and no water ballast replacement. The curiously long, low waves she was encountering came at intervals just too far apart to be caught by the lagging synchronization of her out-of-date and partially damaged stabilizers. Thus, she reeled drunkenly from side to side with the result that the motion combined with the hangover from the practically all-night, gala Christmas party and dance made the bulk of her five hundred odd, one-class Travel Consortium Limited passengers miserably and uncompromisingly ill.
The big switchboard serving the cabin telephones began to light up like the Christmas tree decorating the grand dining-saloon. Calls for help swamped the office of the ship’s medico, Dr Caravello, a seventy-five-year-old Italian dragged from retirement by the International Syndicate operating the trip, and his assistant Marco, an intern just out of medical school. There were also a head nurse and two sisters. The telephone in the surgery never stopped ringing. Unable to cope personally, the Doctor simply sent around pills and instructions to remain in bed. All this took place in bright tropical sunlight on a sea which, except for the interminable swells, was barely ruffled.
To add to the unhappiness of the retching passengers, things in the cabins came alive. Everything unattached—trunks, hand luggage, bottles—slid from side to side; clothing hung upon pegs took on animation, swaying outwards and back again. Nerves were further jangled by the protesting creaks and groans of the old ship’s joints and the distant crashes of breaking crockery. Seasick remedies eventually lost both their potency and psychological magic. By mid-morning as far as the travellers were concerned, their happy home throughout an otherwise gay and uneventful voyage had become a hell.
As always, however, there were a few hardy exceptions, that small percentage of good sailors to be found on every liner which says, ‘I never get sick’ and don’t.
Thus, shortly before noon Mr James Martin, proprietor of a men’s haberdashery shop in Evanston, Illinois, travelling alone and unaffected by the movement, telephoned to Mrs Wilma Lewis, a widow from Chicago. Mrs Lewis was not amongst the fortunate and said, ‘For God’s sake don’t bother me! Just let me die quietly.’ And when he asked, ‘Mayn’t I come and see you?’ groaned, ‘No!’ and hung up.
In another cabin Mrs Linda Rogo was abusing her husband, between bouts of being sick, with every obscenity of an experienced vocabulary. Mrs Rogo was an ex-Hollywood starlet and briefly a Broadway actress, convinced that she had lowered herself and sacrificed her career when she married Mike Rogo, plain-clothes detective of the Broadway Strong Arm squad. Between calling him every gutter name she could muster, she developed the theme that he had made her come upon this voyage of which she had hated every minute and now had not even the grace to be ill. Mike Rogo, unable to placate his wife, eventually fled the cabin followed by her curses.
Dr Frank Scott—the Doctor was not an M.D. but a Doctor of Divinity—telephoned Mr Richard Shelby of Detroit and said, ‘Hi, Dick!’ and got back, ‘Hi, Frank!’
‘How’s the family standing up?’
‘Okay, up to now.’
Scott said, ‘There goes our squash game.’
‘I’ll say!’
‘If this stops, we might have a try this afternoon.’
‘Right!’
‘See you at lunch.’
‘Okay, Buzz.’
The two men had been drawn together during the cruise by common interest in football and athletics. The Reverend Doctor Scott no more than five years ago had been Frank ‘Buzz’ Scott, Princeton’s All-America full back, all-around athlete, two-time Olympic decathlon champion and mountain climber.
Richard Shelby, Scott’s senior by some twenty years, travelling with his family, Vice-