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"I strongly suggest you get your butt to the bridge," Giordino said with deadly seriousness "She's coive her nonoise"

Pitt needed no further encouragement He hoisted hi the deck to the forward coe was only one deck above He took the companionway four steps at a time, threw open the door of the wheelhouse and rushed inside A ship's officer was lying on the deck, dead, his ar the base of the chart table Pitt hurriedly scanned the ship's autoation syste for the digital course ht indicated that the electronic control was on manual override Feverishly he dashed outside onto the starboard bridge wing It was empty He turned and rushed back across the wheelhouse onto the port bridge wing Twoin contorted positions on the deck, white and cold Another ice-encrusted body hunched over the ship's exterior control panel on his knees, arms frozen underneath and around its pedestal He wore a foul-weather jacket with no old braid to show that he was surely the captain

"Can you drop the anchors?" asked Giordino

"Easier said than done," Pitt replied irritably "Besides, there is no flat bottoree angle for a thousand fatho in and grip"

Pitt saw in a glance why the ship maintained a direct track for nearly two hundred kiloold medal on a chain had fallen outside the captain's heavy jacket collar and hung suspended above the face of the control panel Each gust of wind pushed it fro, it struck against one of the toggle-type levers that controlled the movement of the ship, part of an electronics syste in port Eventually, the medal had knocked the directional lever into the half-port position, sending Polar Queen steaer Islands

Pitt lifted the raved on one side It was Saint Francis of Paola, the patron saint of ators Francis was revered for hisin the deep A pity Saint Francis had not rescued the captain, Pitt thought, but there was still a chance to save his ship

If not for Pitt's timely appearance, the simplest of events, the freak circuainst a sross ton ship and all its passengers and crew, alive or dead, would have crashed into unyielding rock and fallen into a cold and dispassionate sea

"You'd better be quick" Giordino's anxious voice came over the earphones

Pitt cursed hilance in awe at the sinister walls that seemed to stretch above his head into the upper atmosphere They were so flat and siant hand had polished their surface The breakers rising out of the sea were roaring into the exposed cliff less than two hundredswells sla her hull ever closer to disaster Pitt estimated that she would strike on her starboard bow in another four minutes

Unimpeded, the relentless waves swept in from the deep reaches of the ocean and dashed into the cliff with the explosive concussion of a large boe witch's cauldron of blue water and white spray It soared toward the top of the jagged rock island, hung there for aa return wave It was this backwash that teainst the palisades when she passed by

Pitt tried to pull the captain away froe The hands clasped around the base refused to give Pitt gripped the body under the arth

There was a sickening tearing sound that Pitt kneas the patting of frozen skin that had adhered to metal, then suddenly the captain was free Pitt threw him off to the side, found the chroainst the slot le of turn away from calamity

For nearly thirty seconds it see slowness the bow began to swing away froh A ship can't turn in the sa semitrailer It takes almost a kilometer to come to a complete stop, much less cut a sharp inside turn

He briefly considered throwing the port screw into reverse and swinging the ship on her axis, but he needed every knot of the ship'sswell, and then there was the danger of the stern swinging too far to starboard and crashing into the cliff

"She's not going to ht by the rollers You'd better jump while you still have a chance"