"You coming?" asked Chu Wen. "I'll be right behind you," answered Gallagher. Chu Wen wiped his oily hands on a rag, nodde
d at the chief engineer and made his way up a ladder to a hatch leading to the upper decks.
Gallagher took one final look at his beloved engines, certain they would soon be lying in the deep. He stiffened as an unusually loud screech echoed throughout the hull. The aged Princess Dou Wan was tormented by metal fatigue, a scourge suffered by aircraft as well as ships. Extremely difficult to distinguish in calm waters, it only becomes evident in a vessel pounded by vicious seas. Even when new, the Princess would have been hard-pressed to bear up under the onslaught of the waves that pounded her hull with a force of twenty thousand pounds per square inch.
Gallagher's heart froze when he saw a crack appear in a bulkhead that spread downward and then sideways across the hull plates. Starting on the port side, it widened as it progressed to starboard. He snatched up the ship's phone and rang the bridge.
Li Po answered. "Bridge."
"P
ut the captain on!" Gallagher snapped.
A second's pause, and then, "This is the captain."
"Sir, we've got a hell of a crack in the engine room, and it's getting worse by the minute."
Hunt was stunned. He had hoped against hope that they could make port before the damage turned critical. "Are we taking on water?"
"The pumps are fighting a losing battle."
"Thank you, Mr. Gallagher. Can you keep the engines turning until we reach land?"
"What time frame do you have in mind?"
"Another hour should put us in calmer waters."
"Doubtful," said Gallagher. "I give her ten minutes, no more."
"Thank you, Chief," Hunt said heavily. "You'd better leave the engine room while you still can."
Hunt wearily replaced the receiver, turned and looked out the aft wheelhouse windows. The ship had taken on a noticeable list and was rolling heavily. Two of her boats had already been smashed and swept overboard. Making for the nearest shore and running the ship safely aground was now out of the question. To reach the smoother waters, he would have to make a turn to starboard. The Princess would never survive if she was caught broadside in the maddened waves. She could easily be plunged into a trough without any hope of getting out. Whatever the circumstance, breaking up or the ice building on her superstructure and capsizing her, the ship was doomed.
His mind briefly traveled back sixty days in time and ten thousand miles in distance to the dock on the Yangtze River at Shanghai, where the furnishings from the Princess Dou Wan's staterooms were being stripped in preparation for her final voyage to the scrap yard in Singapore. The departure had been interrupted when General Kung Hui of the Nationalist Chinese Army arrived on the dock in a Packard limousine and ordered Captain Hunt to converse with him inside the car.
"Please excuse my intrusion, Captain, but I am acting under the personal directive of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek." General Kung Hui, skin and hands as smooth and white as a sheet of paper, sat fastidious and immaculate in a tailored uniform that showed no sign of a crease. He took up the entire rear seat in the passengers' compartment as he spoke, while Captain Hunt was forced to sit uncomfortably twisted sideways on a jump seat. "You are hearby ordered to place your ship and crew in a state of readiness for a long voyage."
"I believe there has been a mistake," said Hunt. "The Princess is not in a state of readiness for an extended cruise. She is about to depart with barely enough men, fuel and supplies to make the scrap yard in Singapore."
"You can forget about Singapore," said Hui with an airy wave of one hand. "Ample fuel and food will be provided along with twenty men from our Nationalist Navy. Once your cargo is on board ..." Hui paused to insert a cigarette in a long holder and light it. "... I should say in about ten days, you will be given your sailing orders."
"I must clear this with my company directors," argued Hunt.
"The directors of Canton Lines have been notified the Princess Dou Wan will be temporarily appropriated by the government."
"They agreed to it?"
Hui nodded. "Considering they were generously offered payment in gold by the generalissimo, they were most happy to cooperate."
"After we reach our, or should I say, your destination, what then?"
"Once the cargo is safely delivered ashore, you may continue on to Singapore."
"May I ask where we're bound for?"
"You may not."
"And the cargo?"