“Don’t tell me,” he said as Adams staggered beside him. “The stopcocks are on the other side of the ship.”
“Yessir.”
“No time like the present,” John said grimly, and gave him a boost forward. The trip across the beam of the ship became steadily more like a climb. Adams staggered ahead, pushed from behind by John and the ex-Marine. At last they came to a complex of wheels and pipes.
“That one!” Adams shouted, pointing. Then he looked down the side of the ship. “Oh, Jesus, the barnacles are showing—Jesus Son of God, Mary Mother, she’s going to go over.”
“No she isn’t,” John said, fighting off a moments image of drowning in the dark with air only a few unreachable feet away through the hull. He spat on his hands. “Let’s do it.”
The spoked steel wheel was about a yard in diameter, locked by a chain and pin. Adams snatched it out, and John locked his hands on the wheel. It moved a quarter of an inch, stopped, moved again, halted. John braced a foot against the wall and heaved until his muscles crackled and threatened to tear loose from his pelvis.
“Jammed,” Adams said. “Must’ve jammed—shaft torqued by the explosion.”
“Then we’ll unjam it.”
John looked around. Resting in brackets on the side of the central island of the ship were an ax, sledgehammer, and prybar.
“Jam these through the spokes,” he said briskly. “Here and here. Now both of you together, heave.”
They strained; there was silence except for grunts of effort and the distant shouts on the dock. Then the ax handle snapped across with a gunshot crack. Barrjen skipped aside with a curse as the axhead whipped past him and bounced off the wall, leaving a streak of shiny metal scraped free of paint on the wall.
“Fuck this,” John shouted.
He snatched the sledgehammer from Adams hands, jammed the crowbar firmly in place, and braced himself to strike. That was difficult; the ship was well past its center of gravity now, A few more minutes, and the intakes for the flood valves would be above the surface. That would happen seconds before she went over.
Clung. The vibrating jolt shivered painfully back up his arms, into his shoulders, starting a pain in the small of his back. He took a deep breath as the sledge swung up again, focused, exhaled in a grunt of total concentration as the hammer came down. Clung. Clung. Clung.
Adams’ nerve broke and he fled back up the ladder. Two strikes later Barrjen spoke, at first a breathy whisper as he stared at the wheel with sweat running down his face.
“She’s moving.” Then a shout: “The boor’s moving!”
It was; John had to reposition himself as it turned a quarter revolution. Easier now. He flung the sledgehammer aside and pulled the crowbar free, grabbing at the wheel with his hands. Barrjen did likewise on the other side. Both men strained at the reluctant metal, faces red and gasping with the effort, bodies knotted into straining statue-shapes. The wheel jerked, moved, jerked. Then spun, faster and faster.
A new sound came from beneath their feet, a vibrating rumble.
“Either that works, or she’s already too far gone,” John gasped. “Let’s see from the dock.”
There was a crowd waiting. They cheered as John and the stocky ex-Marine jumped from the tilted deck to the wharfside, a score of hands reaching to steady them. John ignored the babbled questions. He did take a proffered flask of brandy, sipping once or twice before handing it back and never taking his eyes from the ship.
“She’s not tilting any further,” Barrjen said.
“And she’s settling fast.”
Four minutes and the decks were awash. Another and they heard a deep rumbling bong, a sound felt through the soles of their feet more than through the ears. The funnels, central island and crane-masts of the merchantman trembled through a thirty-degree arc to a position that was nearly vertical as the relatively flat bottom of the ship rolled it nearly upright on the mud of the harbor bottom.
John flexed his hands and took a deep breath. “Right,” he said, when the cheers died down. “Get some small explosive charges here, we’ll want to kill off any sea life.” Scavengers were swarming in. “We’ll need diving suits, air pumps, more ropes. Get moving!”