Gosling jogged across the lurching decks, climbing the see-sawing ladders to the pilothouse. The air was thick and pungent with belching black smoke and the stink of charred wood.
He saw the deck lights flicker in that cloistral fog.
Go out.
The ship was plunged into seething blackness. Men started to scream again and he wondered if they’d ever stopped. The world was a hive of noise. Timbers crunching, metal creaking and groaning with fatigue. Voices were calling for help. Voices were arguing. Grown men were shrieking like babes and he wanted very much to join in.
Then the lights came back on, flickered with a dim strobe effect, but finally caught.
As he entered the pilothouse, or was thrown into it, he saw Morse at the radio. He was shouting into it. “MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!” he bellered. “THIS IS AN SOS! THIS IS AN SOS! WE’RE SINKING… OUR POSITION…” he tossed the mic against the bulkhead. The lights kept flickering. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! We don’t have any goddamn juice!”
Gosling grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. “Captain, we have to get off her,” he stammered. “The sea’s coming in too fast for the pumps… if the rest of those drums go-”
“I’ve seen the Fourth of July, Mister, I know what’ll happen. Let’s get off this bitch. Lower those boats.”
Gosling had already given that order, just as he’d given the order for the men to don their survival suits just as they’d been trained to do… but in the confusion and panic with the ship yawing and rolling severely, well, he figured most never heard.
“Let’s go, First,” the captain said.
He took the lead, Gosling at his heels, making for the hatch… but never got there.
A tremendous ear-shattering roar ripped the night into shreds. The deck beneath them heaved and buckled. The pilothouse collapsed in a rain of splintered wood, glass, and twisted metal.
Gosling crawled from the wreckage, bleeding from a dozen gashes in his face. He found what was left of Morse: he’d been split in two by a beam.
It happened that quick.
Gosling made it out to the ladder, started climbing down the superstructure, deck by deck. The fog had thinned now, it seemed, been replaced by funneling black smoke. He almost made the spar deck when another explosion tossed him through the air. Girders and flaming sheet metal collapsed on top of him.
He tried to pull himself free, but his foot snagged.
“Help!” he called out. “Over here! Lend a hand!”