Man Overboard! Read online

  ALSO BY CURTIS PARKINSON

  Storm-Blast

  Sea Chase

  Domenic’s War

  Death in Kingsport

  The Castle on Deadman’s Island

  Copyright © 2012 by Curtis Parkinson

  Published in Canada by Tundra Books,

  75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9

  Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York,

  P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011923287

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced,

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

  recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior

  written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other

  reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing

  Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Parkinson, Curtis

  Man overboard! / Curtis Parkinson.

  eISBN: 978-1-77049-299-8

  I. Title.

  PS8581.A76234M36 2012 jC813.’54 C2011-901382-7

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through

  the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and that of the

  Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development

  Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of:

  the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our

  publishing program.

  Cover image: Transcendental Graphics / Getty Images

  v3.1

  To my fellow deckhands on the Rapids Prince,

  way back then

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Other Books by This Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Afterword

  ONE

  At a blast from the ship’s horn, the lines were cast off. The Rapids Prince was under way. Their work done for the moment, the tired deckhands could relax.

  All except Scott.

  No. Not when he knew who was up there, mixing with the other passengers, acting as if they were just tourists too. German agents, Scott suspected, from what he’d overheard – one could be the agent rumored to have landed recently from a U-boat on the East Coast, the other already established in the country.

  Yet he couldn’t tell anybody, especially not the captain, because of what he’d been up to when he happened to overhear them. Knowing the captain’s temper, he’d be fired on the spot. So would his friend Adam.

  It was just so frustrating. All Scott could do was wait and try to figure out what those two were up to. They must have had a reason for boarding the Rapids Prince – surely not for the rapids, thrilling as they were, or the scenery. And there were quicker ways to get to Montreal. They could have been driven there in their Packard, on the King’s Highway 2, in three hours, whereas the Rapids Prince took most of the day. So why were they there, mingling with the genuine tourists?

  He sighed. There was nothing he could do about it. He might as well join his fellow deckhands, who were clustering around the access doorway on the lower deck to watch the rapids. For shooting the Long Sault was a thrilling ride, no matter how many times you’d done it before.

  As the ship entered the rapids, it began to pick up speed, like a roller coaster starting on its downhill run. And it really was a run. The St. Lawrence River, Scott had read somewhere, drains an eighth of the continent, and all that water is squeezed – tumbling, twisting, and turning – into one narrow gap, creating the Long Sault Rapids.

  Mere feet away, a giant wave swept by, sunlight glinting on its surface. So close yet so far, provided the pilot stayed within the narrow channel that represented safety.

  On the deck above, passengers lined the rails. A man wielding one of the new-fangled movie cameras was calling instructions to his children, who obstinately refused to smile. A lady nearby pulled her young son down from the rail he’d been climbing. Only a soldier and his bride, the confetti still in her hair, stared into each other’s eyes, ignoring the rapids. It looked like the war would keep them apart for years yet.…

  Up in the wheelhouse, Captain Plum was pacing. He’d made this run almost five hundred times, yet he could never stop worrying. The pilot at the wheel knew the route through the rapids like the back of his hand, and the ship was especially designed for the task. Yet the captain continued to worry.

  A sturdy three-decker, the Rapids Prince had the shallow draft necessary to navigate the rapids. It also had lots of deck space for viewing the rapids and a fine dining room to keep the tourists happy for the day-long trip to Montreal.

  Yet the thought of those rocks flashing by, rocks that could rip a gash in the hull of his precious ship, kept the captain tense. He felt in his pocket for an antacid. His ulcer always acted up on excursion days.

  Beside him, the pilot gripped the wheel tightly, his eyes peering ahead for the landmarks only he was privy to – a certain pine tree on a point of land, a painted barn on the starboard shore. Landmarks he would use to guide the Rapids Prince safely past the rocks; landmarks learned from the Indians centuries ago and passed along within the pilot’s family for generations. It was rumored that Lloyds of London’s insurance on the vessel was valid only if a pilot from this particular family was at the helm.

  “Here we go,” one of the deckhands exclaimed. “It’s the maelstrom coming up!” The maelstrom was where the turbulence reached its peak.

  Then, suddenly, from the deck above, someone screamed.

  The scream was followed by a shout: “Man overboard!”

  TWO

  It was bedlam. The passengers rushed to the stern. The first mate grabbed a life ring and pushed through the crowd. “Make way, make way!”

  He could see no sign of anyone, but he threw the ring in the unlikely event whoever had gone overboard had surfaced. Immediately seized by the churning water, the life ring disappeared.

  On the bridge, Captain Plum’s first thought was to signal the engine room to reverse, but he dared not risk it in the rapids. All he could do was reach up and blow six short blasts on the ship’s whistle – the MAN OVERBOARD signal. By this time, though, most passengers already knew.

  The pilot at the wheel, distracted by the commotion, missed a crucial landmark, and the ship strayed ever so slightly off course. That was all it took. The Rapids Prince gave a lurch, like a building in an earthquake, then shook herself, straightened up, and kept going.

  Captain Plum knew instantly what that lurch meant. It was what he’d feared most. His ship had grazed one of those deadly rocks. He groaned. The loss of a passenger overboard in the rapids was enough of a calamity; add an encounter with a rock and it became a catastrophe.<
br />
  Scott and the other deckhands had heard the shouts from the deck above and felt the lurch of the ship a moment later. Stunned, the inexperienced deckhands looked at each other. We should do something, shouldn’t we? But what exactly?

  Some wanted to rush up top and ready a lifeboat, but on a passenger run they had strict instructions to stay out of the way unless they were summoned by the first mate. So they waited.

  Scott stared out at the raging torrent as the Rapids Prince plunged on. Whoever it was who’d gone overboard didn’t stand a chance. Did those two suspected German agents on the deck above have anything to do with it? Or is it a coincidence that this happened when they were aboard? And that lurch? Did we graze one of those deadly rocks? Are we in danger of sinking? He felt inadequate, so new on the job that he had no idea what to do, except wait for orders.

  The ship’s speed slowed as she entered calmer water below the rapids. Finally it was safe for the captain to signal for reverse; the propellers churned, and the ship came to a gradual halt.

  The deckhands were summoned then, and a lifeboat was lowered. Two manned the oars and a third was posted in the bow as a lookout. The first mate sat in the stern and barked out orders, reminding Scott of Captain Bligh in the movie Mutiny on the Bounty.

  Captain Plum radioed the nearest police patrol and reported the man overboard. He then turned to the pilot and advised him that the ship would not proceed one inch farther until the extent of the damage from the rock was assessed by the chief engineer. Accordingly, the pilot selected a tree on the nearby shore, where he judged the water to be deep enough, and maneuvered the ship as close to the bank as he dared.

  A rope was rigged at the end of a long hinged boom to bridge the ten-foot gap between the ship and the bank. The second mate beckoned to Scott and handed him the rope. “Off you go, then.”

  Scott grasped the rope and shoved off. The boom swung out, but not quite far enough to reach the shore. He was left dangling high over the water, kicking like a puppet on a string. From the deck above, he heard titters from the passengers at the rail.

  The boom, with Scott still hanging on, was hauled back in for a second try. This time he gave a mighty shove off, the boom swung out all the way, and he dropped onto the grassy bank. A scattering of applause came from the passengers, and he began to feel like a sideshow diverting their attention from the tragedy of the man overboard.

  Mooring lines were thrown to him, and Scott secured the ship fore and aft to sturdy pine trees. Then he sat down on the grassy bank to await orders.

  Surveying the passengers gathered at the rail, he didn’t see any sign of the men he suspected of being German agents among them. He did, however, spot his girlfriend, Lindsay, with her mother and father. Conscious of the watching crowd, he gave her a tentative wave, hoping she hadn’t seen him dangling helplessly from the boom.

  He’d been pining for her ever since he’d left home for his summer job, and now, when he saw her so close, his heart beat faster.

  Lindsay smiled and waved back. A boy stood beside her at the rail, and Scott saw, to his annoyance, that it was Ian Day from their high school. Ian was six foot two, popular with the girls, and president of the student council.

  Scott watched jealously as Ian leaned over and said something to Lindsay that made her laugh. The creep is probably making fun of me. He plucked a blade of grass to chew on. Now Ian was touching her arm. Nothing was going right today.

  When the lifeboat returned, the first mate shook his head. Then it sunk home to the watchers that they were witnessing a tragedy.

  The first mate delivered his report to the bridge. “Couldn’t find a thing, Captain,” he said. “The body may have sunk, or it may be hung up on a rock in the maelstrom.”

  “I’m not surprised,” the captain said. “The police patrol will have to drag below the rapids, though I doubt they’ll find anything.… ”

  “The crew’s all accounted for,” the first mate said. “Must have been a passenger. The woman who screamed told me she’d been at the rail and just happened to catch a glimpse of a body hurtling down and hitting the water with a splash. The man beside her said he’d seen a man’s arm sticking up out of the water for a moment, his fingers clawing at the side, like he was trying to grab on to something. But then, he was gone.”

  The captain fully expected to be faced at any minute with a distraught wife, her words tumbling out about a missing husband, or a mother weeping for her child who’d fallen overboard. Yet no one appeared, no one who had even lost track of a traveling companion. It was eerie: a man overboard and no one reported missing.

  He made an announcement over the loudspeaker, asking any passengers who knew of someone missing to report to the purser’s office immediately. When no one appeared, he made a second announcement, asking everyone on board to have their names checked off the purser’s passenger list. A lineup formed immediately outside his office.

  Meanwhile, the chief engineer was busy looking for any signs of a leak from the encounter with the boulder. The captain waited impatiently for his report. He had a boatload of passengers due in Montreal tonight.

  Eventually the lineup outside the purser’s office dwindled to nothing, and the purser sat down to go through his list. He discovered that every passenger’s name had been checked off except one – that of a certain Derek Patterson, for whom, he recalled, a reservation had been made at the last minute by phone.

  “I guess it’s up to the police to figure out who he is,” he said. “Who he was, I mean.”

  “That’s odd,” the captain said. “A reservation for one, made at the last minute.” He stroked his chin. “Most people travel with their family or friends. But it looks like nobody on board has ever heard of this man.”

  But there was someone on board who’d heard of Derek Patterson. That someone was Scott, and he’d heard of him because of the conversation he’d overheard that morning, when he was on the running board of the Packard eating pie instead of working.

  But he wasn’t about to admit that to anyone, especially not the captain.

  THREE

  When Scott first saw the car pull up alongside the ship earlier that day, it had taken his breath away. A Packard Twelve Touring Sedan, with a uniformed chauffeur up front. What a beauty! Just like the one in the full-page glossy magazine ads he used to clip out before the war – when they were still making cars instead of tanks. But he’d never imagined he’d get the chance to see one up close.

  The Packard Twelve Touring Sedan had a powerful twelve-cylinder engine under its long hood, whitewalls, fancy chrome wings as a hood ornament, a luxurious backseat of Moroccan leather, a built-in bar with crystal decanters, and a speaking-tube to communicate with the chauffeur up front. He couldn’t make out who was in the back of this one, but he figured it must be someone important or rich.

  The chauffeur had jumped out to open the back door, and Scott had waited to see who emerged. One thing he knew: it wouldn’t be the prime minister. A Packard Twelve Touring Sedan wasn’t dull old Mackenzie King’s sort of thing. But it could be someone famous – some movie star even, like Rita Hayworth or Jimmy Cagney!

  However, when the actual owner did step out, he sure didn’t look like a movie star. More like some wealthy but boring businessman. He wore a gray double-breasted suit and matching fedora, and the shine on his shoes was so bright it reflected the sun. “Park it,” he ordered the chauffeur.

  Scott watched him stride up the gangway, where the ship’s purser stood, haughtily wielding a clipboard.

  “Dale is the name,” the man said, reaching in his pocket and casually peeling several bills from a fat bankroll. “G. Phillip Dale.”

  The purser’s attitude changed instantly from haughty to subservient. “Welcome aboard the Rapids Prince, Mr. Dale,” he purred, ticking off the name on his clipboard. “Anything I can do to make your trip more enjoyable, you have only to ask.”

  “I’ll tell you exactly what you can do,” the man said. “I’m a pers
on who likes to keep his affairs private. You can forget you ever saw me. Or my chauffeur, Twitch.”

  “I’ve already forgotten,” the purser said, smoothly pocketing the bills.

  Why would the man in the gray suit want to travel alone on the Rapids Prince, his only company a couple of hundred tourists, and why would he want the purser to forget he’d ever seen him or his chauffeur? Scott wondered.

  But he could see the second mate looking for him, so he needed to stop speculating and get back to work. There was still plenty for the deckhands to do before the Rapids Prince was ready to cast off.

  The chauffeur, meanwhile, had parked the car, then he too boarded the ship, but using the crew’s gangway to the lower deck. “I’m looking for the washroom,” he said curtly to a deckhand, who pointed out the crew’s washroom to him.

  When Scott saw the chauffeur, he gathered up his courage. “Excuse me …” he began.

  The chauffeur stopped and stared at him.

  Scott took a deep breath. “Would it be all right if I had a look at your car, sir? I’ve never seen a Packard Twelve before – a real one, I mean, not just a picture.” He hesitated, intimidated by the hostile stare.

  “Get lost, kid,” the chauffeur snarled. “And stay away from that car.”

  Just then, someone accidentally dropped a wrench on the metal deck with a loud clang, and the chauffeur jumped as if he’d been shot. He slumped away, his chin twitching violently.

  “Shell-shocked in the First World War, I’ll wager,” Bert, the veteran helmsman, commented. “I had a buddy like that. The shelling got to him. They accused him of cowardice and told him he was lucky he wasn’t shot for desertion. That’s what they did back then.”

  “I heard his boss refer to him as Twitch,” a deckhand said. “Now I know why.”

  “Poor guy,” Bert said. “It’s not right. These days, they call it battle fatigue, not shell shock, and it can happen to anyone. They shouldn’t make fun of it.”

  As Scott was taking this in, his friend Adam, a waiter, came by to slip him word that there was apple pie on the menu today. “Just thought you’d be interested,” he whispered with a wink. “Come up in ten minutes and wait outside the dining room.”