Valhalla Rising Read Online Free Page B

stone.
    “She’s armored,” he said, stunned. “Our shot glanced off her hull without making a dent.”
    Unfazed, their nemesis aimed its bow unerringly amidships of the Kearsarge’s hull, increasing its speed and gathering momentum for the blow.
    The gun crews frantically reloaded, but by the time they were ready for another broadside, the thing was too close and they could not depress their muzzles low enough to strike it. The detachment of Marines aboard the ship began firing their rifles at the assailant. Several of the officers stood on the railing, grasping the rigging with one hand while firing their revolvers with the other. A typhoon of bullets merely glanced off the armored hull.
    Hunt and his crew stared in disbelief at the nightmare that was about to ram the ship. Transfixed by the long cigar-shaped vessel, he gripped the railing to brace himself for the inescapable collision.
    But the expected shock never came. All any of the crew felt was a slight shudder beneath decks. The impact seemed little different from a slight bump against a dock. The only sound was the faint crunch of shredding wood. In that frozen moment of time, the unearthly thing had slashed between the Kearsarge’s great oak ribs as cleanly as a murderer’s knife thrust, penetrating deep inside the hull just aft of the engine room.
    Hunt gaped in shock. He could see a face through the large transparent view port on the pyramid-shaped housing on top of the underwater ram. The bearded face had what seemed to Hunt to be a sad and melancholy expression, as if the man inside felt remorse for the disaster his strange and bizarre vessel had caused.
    Then the mysterious vessel quickly backed off and fell away into the depths.
    Hunt knew the Kearsarge was doomed. Down below, seawater poured into the Kearsarge’s aft cargo hold and galley. The gaping wound was almost a perfect concave hole through the hull planking six feet below the waterline. The torrent increased as the warship slowly began to list on her port side. The only thing that saved her from immediately foundering was the bulkheads. In keeping with naval regulations, Hunt had ordered them sealed as if the ship were going into battle. The inrush of water was contained, but only until the bulkheads gave way to the crush of tremendous pressure.
    Hunt swung around and stared at a low coral island not two miles away. He turned to the helmsman and shouted. “Steer for that reef off the starboard beam.” Then he called down to the engine room for full speed. His main concern was for how long the bulkheads could hold back the flood of water from gushing into the engine room. While the boilers were still able to make steam, he just might have time to run his ship aground before she sank.
    Slowly, the bow came around, as the ship picked up speed and set a course for shallow water. First Officer Ellis did not need a command from Hunt to prepare the boats and the captain’s gig to be lowered. Except for the engine-room gang, all crew members were assembled on deck. To a man, they focused their eyes on the low, barren coral reef that was nearing with agonizing slowness. The propeller thrashed the water as the boilers were fired by the stokers in a near frenzy. They shoveled coal with one eye on the open grate and the other aimed at the creaking bulkhead, all that stood between them and a horrible death.
    The single screw thrashed the water, driving the ship toward what everyone hoped was salvation. The helmsman called for help in fighting the wheel as the ship became sluggish with the escalating weight from the incoming flood and the list to port that had increased to six degrees.
    The crew stood at the boats, ready to board them and abandon ship at Hunt’s expected command. They shifted uneasily as the deck sloped ominously beneath their feet. A leadsman was sent to the bow to throw out a lead weight and sound the bottom. He called out the depth in fathoms.
    “Twenty fathoms and rising,” he