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"Here, here," Bigalow said as he pointed excitedly to a photo, "by the port ventilator on the roof over the officers' quarters This is where I was standing when she sank beneathdecades seemed to ht Four degrees below freezing it was"

For the next tenin the icy water,a rope that led to an overturned lifeboat; the awfulpeople; the pitiful cries that pierced the night air and then slowly died out; the long hours spent clutching the keel of the boat, huddled against the cold with thirty other men; the excitement when the Cunard liner Carpathia hove into view and hed and peered over the tops of his glasses at Pitt "A you, Mr Pitt?"

"Not in the least," Pitt answered "Listening to so it myself"

"Then I'alow said "Until now I never told a soul about my last minutes before the ship went down I never ; not to the United States Senate inquiry or to the British Court of Inquiry Nor; did I ever breathe a syllable to the newspaper reporters or writers ere forever researching books on the tragedy You, sir, are the first and will be the last to hear it from my lips"

Three hours later, Pitt was on the train back to Exeter, neither tired nor worn He did feel a kind of exciteo hold No 1, G Deck, beckoned to him now more than ever Southby, he wondered? How did Southby fit in the picture? For perhaps the fiftieth tiiven hinmouth

45

Dr Ryan Prescott; chief of the NUMA Hurricane Center in Ta ho with his wife playing cribbage But at tentiredly at the satellite photos spread before him

"Just e think we've learned all there is to know about storms," he said querulously, "one pops out of nowhere and breaks the mold"

"A hurricane in the middle of May," his female assistant replied between yawns "It's one for the record book all right"

"But why? The hurricane season normally extends from July to September What caused this one to materialize two months early?"

"Beats ure our pariah is headed?"

"Too early to predict with any certainty," Prescott said "Her birth followed the norh vast low-pressure area fed bycounterclockwise due to the earth's rotation But here the difference ends It usually takes days, sometimes weeks, for a storm four-hundred miles wide to build up This baby pulled off the trick in less than eighteen hours"

Prescott sighed, rose froe wall chart He consulted a pad covered with scribbles, noting the known position, at a predicted track westerly from a point a hundred and fifty radually curved northward toward Newfoundland

"Until she gives us a hint of her future course, that's the best I can do" He paused as if waiting for confirmation When none came, he asked, "Is that how you see it?"

Still receiving no reply, he turned to repeat the question but the words never came His assistant had fallen asleep, her head cradled in her arreen eyes fluttered open