Page 31 (1/2)

Ga briefly at the unusual display of e

The smooth water behind the ship boiled as if so their work The propellers biting into the slanting sides of the funnel, the ship inched its way painfully toward the rile, was buried by the foae that carried it over the lip

This tiood The Trouts cheered, but their celebration was teainst an unstoppable force of nature

"Any ideas about hoe get out of here?" Gamay shouted

"Maybe the whirlpool will end on its own"

Galanced down In the few le, the boat had dropped at least another twenty feet

"I don't think so"

The water had lost its India ink cast, and the slick black sides had picked up a brownish tinge fro scooped up froreat circle like confetti caught in a windstorm The damp air was thick with the smell of brine, fish and bottom muck

"Look at the debris," Paul said "It's rising from the bottom"

Wreckage was being churned up from the floor of the sea in the same way a tornado picks up objects and lifts them in the air There were splintered wooden cartons, plywood, hatch covers, scraps of ventilators, even a daed lifeboat Much of the itated and destroyed with the saara Falls

Ga up toward the rim "What if we juh to rise to the top like that stuff"

"No guarantee we'd ascend More likely, we'd get sucked farther into the whirlpool, to be ground up like haer Remember that the first rule of the sea is to stick with your boat-if possible"

"Maybe that's not such a great idea We've dropped lower"

It was true The boat had slipped farther into the whirlpool

A cylindrical object orking its way up the side of the whirlpool Then several more followed