Tar was oozing out of the hot planks, and smoke was mounting.
Out of the darkness, halfway down the deck, someone took a shot at us. The slug crashed through the wooden partition behind me and ruined a mirror in one of the cabins with a crash of breaking glass.
I shoved Paula behind me, conscious that my white clothes made me look like a phantom out for a night’s haunting.
More gunfire. I felt a slug zip past my face. The gun-flash came from around a lifeboat. I thought I could see a shadowy figure crouching against the rails. I fired twice. The second shot nailed him. He came staggering out from behind the boat and flattened out on the hot deck.
“Keep going,” I said.
We ran on. The deck was so hot now it burned through our shoes. Somehow we reached the ladder leading to the upper deck. Above the roar of the flames we could hear yells and screams and the crash of breaking glass.
We scrambled on to the upper deck. The deck-rail was packed with men and women in evening-dress, yelling their heads off. Smoke made a black pall over the ship, and it was almost as hot up there as on the lower deck.
I could see three or four of the ship’s officers trying to get the panic under control. They might just as well have tried to slam a revolving door.
“Jack must be somewhere around by now,” I shouted to Paula. “Keep near me, and let’s get to the rail.”
We fought our way through the struggling mob. A man grabbed Paula and swung her away from me. I don’t know what he thought he was doing. His face was twitching and his eyes wild. He clawed at me frantically, and I punched him in the jaw, sending him reeling, and then pushed and shoved my way to Paula again.