At dinner I talked to Sheridan about my accident.
The chief engineer agreed that he had cutting torches in the engine room .
‘ But we don’t keep tools under lock and key. ’
‘ Were you in the engine room that night? ’ I asked.
He looked me straight in the eye. ‘ yes, I was. And my first engineer was with me.’
‘ Not out of each other’s sight all evening? ’
‘ Not long enough to damage a car. ’
Around ten-thirty, they brought a narrow bed and some blankets into the dining room for me.
I climbed under the blankets in my jeans and shirt, put the Smith and Wesson beside me, and went to sleep almost immediately.
The cooks woke me before six as they started preparing breakfast.
After breakfast I packed my little bag for a quick departure: Bledsoe told me we’d have about two minutes to climb over the side of the Lucella on to the shore before they opened the lock gates and she went on to Lake Huron. I put my wallet into my jeans pocket and put the Smith and Wesson into the bag. Then I put the bag on the deck and went up to the bridge to watch the Lucella slide into the lock.
There were four locks closing the seven-metre drop between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Only one lock, the Poe Lock, was big enough for the three-hundred-hundred-metre ships. We were the second ship into the Poe.
Canada’s Sault Ste Marie lay on our left, the huge Algoma steel factory on the shore.
After forty minutes, Captain Bemis was told by radio to move into the lock. Slowly we moved forward and the enormous wood and steel gates shut behind us. I went with Bledsoe down to the deck.