4. The sinking ship.
The Doctor steps over to the Captain. "Whatever we do we must, emphatically must, stay in this cabin. If anyone tries to leave we will all be lost. Don't let them even try!" The Doctor urges the Captain. The Captain doesn't quite know what to think. He's never seen anything like it.
The Captain has heard about mysterious islands that appeared and then mysteriously disappeared. He has heard that boats approaching such islands were either lost for good or turned up with nobody on board – deserted. He is scared. All he can do is pay attention to the Doctor's warnings.
The motor suddenly dies: it just stops working for no apparent reason and refuses to re-start. Adam has had enough.
He shouts to the Captain, "The motor's just died. I'll take a rope and swim for it." With that he opens his navigator's cabin door and jumps into the sea, which is by now lapping over the glazed portholes that had been above the water line.
It is clear that the boat is sinking. Ommera feels her stomach tighten as she watches the water rise above the portholes. She has no idea what's causing this to happen.
"Oh, look, there aren't any fish," a nervous woman called Vera, exclaims.
"All swum sensibly away," Wayne says. "We should get off the boat while we have a chance." He steps towards the closed hatchway.
The Captain steps to block him. "Please sit down, sir!" He starts off politely. But as Wayne is starting to panic, he carefully manhandles Wayne gently but firmly back to his seat. "We must all sit down and just wait to see what happens," he explains.
"Have you seen this happen before?" another man, Tristan, asks nervously.
"Well, no, I haven't," the Captain admits.
"So, how do you know that sitting tight is the best thing to do?" Tristan asks. "I say we leave the boat right now."
Ommera has been looking out of a porthole near her. She screams. Everyone looks at her.
"What's wrong?" the Doctor says gently.
"It's Adam, the boat driver," Ommera says. "He's dead. He's just drifting motionless underwater just out there."
Everyone tries to get a better view through portholes on that side of the boat.
"Oh, no, that's tragic," sobs Vera, who really quite liked Adam.
"We're doomed," Wayne says.
A small leak dribbles its way onto the cabin floor at the front of the cabin.
"We're flooding now," Wayne adds. "We're really sinking now."
"I think the bubbles out there are rather pretty," Summer says. Is she missing the seriousness of what's happening?
Tristan still wants to get off the boat. "We must get off this boat," he says. It's sinking! I must insist you let me go past you."
The Captain bars his way. "Sit down now or I fire!" He pulls a Captain's gun from his pocket and aims it at Tristan. "Sit down, sir!"
Tristan sits down, but starts a voluble attack on the Captain. "You can't go threatening people at gunpoint these days and get away with it! You're taking risks with our lives, sir!"
The Doctor intervenes firmly. "He is the Captain of the ship and he must be obeyed at all times during the voyage. You did hear him expand on that before we came aboard, I think!"
"But the boat has sunk. Voyage ended!" Tristan tries to assert.
"No," the Doctor says. "The voyage hasn't ended until we are in port and we have disembarked. He is the ship's Captain and has authority until then."
"Well said!" Ommera says. She is trying to back the Doctor up, but other passengers have other ideas.
"How long will we be down here for?" Summer asks.
The boat gently arrives at the bottom of the sea, some five metres down. A wreck is visible nearby.
The small leak is running a little faster now, more of a small spurt. Water is sloshing around their feet.
"Looks like we might be here forever, like that wreck," Wayne says. He is very agitated.
Vera sobs.
"We must all just sit tight," the Doctor says.
"What do you know of it?" the Captain asks.
"We're near an underwater landslide," the Doctor says.
"Near?" Tristan says. "What would it be like if we were right by it?"
"Then the boat would have descended faster and probably would have been buried with landslip debris," the Doctor says.
"How did you know we wouldn't be covered with debris," Ommera asks. She knows that the Doctor has chosen this voyage for them to go on, so it must be at least reasonably safe, mustn't it?
"I'll tell you later," the Doctor says. He is still worried that history shows that the boat was found without passengers just drifting in the open sea. His worry is that this might yet take place!
Just what had happened? Are the Doctor and Ommera safe? Just how much danger are they in?