Rose was amazed by New York. She pointed out anything interesting that she'd seen, and pointed out a newsstand that was selling papers about the Titanic's sinking. Jack walked over to the stand and picked up one of the newspapers.
"Hey, buddy! If ya want it, ya buy it!" snapped the man selling them. Jack rolled his eyes and handed him money for the newspaper. He and Rose took it aside and looked at it.
"Well, would you look at this!" Rose exclaimed. Jack read the article aloud.
TITANIC SINKS: GREATEST TRAGEDY IN HISTORY
Once said to be an unsinkable ship, the Titanic set sail from Liverpool, England on April 10, 1912. Her captain wanted to make it to New York in record time, so he traveled at twenty-seven knots. Little did he know that on April fourteenth, at approximately at 11:20 PM, his ship would be striking ice. A passenger aboard the Carpathia, the nearest to the Titanic at the time of its sinking, named Meredith Sherman was lucky enough to interview a passenger who had been aboard the Titanic.
Q: What is your name?
A: Rose Dawson.
"Rose, that's you!" exclaimed Jack.
"Keep reading," Rose said to him, so Jack continued.
Q: How old are you?
A: Seventeen.
Q: What type of passenger were you?
A: First class.
Q: You don't appear to be a first class passenger, Mrs. Dawson.
A: When the ship went down, we lost everything.
Q: Before we began this interview, you said that my first class room was small. Why is that?
A: The Titanic was the largest ship ever built. She had to be about six city blocks long and maybe half a mile wide. The first class rooms were huge. Three or four times the size of this one.
Q: The ship was said to be the ship of dreams. What was it to you?
A: At first, I thought it was like a slave ship, taking me back to America in chains. But then I met a man. He's around my age, also survived the sinking, and happened to be a third class passenger. He made me realize what the true meaning of my life is, and he taught me how to make it that way. After that, the ship became my heaven.
Q: And what was this young man's name?
A: Jack Dawson. He's probably asleep at this moment, having no idea where I am.
Q: Would you like to tell me about this young man?
Jack stopped there and looked up at Rose.
"You really said that?" he asked, rereading what Rose had said a couple of questions back.
"Every word," Rose replied, and she kissed him. Jack got back to reading.
A: Jack was originally from Wisconsin, born penniless. He's been on his own since he was fifteen, and since then, he's traveled all over the place, especially to Paris. He's a phenomenal artist. He once drew me, but now that drawing is at the bottom of the ocean. I guess I can admit that I could no longer take being all proper and polite, so I attempted to commit suicide by jumping off the back of the ship. It was Jack who stopped me, told me that the water felt like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body, and he was right. Not that I jumped in, because what he said stopped me most of all. His words were, “If you jump, I jump.” Up until that moment, I hadn't realized how much I meant to anyone, just that I was tired of my mother and my fiancé, Caledon. I am no longer engaged to him. Jack and I were on the deck when the Titanic struck the iceberg. He was framed after that for stealing the Heart of the Ocean, which he obviously didn't do. Caledon had slipped it into his jacket pocket. Jack is a very romantic man. When I told him that I'd changed my mind about him being annoying and obnoxious—the same time I realized that I was in love with him—he put me up on the railing of the bow and I swear I was flying. He softly sang Come Josephine, In My Flying Machine in my ear, and from that moment on, that became our song. That was also the last time the Titanic saw daylight. When I saved Jack from drowning in a room down on E Deck, we went back up to the top deck to wait for a lifeboat, but once again, Caledon tried to rip us apart. He told Jack that he'd made an arrangement for them to get on a different boat while I got on one that was waiting for me. I got on, and a few moments went by, and I looked up at Jack and the sad expression on his face. The minute I saw that, my heart ripped in two. He'd been lied to—there was no arrangement. I knew from that moment on that if I didn't jump out then, I'd never see Jack again. So I waited until we were level with the second class deck and leaped out of the lifeboat. I heard Jack calling my name as we both ran to the Grand Staircase, where he swept me into his warm, loving arms. After that, Caledon had tried to shoot us, but he missed us every time. Jack told me later that we'd have to stay on the ship as long as possible. He heard a woman shouting, “Cora! Cora!" I recognized this woman from an Irish party he'd taken me to in third class. Her name was Lynette McBragginson. Jack knew her daughter, so he told Lynette and me to stay together and he went off to search for Cora. Cora, I believe, is about four or five years old. The ship went down, and Lynette and I found something to float on. There we remained until a lifeboat came back. Out of the twenty lifeboats that were nearby, only one came back. Just one. And out of the fifteen hundred passengers that were left in the water, only six were rescued alive. Those six people were myself, Jack, Cora, Lynette, an infant, and an older woman. I had no idea that Jack had survived. I only found out the next day when we boarded the Carpathia. It's a sad story, really. How two people board the same ship, they find love, and they are almost ripped apart by tragedy.
Mrs. Dawson was said to have been close to tears by the end of the interview, so Mrs. Sherman wrapped it up there. The Titanic will be a tragedy that no one will ever forget.
Jack stopped reading after the article ended. He looked at Rose.
"You made me sound like a hero," he said.
"You are," Rose replied.
"Well, I guess we'd better get going if we want to get to your father's before the crowd comes," Jack said. And the two of them got off and continued on their way to Manhattan.