AN ADVENTURE TO REMEMBER AND A MEMORY TO FORGET
Chapter Fourteen
Harry
I still hadn’t seen Victoria. I
heard from one of the other officers that Mr. Metcalfe had gotten off the ship
with both of his daughters and then I heard it was just the younger one. When
the other crew member told me about Rose and Victoria going down belowdecks for
who knows what, I knew that she wasn’t the one on the lifeboat with her father.
"Women and children only at
this time. Please, we request that only women and children come forth at this
time." I was watching Boxhall try to keep the crowd calm, but I think that
at this time many realized that if they didn’t get on now, they’d never get on.
I moved in closer to him to help keep the peace.
"It’s starting to unravel.
The passengers are getting uneasy." I looked up to see Lightoller standing
next to me.
I shook my head. "Right now
it’s not that bad. But if we don’t get off this ship now with one of these
boats, we’re not going to make it."
He nodded in agreement and had
Boxhall board the lifeboat that he was filling right then. I saw a wave of
relief as he got on board and asked everyone if they were all right. I helped
lower the boat, and when it hit the water, the crew and I undid the davits and
moved on to the next one.
When I looked up, a mob of people
was headed towards us. Lightoller and another crewman were doing their best to
keep the peace while I loaded the boat with scared passengers. They did their
best to break through the human barricade that Lightoller and the other
crewmember were making. I saw Lightoller reach for his pistol. He pulled it out
and pointed it at the crowd.
"Get back, I say, or I'll
shoot you all like dogs! Keep order here! Keep order, I say!" He paused as
he waved the gun around. He turned around to face me. "Mr. Lowe, man this
boat!"
I watched as he turned around to
face me and dug the bullets for his gun out of his pocket. I looked at him,
horrified at what he just did. But I didn’t have time to argue. I scanned the
crowd one more time for Victoria. I sighed in disdain when I didn’t see her.
"Damn it."
I turned my attention back to the
crowd. "Right. Is everyone all right? Nobody panic. We’re going to be all
right." Truth be told, I didn’t know if we’d be all right. I just didn’t
want anyone to panic and capsize the boat. We were on our way down into the
water when I saw a body fly off the top deck and hit another one of the
passengers square on the shoulders. She collapsed over in pain as the third
class passenger took a seat next to her in the lifeboat. I got up to move over
to her to check on her, and another third class lady jumped into our boat, too.
I looked up and saw another one about to jump. I had no choice.
"Stay back! I mean it! I
said stay back!" I got my gun out and fired two shots over my shoulder,
away from the boat. The rest of the people in my boat were starting to panic. I
had to do something to keep us all from being killed.
Victoria
Rose and I were following the
maze of hallways to find where the Master-at-Arms was keeping Jack.
"What hallway are we looking
for?"
Rose studied the sign above a
door. "This one. It says Crew Passage, and that’s the one Mr. Andrews said
to look for." Rose grabbed my hand, and together we walked through
ankle-deep freezing water, on the search for Jack. She stopped at the edge of
the hallway. "Now which way?"
"Rose, you go that way. I’ll
go this way. If one of us finds him, yell out." She nodded and took off in
one direction while I went another.
"Jack!" I was running
through the freezing water while yelling. "Jack! Where are you?" I
heard a faint tapping on a pipe. "Jack?"
"Rose! In here!" I
heard him yelling out while banging something on a metal pipe.
"Rose!"
It was Jack. "Rose! Down
this way. I found him!" She flew past me and into the room where he was. I
watched as she sloshed her way to Jack. He was perched on a desk, trying to
stay dry. Rose ran right to him and they kissed.
"Jack, I’m sorry. I’m
sorry." She kissed him.
"That guy Lovejoy. He put it
in my pocket."
"I know. I know." She
kissed him again.
Jack motioned that he had
handcuffs on. "You two have got to find a key. It’s a silver one.
Victoria, you check the drawers. Rose, you check those key things over there on
the wall." I found the desk drawer floating in the water. I dumped it
upside down and papers fell out, but no keys.
"Rose!" Jack called out
to her. She looked up from the key cabinet. "How’d you know I didn’t do
it?"
I watched Rose’s expression go
from serious to a sincere and loving smile. "I didn’t. I just realized I
already knew." I watched Jack’s expression soften before he reminded us
both to keep looking for the key.
"There’s no key! Jack, what
are we going to do?" Rose moved over to him.
"Both of you are going to
have to go get some help. Something. Now go!" He motioned for the door.
Rose moved in to kiss him good-bye.
"Be right back." Rose
took me by the hand and we tried to walk against the current out of the room.
Jack called out after we were out
the door. "I’ll just wait here!"
Rose led me to the stairs we had
passed earlier. She pulled herself out of the water, as did I. I followed her
up the stairs and up to the next level. I had no clue where we were.
"Is anyone here? Hello? We
need help! Please! Someone!" Rose was beginning to sound desperate. A
foreign man ran around the corner. She ran up to him. "Oh, thank
God!" She began to lead him back to the stairs that would take him back into
the water where Jack was. "We need help…" That was as far as she got
before he ran off. "Damn it!" I watched her lean against the wall.
She regained her composure and we ran to another hallway.
"Hello? Is anyone
here?" I called out, giving Rose’s voice a rest. A steward came up behind
us.
"You two shouldn’t be here.
Both of you come with me." He led us towards the exit. Rose dug her heels
in and stopped him.
"No! You don’t
understand." She motioned over her shoulder. "There’s a man down here
and he’s trapped."
The steward, unfazed by her
rambling, grabbed both of us again and led us to the exit. "No need to
panic. This way."
This time I stopped him.
"There is a man down here and he needs help. Now, help us!"
Rose hit him square on his nose,
which started to bleed. He touched his nose, noticed the blood, and ran from
us.
"Now what?" I asked.
The lights flickered. "Oh, shit." I didn’t expect that to come out,
but it did.
Rose started to breathe hard. The
lights popped back on and she noticed an ax in a glass cabinet across the hall.
She grabbed part of a fire hose and broke the glass. She got the ax in one
hand, my hand in her other hand, and dragged me back downstairs.
"Oh, my." She looked at
me. I peered over her shoulder and noticed that the water was higher than we
had thought. She took off her coat and put the ax on the grate at the top. I
took off my coat and did the same thing. The water was like knives stabbing me.
But I had to do this. I had to do it for Rose.
She got back to Jack’s room, and
after a practice session on a cabinet, she broke the handcuffs. He stepped into
the water.
"Oh, shit, this is cold!
Shit, shit, shit." Jack led us back the way he came. We got upstairs to a
locked gate.
The water was beginning to climb
up the stairs. Another steward ran past us.
"Sir, please! Help us!"
The porter started up the stairs. He turned to face us, tossed Jack his keys,
and apologized for not helping. Defeated, I rested against a wall while Jack
went under the frigid water, trying to find the keys. He found them, and when
the water was waist high, he got the gate unlocked and shoved both Rose and me
towards the entrance to the third class exit, where we ran into another locked
gate.
"Damn," Jack said as he
looked around. He led us to another gate, also locked. There were only a
handful of people in the room, though. Jack and two other men grabbed a bench
off the floor and rammed the gate open. He led Rose and me out of our prison
and up to the main part of the ship.
"Look at you both. You look
like hell." Rose spun around to see who was walking up behind us. Her face
fell when she saw it was Cal. He put his coat on her and put his manservant’s
coat on me. I wanted to throw it back in his face, but it was warm and I was
freezing. I just wrapped it tighter around my midsection as Cal led us both to
a lifeboat with Jack looking pained at us. Rose managed to break free of his
grip and stopped to be with Jack.
She looked right at him.
"Not without you!"
Jack looked at Cal, then at me.
"I’ll be all right. I’m a survivor."
Rose was unmoved. "No. Not
without you."
"Get in the boat,
Rose." Cal moved into Rose and led both Rose and me to the lifeboat. I
stepped in first and reached out for Rose’s hand. She kissed Jack one more time
before she stepped in.
The crew member in charge of our
boat started to lower it. Rose rested her head on my shoulder and began to cry
as the boat was lowered into the dark, icy sea.