CARPE DIEM
Chapter Ten
I found them, Thomas and Captain
Smith, as they came up from the lower decks and entered the chartroom
hurriedly, Mr. Murdoch and the others following close behind. My brother,
dressed in his night robe, hair askew, was with them. I remained out of sight
by the door of the chartroom, listening and watching through the space between
the door and its frame.
"Most unfortunate,
Captain!" Bruce spoke, but no one acknowledged him. Thomas unfurled a
large copy of the ship’s design on the table in the center of the room. The
captain held the edges while he placed a makeshift paperweight at the far end.
The young officer on his left did likewise with the nearside.
"Water…fourteen feet above
the keel in ten minutes." Thomas’s voice did not waver, but the mechanical
nature with which he spoke could not mask his trepidation, either. He placed
his hands on the blueprint, moving them as his references required. "…in
the forepeak…in all three holds…and in boiler room six."
"That’s right, sir,"
came the soft, hesitant voice of the young officer standing near the table.
"When can we get underway,
dammit?" demanded my brother with a scowl and pursed lips, glaring at
Thomas and speaking without pretense, formality, or gentility.
"That’s five
compartments!" Thomas answered him directly, then turned to Captain Smith.
My brother, now scolded, paced the floor with heavy footsteps. I moved
slightly, avoided his observance. "She can stay afloat with the first four
compartments breached. But not five…not five."
Thomas’s hands ran over the
blueprint before him once more as he shook his head. "As she goes down by
the head, the water will spill over the bulkheads…at E-Deck…from one to the next…back
and back. There’s no stopping it." Now his voice began to betray some
disconsolation and morosity. The captain, ever a pragmatist, responded to it.
"The pumps—" he began,
but Thomas shook his head once more.
"The pumps will buy you
time…but minutes only." He looked around at them all and then elsewhere,
as if seeing the events that would take place in the next couple of hours
unfold before him with unstoppable certainty. "From this moment, no matter
what we do, the Titanic will founder."
Dear God, I prayed, perhaps even whispered, too low
to be heard, biting back a cry, bringing my clasped hands up to my face. In
their disbelief and dread, the men in the chartroom fell momentarily silent.
"This ship cannot
sink—" Bruce stated incredulously, insisted as was his custom, demanded
implicitly that Thomas retract such a statement.
"She’s made of iron, sir! I
assure you, she can! And she will. It’s a mathematical certainty." Thomas
would not tolerate Bruce Ismay’s pompous irrationality, not on this night. He
held my brother’s gaze directly, and I saw his face plainly, for in facing my
brother, he faced the doorway. For more than a decade, he’d placated this man,
passed on many a chance to pronounce him a fool and prove it most decidedly. It
wasn’t worth it. That’s what he’d said to me once after he accused me of being
meek in my brother’s presence and I countered by asking why he never challenged
Bruce, why he never denounced his arrogance, his selfishness, his pride. Well,
he did so now. The impatience of his answer, the steady conviction in his
expression simmered with long suppressed indignation.
His jaw moved slightly as he
caught sight of me, standing in sight now just beyond the half-open doorway. He
looked pained then, suddenly world-weary, anger leaving him, and did not hold
my gaze, turning back briskly.
"How much time?" The
captain suddenly seemed old to me, as if he’d aged ten years in half as many
minutes. But still he reached for control, needed to find his footing in this
tempest. Thomas stared at the drawing, running numbers in his head.
"An hour…" Thomas spoke
softly now. "Two at most."
At these words, something much
worse than disbelief and shock settled in the chartroom. Fear interwove its
grasping fingers into every man’s expression and stature, hung in the air among
them like the cigarette smoke that hung around those electric lights on the
open air veranda. This fear, like a shadow, passed Mr. Murdoch’s countenance,
and this frightened me more than anything else. Mr. Murdoch was not a man accustomed
to showing emotion of any kind. He swallowed hard.
"And how many aboard, Mr.
Murdoch?"
"Two thousand, two hundred
souls aboard, sir."
Without my knowledge, a tear
gathered on my eyelashes and fell. I lifted my hand to the side of my face to
brush it away. Two thousand, two hundred souls…and lifeboats for a little more
than half of them. I remembered the conversation in London. I remembered the
insistence that the deck be uncluttered by things unnecessary. Thomas had been
unhappy with the decision, but was overruled. Dear God, I prayed once
more.
"I believe you will get your
headlines, Mr. Ismay." The captain’s bitter words resounded through the
room. He had turned to my brother slowly, deliberately, and since I neglected
to duck out of sight in apathy, I remained in view. He had not minced his
words, even upon noting my presence. But his lingering scrutiny, past Bruce’s
shoulder, in my direction, brought my brother’s gaze round as well.
"Mary Catherine?" I
resented the sound of Bruce’s voice. Detested the sound of it, suddenly. A
thousand things he could have said, words of comfort, reassurance, but nothing,
just my name, hurled at me like an accusation. Thomas brought his fist down on
the table hard, rattling the compass and ruler lying near him. The sound was
both harsh and startling. Mr. Murdoch blinked. Bruce visibly jumped.
"Captain Smith? The
lifeboats need to be launched now." No sooner than Thomas had said this
than he strode from the chartroom, brushed past Bruce without so much as a
glance, took my hand in his own on his way by, firmly, with purpose, and
dragged me away from that gathering of men with white-washed faces, already
marked for death and close to embracing hopelessness.