SAVE ALL WHO DARE THE EAGLE’S FLIGHT
Chapter Nineteen
We were ghosts on the Carpathia.
Some were reunited with loved ones, their joyous shouts startling those of us
who heard them. Most, however, cried over those they had lost, hysterically
searching for them and shrieking when they were not to be found. I doubt there
was anyone who did not lose someone that they knew. Some people accepted it.
Others could not. They asked ridiculous questions at times, unable to
comprehend that whomever they had lost was not going to come back.
"Could not another ship have
picked them up?"
"Could they not possibly be
in some boat overlooked by the Carpathia?"
"Was it not possible that he
might have climbed onto an iceberg?"
I heard such questions whenever I
was around survivors, and they were all asked in earnest. Many had not the
heart to tell these poor souls that they hoped for the impossible. I was
thankful I did not have to answer these questions; Lights, who I became very
close to during the journey to New York, remarked that he saw no other option
but to be frank in his replies. That first day was awful, what little I saw of
it; I slept for most of the day, curled up on the deck. Eugene, Maggie, and
Bertha finally found me at around ten in the morning, and we stayed together
for as long as we were on the Carpathia.
I slept on and off throughout the
day, sitting awake for as long as half an hour and sleeping for as long as
three hours at a time. I remember eating part of a sandwich--I wasn’t hungry,
but since Maggie was insistent, I ate as much as I could--and drinking some
coffee mixed with what I suspect was brandy. A doctor examined each of us and
pronounced us perfectly fine, claiming that all we needed was some good food
and plenty of rest. This was difficult to argue with, so as soon as he was
gone, I fell asleep again.
After the lifeboats had been
emptied, the Carpathia came to where the Titanic had foundered to see if there
were any survivors; predictably, there were none. Only floating, white corpses
that made me feel ill. I wondered how many people I knew were bobbing there.
Maggie made me lay down again after this. The Californian, another steamer,
arrived before long, and according to Eugene, they continued the search while
we went on to New York. Before we left, however, Captain Rostron, the skipper
of the Carpathia, gathered everyone together for a brief service. He and the
chaplain of the ship gave thanksgiving for the seven hundred survivors before
leading us in a prayer to pray for the over fifteen hundred people who had been
lost.
Out of twenty-two hundred people,
fifteen hundred died while only seven hundred had lived. In a way, I believed
it; I had seen for myself all of those people clinging to the ship as it sank,
I had seen the victims in the water. But it was also very hard to believe. How
could this have happened? How could so many people have perished because of one
iceberg? How was it fair? I do not believe that anyone should have died; I
would not wish such a fate on my worst enemy. The screams I heard that night
can still sound clearly in my ears; they were the most awful, awful sounds ever
to be heard. No one should have died that night; every one of them was
innocent.
It is often said that everything
will seem better in the morning; I can assure you with the utmost certainty
that this is not always the case. On the morning of April sixteenth, I didn’t
want to wake up. I had slept all the previous day and night, but still, I
wanted to crawl into the solitude that only a dreamless unconsciousness can
offer. I say dreamless because the dreams I had had, save the one where I
returned to the sunken Titanic, were nightmares in the very worst possible way.
I saw the Titanic sink over and over, heard helpless screams, watched Tommy
being shot again and again. The first nightmare, which I didn’t have until late
in the night, brought the first tears to my eyes since the sinking; finally, I
felt something other than exhaustion. We had slept outside on the deck with
many other passengers; I had slept outside for most of my life and I had grown
quite fond of it.
The sea air did little to whet my
appetite; I was hungry not once that day, and if I ate, it was only because
Maggie insisted upon it. I would have been content to sit in a corner with a
large bottle of whiskey and forget the pain, but of course, that did not
happen. Bertha and the Dalys kept talking, and for some reason, it made me
sick. I wanted to be alone, and I finally slipped away from them and retreated
to another part of the deck. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them; quite the
contrary. But I needed some solace. I walked for about two hours before they
found me; by that time, I was able to sit with them again.
Eugene sat next to me after they
had talked for quite some time and I, of course, had remained silent. He said
in a low voice, "Your friend, Jack…did you love him?"
I paused for a moment before
nodding. "Yes, I loved Jack. And Fabrizio. And Tommy. I loved all three of
them. And I never once told them. None of them." My voice cracked.
"And they’re gone now."
Eugene nodded understandingly.
"I think…that they knew. In their hearts, they knew."
We shared a look for a moment
that said more than any words could before I turned to look at the horizon. And
that was all there was to be said for the moment.
Most of the other survivors of
Collapsible B ran into one another somewhere or other, introducing ourselves
and relating our experiences. I did not think I would be able to talk about it,
but I surprised myself in that I could speak openly with the other fellows who
had been with me on the Englehardt. It was in this way that I came to be on
very good terms with Lights, Jack Thayer, Patrick O’Keefe, Algie Barkworth,
Edward Dorking, John Collins, and Tom Whiteley. There were other men there, of
course, but we never became quite as close as I did with the aforementioned.
I was awakened by a nightmare at
around midnight that night and I went for a walk to calm myself when I came
across Lights. He, too, was unable to sleep, and we talked for a long time,
leaning against the railing on the third class deck. Just what we talked about,
I can’t quite remember, but we parted as very good friends. He even introduced
me the next day to Fifth Officer Harold Lowe, another Titanic hero. The two
officers had never met before boarding in Belfast, but in the ensuing three
weeks, they had become very close, especially in light of the disaster they had
both struggled through. We were all survivors, yes, but they had been heroes.
On Wednesday, April seventeenth,
I went in search of Lights. I was not entirely sure where to find him, and so I
tried the Marconi wireless operating room. Harold Bride was in there, alone;
the Carpathia’s wireless operator, Harold Cottam, had just gone off for lunch.
I did not think that Harold would recognize me; he had been in the Marconi room
ever since awakening after the disaster and we had not talked on the
Englehardt. But he turned around as best he could--his legs were badly injured
from the cold and the way they had been sat upon by the man I described
earlier--and smiled at me.
"Ah…yes; you’d be…Angie
Marshall, am I correct?"
I nodded, dumbfounded.
"Well…yes."
"Lights told me," he
supplied at once. "I thought I recognized you from the boat. I see you’re
still holding up."
"So are you," I said
bluntly. "Shouldn’t you be in the infirmary or something? They told me you
can’t walk."
"No, I can’t," he
admitted. "But all I have to do here is sit, and that’s easy enough. I
have my meals brought to me and I keep myself busy."
That was an understatement; he
had bags under his eyes from all of the work he and Cottam had been doing.
Everyone wanted to assure their families that they were all right or that
someone had been lost; things were so busy that some messages didn’t even get
sent.
"I suppose you want to tell
your people you’re alive and well," he went on, looking surprisingly
cheerful. "I’m not supposed to, but I can do you one right now; after all,
you are the only lady who was on that collapsible."
This was the one occasion in my
life that I was truly annoyed by Harry Bride; I hated being reminded that I was
the only lady and the youngest person on that Englehardt. But I held my tongue;
Harold didn’t know that it irked me. And besides, the poor fellow was
overworked and suffering from a sprained ankle and a frostbitten leg. I shook
my head. "Thanks, but…well, I don’t have any people."
He raised an eyebrow. "No?
No one at all? No one who might be worried over you?"
I shook my head. "No; the
only people I had were…well…you know."
Harry, as he would later insist I
call him, nodded sympathetically. "I’m sorry," he said in a voice
that suggested he truly meant it. "If you don’t mind my asking…who were
they?"
I didn’t mind him asking; he had
been through just as much as, if not more than, me. "They were like
brothers to me, Jack and Fabrizio. And Tommy, too, I suppose, but I didn’t meet
him until the eleventh. We—Jack, Fabrizio, and I, that is—traveled all over
Europe together. They won Titanic tickets in a poker game and, well, we thought
we were lucky." I felt a hard lump in my throat, a lump I came to
associate with talking about the Titanic. "Well…I’ll leave you to your
work now," I said, gesturing to the toppling pile of messages.
"Oh, yes; fun, these,"
he said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
Harry, I found, was wonderful
company. Not that I had much of a chance to talk to him on the Carpathia; he
was much too overworked. We met up several times in New York until he had to
return to England; at that point, we began exchanging letters. He never liked
to discuss the Titanic, and he, too, detested the fame that accompanied being a
survivor.
*****
On Thursday, April eighteenth, we
steamed into New York Harbor at 8:30 in the evening. Rain poured unrelentingly
and thunder boomed every now and then; there couldn’t have been a better way to
end our voyage. The Americans onboard made sounds of joy and relief at seeing
their home country, but I did not. I had never had a home; not really. I
suppose that Pacific Grove had been my home, but I hardly remembered it. No,
home was wherever Jack and I and later Fabrizio would sit to rest. Where was
home for me now? I supposed I could work something out in New York, but until I
got the money, I would have to sleep in the alleys, and from what I had heard,
New York alleys leave something to be desired.
As they were setting up the
gangplank and everyone was slowly making their way to the decks--I say slowly
because most of the passengers had had enough of being wet for one voyage and
many people were trying their hardest to avoid being soaked again--I went
inside to find Bertha and the Dalys and instead found Lights talking to Harry
Bride. Harry was sitting in a chair, waiting for a wheelchair to be brought up
the gangplank for him.
"Hullo, Angie
Marshall," Harry said cheerfully. "You look wet."
"I wonder why," I
returned, almost smiling; it felt good to joke again.
"We were just discussing the
Enquiries," Lights explained, sounding thoroughly annoyed at the subject.
"Did you know that they intend on sailing us back to England directly
after the American Enquiries?"
"Enquiries?" I asked,
confused. "What Enquiries?"
"Well, see, they’re trying
to find someone to blame the sinking on," Harry offered, rolling his eyes.
"But that’s stupid!" I
huffed. "It wasn’t anyone’s fault!"
"Oh, you’d be surprised at
what politicians can come up with," Lights said seriously. "They’ll
no doubt blame the collision on the incompetence of the crew or the fact that
we lost the binoculars in Southampton or that we were heading too fast through
too dangerous an area or that a cursed mummy lay in the cargo hold or some such
nonsense; you believe me, they’ll latch onto anything."
"And the stupider, the
better," Harry added.
Lights nodded.
"Precisely." He fished something out of his pocket then and handed it
to me.
"What’s this?" I asked,
unfolding the slip of paper.
"It’s my Southampton
address," he replied, sounding almost uncomfortable. "Just…if you
should ever feel the need to write me or if you are ever in England
again…well…there you have it."
I tucked it carefully into my
coat pocket, ignoring Harry as he said, "Aw…can I give you my address,
too?"
"Thank you," I said
quietly. I hugged Lights then. He patted me on the back awkwardly; although we
both knew he didn’t mind, we also both knew that he would never break his crisp
façade. Lights never was one to be outwardly sentimental.
I wished them both the best of
luck, the sentiment was repeated back to me, and we parted. I found Eugene,
Maggie, and Bertha shortly afterwards, discussing living arrangements. I was
waiting for them to come on, not bothering to partake in the conversation, when
Maggie turned to me. "And ye might have to share a room with Bertha,
Angie, is that all right?"
I blinked. "I…what?"
Maggie repeated her question.
Seeing the look on my face, she gasped. "Oh, Angie, ye didn’t really think
we would leave ye after this, didja?"
I shrugged. "Well…yes, I
suppose."
Maggie tsked. Eugene smiled,
shaking his head. "Nah, lass, I’m afraid you’re stuck with us."
And so it came to pass that I
found a home with Eugene and Maggie Daly in New York City.