FAMOUS SHIPWRECK
Chapter Three
"It’s very…bizarre,"
said Ariel. "It’s so big, almost as big as Father’s castle! Maybe bigger.
Do you suppose this was once a human’s castle?"
"I thought humans build
those on land," said Flounder.
Ariel didn’t hear him.
"But it’s so hard," she
said. "Most of the other ships are made of some soft brown stuff that
Scuttle said was from the sand on the beaches. This one is dark, hard, and it
makes a noise when you tap on it. Maybe we should take a bit up to Scuttle and
see if he knows anything about it."
She reached up and touched one of
the rusticles on the ship. It immediately disappeared into a cloud, and was
gone.
"It’s so fragile," she
said. "How are we ever going to know, then? It’s all covered up, too. And
it has so many layers. Most ships only have one or two."
Next to a door, a sign, barely
legible, read First Class Entrance, A Deck.
"And it has so many windows
on the sides. Do you suppose that was so they could look underneath the water?
It’s even bigger, it seems, than the giant squid."
She swam up to where the crow’s
nest now was and removed the bell that had been rung when the iceberg had been
seen. She removed it and added it to her bag. When she pulled at the string, it
moved, and she heard a different sound, but not too different from the one when
she tapped on the ship itself. Then they went on to the gymnasium.
"It’s a big room," she
commented, and looked at the equipment.
Most of the equipment was damaged
or destroyed, but to Ariel’s eyes, there was nothing more enthralling. She saw
the stationary bicycles, and they immediately caught her attention. She liked
to move the pedals. When she did, other parts of the bicycle would move.
"A team effort," she
said.
As they went lower into the ship
and towards the bow, she noticed that the rooms started to be less luxurious,
mostly just bunk beds and a sink, no dressing tables and such.
"Maybe it’s because there’s
less space here," she said. "See, it’s only obvious that the part
that goes up has more space and bigger rooms and such. Here, it’s so
cramped!"
Of course, they didn’t know that
the reason for it was that on the bow it was mostly crew living and eating
areas, cargo, and crew working areas, while the rest was first class. In the
first class were beautiful painted doors, cracked mirrors, and debris that had
belonged to most of the first class passengers. She reached a room with a
square hole cut in the bottom.
"Why is there a hole?"
asked Flounder. "I thought humans couldn’t swim in or out of them, and
that’s why on the surface everything is flat."
They didn’t know that it was the
first class swimming pool. When they came to the third class dining room, it
was probably bigger than the first class dining room, but with bigger tables
and much less luxurious. The most preserved part of the ship was the Turkish
baths. Ariel felt as though she were a human herself, looking in on the ship
when it was still floating on the surface. The Turkish baths were right at the
bottom of the Grand Staircase, and it took them almost an entire hour to get
from the top to the bottom, and another half hour to get back to the top.
"It’s beautiful!" said
Ariel, emerging from the top of the staircase.
"And big," panted
Sebastian.
Ariel began examining the light
fixtures. She was immediately captivated by a chandelier and the form of a
small angel holding another light fixture.
"I still don’t understand
why there’s just a hole in the back. It doesn’t look complete," said
Ariel, looking back at the great ship, the biggest and most beautiful ship she
would ever see in all her life, perhaps. She sighed. "Come on," she
said to Sebastian and Flounder. "Let’s see what we can find around
it."
They found one of the perfect,
circular boilers that had helped run the ship, but obviously couldn’t take it
with them. It must have weighed a ton, and was bigger than the three of them,
anyway. They followed the debris and noticed that as they went further and
further from the ship, there seemed to be more.
"Why?" asked Ariel, and
she kept following it.
Soon, they came up the stern
section of the ship.
"I told you! You see, this
must be the other part of the ship. Oh, dear. It’s so…destroyed," she said
sadly.
The stern section was not as
intact as the bow, and surrounding them were miles and miles of debris. Ariel felt
as though she’d discovered a gold mine, so many things that had belonged to
humans. Now it was time to start to explore the stern section of her great ship
and see what new discoveries and new understandings she would gain. Smiling,
she swam with all her might toward it. Flounder and Sebastian followed
resignedly after her.