TITANIC: A STORY TOLD
Chapter Sixty-One
Jack and Rose ran out of the Palm Court into
a dense crowd. Jack pushed his way to the rail and looked at the state of the
ship. The bridge was under water and there was chaos on deck. Jack helped her
put her lifebelt on. People streamed around them, shouting and pushing.
"Okay...we keep moving aft. We have to
stay on the ship as long as possible."
They pushed their way aft through the
panicking crowd.
*****
Collapsible A was whirled like a leaf in the
currents around the sinking ship. It slammed against the side of the forward
funnel.
Cal shouted to the crew in the boat.
"Row! Row, you bastards!"
Fabrizio was drawn up against the grating of
a stokehold vent as water poured through it. The force of tons of water roaring
down into the ship trapped him against it, and he was dragged down under the
surface as the ship sank. He struggled to free himself but could not.
Suddenly, there was a concussion deep in the
bowels of the ship as a furnace exploded and a blast of hot air belched out of
the ventilator, ejecting Fabrizio. He surfaced in a roar of foam and kept
swimming.
*****
Jack and Rose clambered over the A Deck aft
rail. Then, using all his strength, he lowered her toward the deck below,
holding on with one hand. She dangled, then fell. Jack jumped down behind her.
They joined a crush of people literally
clawing and scrambling over each other to get down the narrow stairs to the
well deck...the only way aft.
Seeing that the stairs were impossible, Jack
climbed over the B Deck railing and helped Rose over. He lowered her again, and
she fell in a heap. Baker Joughin, now three sheets to the wind, happened to be
next to her. He hauled Rose to her feet. Jack dropped down, and the three of
them pushed through the crowd across the well deck. Near them, at the rail,
people were jumping into the water.
The ship groaned and shuddered. The man ahead
of Jack was walking like a zombie.
"Yeah, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death--"
"You wanna walk a little faster through
that valley, fellow?"
*****
The stay cables along the top of the funnel
snapped, and they lashed like steel whips down into the water. Cal watched as
the funnel toppled from its mounts. Falling like a temple pillar twenty-eight
feet across, it fell into the water with a tremendous splash. People swimming
underneath it disappeared in an instant.
Fabrizio, a few feet away, was hurled back by
a huge wave. He came up, gasping...still swimming. The water pouring into the
open end of the funnel drew in several swimmers. The funnel sank, disappearing,
but hundreds of tons of water poured down through the thirty-foot hole where
the funnel stood, thundering down into the belly of the ship. A whirlpool
formed, a hole in the ocean, like an enormous toilet flush. T.W. McCauley, the
gym instructor, swam in a frenzy as the vortex drew him in. He was sucked down
like a spider going down a drain.
Fabrizio, nearby, swam like hell as more
people were sucked down behind him. He managed to get clear. He was going to
live no matter what it took.
*****
Water roared through the doors and windows,
cascading down the stairs like a rapid. John Jacob Astor was swept down the
marble steps to A Deck, which was already flooded...a roiling vortex. He
grabbed the headless cherub at the bottom of the staircase and wrapped his arms
around it.
Astor looked up in time to see the
thirty-foot glass dome overhead explode inward with the wave of water washing
over it. A Niagara of seawater thundered down into the room, blasting through
the first class opulence. It was the Armageddon of elegance.
*****
The flooding was horrific. Walls and doors
were splintered like kindling. Water roared down corridors with pile-driver
force.
The Cartmell family was at the top of a
stairwell, jammed against a locked gate, like Jack and Rose were. Water boiled
up the stairwell behind them. Bert Cartmell shook the gate futilely, shouting
for help. Little Cora wailed as the water boiled up around them all.
*****
Rose and Jack struggled to climb the well
deck stairs as the ship tilted. Drunk Baker Joughin put a hand squarely on
Rose’s butt and shoved her up onto the deck.
"Sorry, miss!"
Hundreds of people were already on the poop
deck, and more were pouring up every second. Jack and Rose clung together as
they struggled across the tilting deck.
As the bow went down, the stern rose. In Boat
Two, which was just off the stern, passengers gaped as the giant bronze
propellers rose out of the water like gods of the deep.
People were jumping from the well deck, the
poop deck, and the gangway doors. Some hit debris in the water and were hurt or
killed.
On the poop deck Jack and Rose struggled aft
as the angle increased. Hundreds of passengers, clinging to every fixed object
on deck, huddled on their knees around Father Byles, who had his voice raised
in prayer. They were praying, sobbing, or just staring at nothing, their minds
blank with dread.
Pulling himself from handhold to handhold,
Jack tugged Rose aft along the deck.
"Come on, Rose. We can’t expect God to
do all the work for us."
They struggled on, pushing through the
praying people. A man lost his footing ahead and slid toward them. Jack helped
him up.
The propellers were twenty feet above the
water and rising faster.
Jack and Rose made it to the stern rail,
right at the base of the flagpole. They gripped the rail, jammed in between
other people. It was the spot where Jack pulled her back onto the ship, just
two nights...and a lifetime...ago.
"Jack, this is where we first met."
Above the wailing and sobbing, Father Byles’
voice carried, cracking with emotion.
"...and I saw new heavens and a new
earth. The former heavens and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was
no longer."
The lights flickered, threatening to go out.
Rose gripped Jack as the stern rose into a night sky ablaze with stars.
"I also saw a new Jerusalem, the holy
city coming down out of heaven from God, beautiful as a bride prepared to meet
her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne ring out; this is God’s
dwelling among men. He shall dwell with them and they shall be His people and
He shall be their God, who is always with them."
Rose stared about her at the faces of the
doomed. Near them was the Dahl family, clinging together stoically. Helga
looked at her briefly, and her eyes were infinitely sad.
Rose saw a young mother next to her,
clutching her five-year-old son, who was crying in terror.
"Shh. Don’t cry. It’ll be over soon,
darling. It’ll all be over soon."
"He shall wipe every tear from their
eyes. And there shall be no more death or mourning, crying out or pain, for the
former world has passed away."
*****
As the ship tilted further everything not
bolted down inside shifted.
Cupboards burst open in the pantry, showering
the floor with tons of china. A piano slid across the floor, crashing into a
wall. Furniture tumbled across the Smoking Room floor.
On the A Deck promenade passengers lost their
grips and slid down the wooden deck like a bobsled run, hundreds of feet before
they hit the water. Trudy Bolt, Rose’s maid, slipped as she struggled along the
railing, and slid away screaming.
At the stern the propellers were one hundred
feet out of the water and rising. Panicking people leapt from the poop deck
rail, fell screaming, and hit the water like mortar rounds. A man fell from the
poop deck, hitting the bronze hub of the starboard propeller with a sickening
smack.
Swimmers looked up and saw the stern towering
over them like a monolith, the propellers rising against the stars. One hundred
ten feet. One hundred twenty.
At the stern rail a man jumped. He fell
seemingly forever, right past one of the giant screws. The water rushed up.
*****
Ruth listened as the sounds of the dying ship
and the screaming people came across the water.
Titanic’s lights were blazing, reflecting in
the still water. Its stern was high in the air, angled up over forty-five
degrees. The propellers were one hundred fifty feet out of the water. Over a
thousand passengers clung to the decks, looking from a distance like a swarm of
bees.
The image was shocking, unbelievable, and
unthinkable. Ruth stared at the spectacle, unable to frame it, or put it into
any proportion.
"God almighty," Molly Brown
whispered.
The great liner’s lights flickered.
*****
In darkness Chief Engineer Bell hung onto a
pipe at the master breaker panel. Around him men climbed through tilted
cyclopean machines with electric hand torches. It was a black hell of breaking
pipes, spraying water, and groaning machinery threatening to tear right out of
its bedplates.
Water sprayed down, hitting the breaker
panel, but Bell would not leave his post. Clunk. The breakers kicked. He
slammed them in again and--something melted and arcing filled the engine room with
nightmarish light.
*****
The lights went out all over the ship.
Titanic became a vast, black silhouette against the stars.
In Collapsible C Bruce Ismay had his back to
the ship, unable to watch the great steamer die. He was catatonic with remorse,
his mind overloaded. He could avert his eyes, but he couldn’t block out the
sounds of dying people and machinery.
A loud, cracking report came across the
water.
*****
Near the third funnel a man clutched the
ship’s rail. He stared down as the deck split right between his feet. A yawning
chasm opened with a thunder of breaking steel.
Lovejoy was clutching the railing on the roof
of the Officers’ Mess. He watched in horror as the ship’s structure ripped
apart right in front of him. He gaped down into a widening maw, seeing straight
down into the bowels of the ship, amid a booming concussion like the sound of
artillery. People falling into the widening crevasse looked like dolls.
The stay cables on the funnel parted and
snapped across the decks like whips, ripping off davits and ventilators. A man
was hit by a whipping cable and swept into the crevasse. Another cable smashed
the rail next to Lovejoy, and it ripped free. He fell backward into the pit of
jagged metal.
Fires, explosions, and sparks lit the yawning
chasm as the hull split down through nine decks to the keel. The sea poured
into the gaping wound.
*****
It was a thundering black hell. Men screamed
as monstrous machinery came apart around them, steel frames twisting like
taffy. Their torches illuminated the roaring, foaming demon of water as it
raced at them through the machines. Trying to climb, they were overtaken in
seconds.
*****
The stern half of the ship, almost four
hundred feet long, fell back toward the water. On the poop deck everyone
screamed as they felt themselves plummeting. The sound went up like the roar of
fans at a baseball stadium when a run was scored.
Swimming in the water directly under the
stern, a few unfortunates shrieked as they saw the keel coming down on them
like God’s boot heel. The massive stern section fell back almost level,
thundering down into the sea, and pushing out a mighty wave of displaced water.
Jack and Rose struggled to hold onto the
stern rail. They felt the ship seemingly right itself. Some of those praying
thought it was salvation.
"We’re saved!"
Jack looked at Rose and shook his head,
grimly.
Then the horrible mechanics played out.
Pulled down by the awesome weight of the flooded bow, the buoyant stern tilted
up rapidly. They felt the rush of ascent as the fantail angled up again.
Everyone was clinging to benches, railings, ventilators...anything to keep from
sliding as the stern lifted.
The stern went up and up, past forty-five
degrees, then past sixty.
People started to fall, sliding and tumbling.
They skidded down the deck, screaming and flailing to grab onto something. They
wrenched other people loose, and pulled them down as well. There was a pile-up
of bodies at the forward rail. The Dahl family fell one by one.
"We have to move!" Jack shouted.
He climbed over the stern rail, and reached
back for Rose. She was terrified to move. He grabbed her hand.
"Come on! I’ve got you! I won’t let go."
Jack pulled her over the rail. It was the
same place he pulled her over the rail two nights earlier, going to other
direction. She got over just as the railing was going horizontal, and the deck
vertical. Jack gripped her fiercely.
The stern was now straight up in the air...a
rumbling black monolith standing against the stars. It hung there like that for
a long grace note, its buoyancy stable.
Rose lay on the railing, looking down fifteen
stories to the boiling sea at the base of the stern section. People near them,
who didn’t climb over, hung from the railing, their legs dangling over the long
drop. They fell one by one, plummeting down the vertical face of the poop deck.
Some of them bounced horribly off deck benches and ventilators.
Jack and Rose lay side by side on what was
the vertical face of the hull, gripping the railing, which was now horizontal.
Just beneath their feet were the gold letters Titanic emblazoned across the
stern.
Rose stared down, terrified, at the black
ocean waiting below to claim them. Jack looked to his left, and saw Baker
Joughin, crouching on the hull holding onto the railing. It was a surreal
moment.
Joughin nodded a greeting. "Hell of a
night."
The final relentless plunge began as the
stern section flooded. Moving down a hundred feet to the water, it dropped like
an elevator with Jack and Rose.
Jack was talking fast. "Take a deep
breath and hold it right before we go into the water. The ship will suck us
down. Kick for the surface and keep kicking. Don’t let go of my hand. We’re
gonna make it, Rose. Trust me."
She stared at the water coming up at them,
and gripped his hand harder.
"I trust you."
Below them, the poop deck was disappearing.
The plunge gathered speed...the boiling surface engulfed the docking bridge,
and then rushed up the last thirty feet.
The stern descended into the boiling sea. The
name Titanic disappeared, and the tiny figures of Jack and Rose vanished under
the water.
Where the ship stood, now there was nothing.
Only the black ocean.