TITANIC: A STORY TOLD
Chapter Sixty-Four
Fifth Officer Lowe, the impetuous young
Welshman, had gotten Boats Ten, Twelve, and Collapsible D together with his own
Boat Fourteen. A demon of energy, he’d had everyone hold the boats together,
and was transferring passengers from Fourteen into the others, to empty his
boat for a rescue attempt.
As the women stepped gingerly across into the
other boats, Lowe saw a shawled figure in too much of a hurry. He ripped the
shawl off, and found himself staring into the face of a man. He angrily shoved
the stowaway into another boat and turned to his crew of three.
"Right, man the oars."
*****
The beam of an electric torch played across
the water like a searchlight as Boat Fourteen came through the water.
The torch illuminated floating debris, a
poignant trail of flotsam: a violin, a child’s wooden soldier, a framed photo
of a steerage family, Daniel Marvin’s wooden Biograph camera.
Then, their white lifebelts bobbing in the
darkness like signposts, the first bodies came into the torch’s beam. The
people were dead, but not drowned, killed by the freezing water. Some looked
like they could be sleeping. Others stared with frozen eyes at the stars.
Soon bodies were so thick the seamen could
not row. They hit the oars on the heads of floating men and women...a wooden
thunk. One seaman threw up. Lowe saw a mother floating with her arms frozen
around her lifeless baby.
It was the worst moment of Lowe’s life.
"We waited too long."
*****
Jack and Rose floated in the black water. The
stars reflected in the millpond surface, and the two of them seemed to be
floating in interstellar space. They were absolutely still. Their hands were
locked together. Rose was staring upwards at the canopy of stars wheeling above
her. The music was transparent, floating...as the long sleep stole over Rose,
and she felt peace.
Rose’s face was pale, like the faces of the
dead. She seemed to be floating in a void. Rose was in a semi-hallucinatory
state. She knew she was dying. Her lips barely moved as she sang a scrap of
Jack’s song.
"Come Josephine in my flying
machine..."
Rose saw the stars as she’d never seen them.
The Milky Way was a glorious band from horizon to horizon.
A shooting star flared...a line of light
across the heavens.
Rose’s hair was dusted with frost crystals.
Her breathing was so shallow, she was almost motionless. Her eyes tracked down
from the stars to the water.
Seemingly in slow motion, Rose saw the
silhouette of a boat crossing the stars. She saw men in it, rowing so slowly
the oars lifted out of the syrupy water, leaving weightless pearls floating in
the air. The voices of the men sounded slow and distorted.
Then the lookout flashed his torch toward
her, and the light flared across the water, silhouetting the bobbing corpses in
between. It flicked past her motionless form and moved on. The boat was fifty
feet away, and moving past her. The men looked away.
Rose lifted her head to turn to Jack. Her
hair had frozen to the wood under her.
Rose’s voice was barely audible. "Jack."
She touched his shoulder with her free hand.
He didn’t respond. Rose gently turned his face toward her. It was rimed with
frost.
He seemed to be sleeping peacefully.
But he was not asleep.
Rose could only stare at his still face as
the realization went through her.
"Oh, Jack."
All hope, will, and spirit left her. She
looked at the boat. It was further away now, the voices fainter, Rose watched
them go.
She closed her eyes. She was so weak, and
there just seemed to be no reason to even try.
And then...her eyes snapped open.
She raised her head suddenly, cracking the
ice as she ripped her hair off the wood. She called out, but her voice was so
weak they didn’t hear her. The boat was invisible now, the torch light a star
impossibly far away. She struggled to draw breath, calling again.
In the boat, Lowe heard nothing behind him.
He pointed to something ahead, turning the tiller.
Rose struggled to move. Her hand, she
realized, was actually frozen to Jack’s. She breathed on it, melting the ice a
little, and gently unclasped their hands, breaking away a thin tinkling film.
"I won’t let go. I promise."
She released him, and he sank into the black
water. He seemed to fade out, like a spirit returning to some immaterial plane.
Rose rolled off the floating staircase and
plunged into the icy water. She swam to Chief Officer Wilde’s body and grabbed
his whistle. She started to blow the whistle with all the strength in her body.
Its sound slapped across the still water.
In Boat Fourteen, Lowe whipped around at the
sound of the whistle.
Lowe turned the tiller. "Row back! That
way! Pull!"
Rose kept blowing as the boat came to her.
She was still blowing when Lowe took the whistle from her mouth as they hauled
her into the boat. She slipped into unconsciousness, and they scrambled to
cover her with blankets.