On a Cold Dark Sea(30)
Anna felt the icy air waft toward her as they approached the door that led outside. Emil took hold of her arm and pulled her along. As they stepped onto the deck, he asked, “Now do you see?”
Chunks of ice were scattered across the open expanse of wood and piled in haphazard towers along the railing. Anna wondered where it had all come from, and how it had ended up on the ship. A nearby thud made her jump, but a quick-to-follow laugh told her Bridget was nearby. Anna looked toward the sound and saw her cabinmate across the way, part of a loud, lively group tossing chunks at each other. Beyond them, on the first-class deck higher up, Anna could see figures looking down on the scene. Turning up their noses at such antics, most likely.
“I’m freezing,” Sonja said, with an exaggerated shiver. “Let’s go inside.”
Emil escorted them to the dining hall, which had become the main gathering place for confused third-class passengers. A cacophony of voices, speaking a dozen different languages, asked the same questions and shared the same uncertain news. Was it true they hit a whale? Where were they supposed to go? The ship was about to sink; the ship had been only slightly damaged and would soon be repaired. Anna heard the name Marconi several times, and when she asked Emil what it meant, he told her the Titanic’s wireless operators were sending messages to other nearby ships.
Reassured, Anna squeezed Sonja’s hand. Help was on the way.
A group of stewards walked in, their arms piled with bulky white objects. As the men were set upon by anxious passengers, they called out orders in English, their words immediately translated and murmured throughout the room: Life belts. Lifeboats. Captain’s orders. Emil helped Sonja and Anna fasten the straps on their vests before pulling on his own.
“Let’s go,” he said, urging the girls toward the door, where people were already pushing against each other in their frenzy to get through.
A harried-looking steward was guiding people toward a staircase that was usually closed off by a metal gate.
“Women and children,” he repeated. “Women and children.” For those who didn’t speak English, the message was made clear by a sailor who grabbed hold of a man who tried to pass. The sailor shoved the man away, causing a rippling effect of stumbles and shouts.
Sonja stepped away from the crush. “We should stay together,” she said.
“Go!” Emil ordered her. “I’ll find you later.”
All around them, similar arguments erupted: fathers and mothers and sons and daughters, urging each other to go or stay. Anna had accepted Emil as her protector without question; in her world, women did as their men ordered. But leaving him there, amid the confusion, felt soul-crushingly wrong. He was family.
They bickered as the water poured relentlessly through the gash below the waterline, not knowing how little time they had left. Finally, Emil let out a frustrated sigh and said, “I have an idea.”
He took them back past the dining room and up to the third-class deck. The expanse was mostly deserted, except for a few people milling at the bottom of a crane that sat midship, a crane that had been used to load baggage in Southampton. Emil strode toward them, his feet sliding on the wet wood, and Anna and Sonja shuffled carefully behind him. Emil called out to one of the Norwegians from his cabin, and the two men had a quick consultation.
Emil turned to Anna. “We’re climbing up, to the lifeboats.”
“We can’t!” Sonja protested. “That deck is first class!”
“What are they going to do to us now?” Emil argued. “The ship is sinking!”
Belatedly, Anna understood why her footsteps had been so unsteady: the ship was leaning. Shock and fear heightened her senses, and she clutched at the crane, seeking reassurance in its solidness.
The Norwegian was already testing out footholds, moving like a spider up the steel bars. Another man, dressed in the white uniform of a kitchen worker, was already halfway up the other side. Emil motioned to Sonja.
“My bag . . . ,” she protested.
“Leave it.”
Sonja looked like she was about to cry. Anna wanted to cry, too, when she thought of what she’d left in her cabin. Her best stockings, her only hat, her Sunday dress. None of it valuable, yet every piece priceless, because it was all she owned.
“We’ll fetch it later,” Anna said.
The certainty with which she delivered the lie had the desired effect. Sonja put down her bag and took hold of the first crossbar. Anna climbed alongside her, their hands and feet moving in a tentative joint rhythm. When they reached the railing of the upper deck, the Norwegian leaned out and helped them over.
Anna expected to be shouted at or quickly shooed off the deck. But the people she’d seen there earlier, gawking at the ice, were gone. From this vantage point, one of the highest spots on the ship, the Titanic’s fate was chillingly clear. Its prow was pointing precipitously downward, only a few feet from the water. And the lifeboats that had hung along the edges of the deck were gone.
The enormity of the absence silenced them. The lifeboats had been their guiding light, a way to channel their fear into action. Now, there was nowhere else to go.
“The boats can’t be far. We can get to them.”
Emil’s voice was firm, but his face made Anna want to weep. He was trying so hard to prove himself, to show he was a man who could protect the women in his care. But he was only seventeen.