The Second Mrs. Astor(78)

I told myself that he had made it into another boat, that he had to be on another boat.

I never stopped looking.




Monday, April 15th

Adrift



Lifeboat Four was leaking. No one could pinpoint the source of it, but it was. Ice-cold water sloshed along its bottom, leisurely rising no matter how much any of them bailed.

The silence of the night expanded, infinite but for their own hushed voices and the gentle lapping of water against wood. After she and four other women had tugged and pulled the last man aboard, Madeleine realized she no longer heard the ghastly dying-beast sound; in the last twenty minutes or so, she’d noticed it thinning, flattening into a dull monotone. But she’d not noticed until just this moment that it was utterly done.

No one else cried out for help. Nor would they, ever again.

The terrible peace of it rang in her head. They searched a while longer anyway, rowing this way and that, but there was no one alive to save.

A baby whimpered, and the man at Madeleine’s feet groaned. He was too weak to sit up on his own, and there wasn’t enough space to lie him along the benches, so they’d propped him up against the side as best they could. He seemed insensible, his legs sprawled, pressing against her. The violent shivers that wracked him shook her as well, no matter how she tried to shift away. Every now and then, she’d bend down to chafe her palms against his face and neck. She wasn’t sure why beyond a vague notion to let him know that even in his delirium, he wasn’t alone.

“He knew,” said a woman to Madeleine’s left, low and vehement.

“What?” said another. Eleanor.

“Mr. Ismay. He knew about the ice. Marian and I ran into him yesterday on the promenade. We’d gone out to look at the sunset, and he walked up. He’d gotten a Marconigram about it from another ship. He showed it to us. He told us we were among the icebergs.”

Madeleine gazed out into the darkness, her jaw clenched, listening. All of them were listening now.

“He told us they were going to start up more of the boilers to go faster. That we were going to get to New York early.” The woman’s voice broke.

“Emily—”

“He knew,” she said again, louder.

The man at Madeleine’s feet had stopped shivering. She folded her hands over her stomach and closed her eyes, tired of looking at the stars.

*

They tied up to a group of other lifeboats, she wasn’t certain how many. Four or five, enough to form a miniature flotilla that revolved in a wide, lazy circle, governed by the cold northern currents; no one bothered now to row. After a burst of greetings, of people calling out names, hopeful, over and over again hopeful, until the lack of answer became their answer, the silence won again.

Far away along the unwrinkled line of the ocean, someone in another lifeboat occasionally launched flares that lifted, exploded, thin green darts of fire that melted into nothing long before they reached the water. Even the shooting stars seemed more bold.

The eastern edge of the sky began to separate itself from the Atlantic, going from black to indigo to wine. As the light lifted, she was able to better see all the people around her, their eyes bloodshot, their faces chapped. A breeze rose, sending the calm water into ripples that broke against meandering small chunks of ice.

The sound of a whistle sliced through the chill. An infant released a startled cry. Madeleine lifted her head, then joined several others standing to discover the source. Just barely in view, a group of about thirty men balanced in two neat rows atop what looked like a floating shelf of ice. The man holding the whistle shrilled it again; some of the other men began waving their arms.

Hope caught at her once more, a hot blazing thing. She turned to the quartermaster, who was already reaching to uncouple their boat.

“We’ve room for eight or ten,” he called to the crewmen in the other boats. “Who else will go?”

A second boat cut loose from their flotilla, and the pair of them began to creep along. Madeleine sat against the port gunwale, leaning out to better see. Before she could make out their faces, she could make out their perch: not ice at all, but an overturned lifeboat, rapidly sinking.

None of the men were Jack. She knew it even before the morning was clear enough to tell. None of them had his lean frame, his posture.

The man with the whistle was the same officer who’d shoved her aboard from the promenade window a lifetime ago. Who’d told her husband that he could not go with her.

“Come and take us off!” the man shouted, hoarse.

Behind him—oh, behind him, bright as sundrops against the purple-pink sky—shone the mast lights of a steamship heading their way.

*

They did not have room for eight or ten more people. They scarcely had room for five, and then only if everyone stood up. The water was up to Madeleine’s ankles; she’d lost feeling in her feet a half hour past. With every new man added to their group, the lifeboat rocked and dipped lower into the waves.

“We’ll have to row to her,” decided the quartermaster, eyeing the approaching ship. “She’s miles out still. We won’t be afloat by the time she makes it here.”

People rearranged themselves, stood sideways, making room for the pulling oars.

With a sudden brilliance, the sun breached the boundary of the sea, spilling a warm lemon light up and up, bleeding through the pink. It spread across the heavens, all the water, and caught in bright burning lines along the icebergs that had been floating around them all along, unseen in the dark.