The watch that ends the.., p.26
The Watch That Ends the Night, page 26
was still overturned and that I was underneath it.
I lingered a moment in the large pocket of air
before swimming out from under and away.
Realizing there was nowhere to go,
I gradually made my way back to the collapsible.
And by that time there must have been twenty men,
most of them standing, on the boat’s upturned keel.
As I pulled myself up, I was warned to be careful.
I scrambled to the stern. A fellow sat down on my feet.
I hadn’t the strength to push him off.
I called out for Phillips but got no answer.
The calm water was beginning to roll
and with each slight swell a burp of air
would escape from beneath the boat
and we would sink just a slight bit more.
I heard an officer’s voice, taking charge.
Second Officer Lightoller. “Lights” we called him.
He was organizing those who could stand,
keeping them as close to the keel as possible,
instructing them to go left or right as needed.
Lightoller recognized me from the Marconi shack
and asked if we’d been in contact with any ships.
“The C-C-Carpathia,” I stammered. “She’s on her way full speed.”
“You hear that, boys?” said Lightoller. “A ship’s on her way.
Every man who is able needs to stand up and dance.
To the left, now. Slightly right. That’s it. Steady now.”
CHARLES JOUGHIN THE BAKER
I had dog-paddled through the splashing mass.
At the center of the struggling crowd, chaos
had overtaken common sense as people lashed out,
splashed, and flailed like a tangle of rats.
As I swam outward, the circle began to thin out
and calm down. This is where most passengers
were floating, easily buoyed by their life vests.
The water was unearthly cold. It almost burned.
Like red-hot needles driven into the skin.
And within seconds a throbbing ache had penetrated
my bones and joints. I kept on swimming.
A sleepy calm began to spread through the crowd.
I swam on outward through the dying.
In my mind I could not erase the sight of the tangled rats
I had seen at the bottom of flour barrel number forty-six.
Finally the dead and dying thinned out to nearly nothing
and I spotted what turned out to be a group of men
standing atop one of the ship’s Engelhardt collapsibles.
The boat was upside down, and the men were shifting
to one side, then the other to keep their balance.
Swimming up to it, I saw that it was very full.
I attempted to climb aboard but was kicked back into the water.
“Easy, boys,” I said. “God bless.”
It is simple math, I know:
a muffin tin that’s made for a dozen will not fit thirteen.
Even so, you should never kick a muffin for making the attempt.
I hung about the raft awhile and dog-paddled
around to the other side, where I tried again to grab hold.
And again, a boot kicked at my frozen fingers.
“Leave that one alone, you heartless wretch!” came a familiar voice.
“You may as well be stomping the fingers of a world-class violinist!”
It was Maynard. (The human.) He sat down at the edge.
And he held out a trembling hand. “Grab hold,” he said.
And he helped me to hoist myself up.
I stayed there perched, half in, half out. Just to have
that small relief from the intensely cold water seemed a miracle.
And what’s more, the feel of Maynard’s hand in mine shot hope
to my every extremity faster than the strongest whiskey.
Maynard’s mustache was all out of shape, a matted comical mess.
“I shan’t let go of you, baker,” he said. “I will die before I do.
We’ll get out of this, yet. Just you watch.”
MARGARET BROWN THE SOCIALITE
“I would rather die taking action
then live and do nothing!” I said.
“We have to go back.”
“We’ll do no such thing,” said Hichens.
“Could we not row back, sir?” said Mrs. Candee to Hichens.
She was obviously attempting to “ask pretty,” as she called it.
“Are you daft?” he spat back. “It’s just a lot of stiffs out there now.
It’s either us or them. If we go among that lot, they’d swamp us.”
“But we can’t just sit and do nothing!” I screamed.
“Listen, lady. Even if I was to give over this rudder
(which I will not do), do you really think everyone here
wants to risk certain death by rowing out to save them stiffs?”
“There’s no talking to that one, Mrs. Brown,” said Major Peuchen.
The ship’s lookout, the quiet thing named Fleet, only bowed his head.
Perhaps it was a foolish idea. Perhaps it was suicide.
And even if this oaf at the helm had wanted to return,
I had a sense that the majority of the ladies in our boat
would have talked him out of it.
I was stunned into silence.
We pulled in our oars.
And we listened as the moaning
gradually,
ever so slowly,
began to die.
OLAUS ABELSETH THE IMMIGRANT
I helped a stoker who was wearing just a thin shirt and short pants to climb aboard. He also had a fancy gentleman’s dinner jacket on under his life vest. I forced the man to stand and gave him a slap to wake him up. “Do not go to sleep,” I said. “If you go to sleep, you go to sleep for good.”
Some of the other men told me to stop helping people aboard the raft. “We were here first, friend. Don’t ruin a good thing by inviting more to board than we’ve room for.”
So I stopped.
I watched one swimmer kicked away. And then another. I began to cry out, but I stifled my protests. I could see it was true. Even one more might tip us all into the sea.
If Sigurd or Peter had found the raft, we would not have been able to take them in. Our raft was like a crowded country, and each swimmer was an immigrant seeking refuge. Refuge that we refused to give.
GEORGE BRERETON THE GAMBLER
As a rule, I prefer to play at cards over dice.
When holding cards, you can conceal your hand.
You can therefore bluff, connive, and ambush.
(Not to mention cheat.)
Dice, on the other hand, require no skill. You simply toss them out
and you rely on luck. And I am not one to rely on luck.
Yet if luck comes knocking, I’ll answer.
The stoker who informed me about Titanic’s true condition,
the stoker who informed me where to find my boat —
that fellow was my unanticipated ace — certainly worth
the price of a good tailor-made dinner jacket.
I volunteered to distribute the baker’s bread,
figuring that it would gain me easier access.
When no women answered the call to board,
I stepped into the first boat I saw, taking the bread with me.
Once I had secured my seat, I tossed the basket into the stern.
So what if the other boats went without bread?
There was no butter or marmalade to spread on it, anyway.
On the way down, our boat scraped slightly against the ship.
Then the bow dipped down. Then the stern dipped down.
It was a rocky ride. But that was not the worst of it.
We finally made it safely down, only to encounter
a tremendous torrent of water pouring from the ship’s side.
It nearly swamped us and pushed our boat backward.
The sailors were having a difficult time releasing the ropes
attached to either end of our boat, which was a bad thing
because unbeknownst to Titanic’s crew above,
we had drifted backward into the path of another boat,
which was descending directly on top of us!
It creaked closer and closer until our screaming and shouting
stopped the descent, leaving the boat hanging
precariously over our heads, so close you could touch it.
Finally our crew cut the ropes and pushed us out from under.
As we rowed away, I felt like I’d been duped.
Not thirty minutes earlier I had been having a smoke
and a whiskey in the midst of a lucrative game of red dog.
Now I was wet, cold, and wedged tightly among
a group of hysterical women and crying children,
floating in a boat on a moonless night in the middle of the Atlantic.
And when I heard one of the crew
say that our lifeboat was number thirteen —
well, I just had to laugh out loud at that! Lucky thirteen.
Our lifeboat became silent as we watched
the mighty Titanic vanish from our sight. And I thought,
Maybe number thirteen is not so unlucky after all.
Then the moaning reached out across the water.
If Stengel is dead, I thought, at least I’ve got his bank draft.
I’ll have to cash it before the bank knows he’s gone.
I won’t have any luggage to slow me down,
and I’ve got the check right here in my —
dinner . . . jacket . . . pocket.
The stoker!
THOMAS HART THE STOKER
I’m tired.
I just want to sit down.
Why does this man
not let me sit down?
I’m so, so tired.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Leave me be,” I say.
“Who are you?”
“I am Abelseth,” he says.
“Who am I?” I try to ask.
But no words will come.
I am too cold to speak.
I just want to sit down.
I just want to go to sleep.
Why won’t this man
let me sleep? Let me sleep.
Tommy Hart
needs his sleep.
JOHN JACOB ASTOR THE MILLIONAIRE
Oh, God.
The absurdity of souls residing on Saturn.
The absurdity has just struck me for the first time.
Maybe Jupiter. Maybe Mars. I am so cold.
Where shall I go now? When I leave this body,
where shall I go? I am so terribly cold.
Considering my present luck, I’ll find myself stuck
in some damp, moldy, ancient English castle,
with cousin Willy and my ex-wife, Ava,
forced to endure an eternal game of mah-jongg!
(Hem, hem.)
I am growing sleepy. I know what that means.
My consciousness begins to blink on, off, on, off, on.
Like the stutter of the telegrapher adjusting his set,
I hear intermittent static as I move from one frequency to the next.
I have left 1912. I have left my Madeleine behind.
I move my dial a century into the future: the year 2012.
Armies are still at war. The poor are still poor. The rich still rich.
Glaciers continue to shed mountains of ice into the oceans.
The world still tilts at twenty-three and one half degrees.
The entire human race stands idly by as the great ship lists.
I see it so clearly, how we are all of us on the Titanic’s deck,
steaming happily toward destruction or stopped dead in the water —
content that human ingenuity will keep us afloat forever
or at least till we are rescued by some passing steamer.
But from where I watch, I can see the truth of it:
we are alone.
We are the only ship in the vastness of a cosmic sea,
sinking lower every second. No lifeboats left to launch.
Finally, I’ve reached my destination.
No light.
Just calm.
Quiet.
Peaceful.
Until suddenly
the darkness is shattered by an explosion of magnesium powder.
“Welcome to Saturn, Mr. Astor!” the photographer says.
“Colonel Astor,” I correct him, with spots in my vision.
And even in the afterlife, they ask the same thing:
“What was it like, sir? To be the richest man in the world?”
And I answer them back,
still shivering from my travels,
dripping wet with knowing,
as I remove my life vest for good:
“Cold, sir. It is very cold.”
CHARLES JOUGHIN THE BAKER
I am. so cold.
Cold beyond description.
But I am. alive.
Life gives no guarantees.
I know this.
We are each
just a child’s balloon
floating amid the cutlery.
But I am alive.
I stay alive
because I am a man. of the sea.
I stay alive.
Because I know no earthly hell.
Can last. forever.
I stay alive
because. someone must be there.
When the loaves are done.
I stay alive.
Because Maynard.
Refuses. to let go.
OSCAR WOODY THE POSTMAN
Paddle. Float. Gasp. Shiver.
Shiver. Paddle. Gasp.
“Must hold on, Mr. Woody,” says Mr. March.
“We must deliver this final sack,” I say.
Paddle. Float. Gasp. Shiver.
Shiver. Paddle. Gasp.
I hold tight to the sack of registered mail.
Mr. March holds tight to the sack as well.
He’s growing weaker. I can tell.
His fingers are loose against the canvas.
The gold ring with the letter M.
Only, from where I am, it’s upside down.
“I see your ring is upside down,” I say.
“From where I am, the M is a W,” I say.
“Ha. Ha,” says Mr. March. He shuts his eyes.
“A W for Woody,” says he. “For Woody.”
Float. Float. Gasp. Shiver.
Shiver. Float. Gasp.
He drops the sack. I drop the sack.
“There goes the sack of mail,” I say.
But Mr. March has gone away.
He looks my way, but he doesn’t see.
“Let’s just float, Mr. M.,” says I.
Float. Turn. Float.
Turn. Float. Float. Away.
HAROLD LOWE THE JUNIOR OFFICER
“We’ve been floating here long enough,” I said.
“I need a few volunteers. We have to go back.”
The sound of the dying had lasted so long.
But now it was becoming too silent, too quickly.
From boat to boat I moved my passengers out
so I might replace them with a makeshift rescue crew.
But these people had no sense of urgency.
One lady moved as if she were attending a picnic.
“Jump, God damn you! Jump!” I said.
Finally I was able to transfer about fifty passengers
to give us extra room for more. And we rowed
as quickly as possible toward the mass of people.
But by then it was silent as a grave. And a grave was what it was.
“Slow up, boys,” I said. “We’re coming in among them now.”
I called out into the gloom of the barely breaking dawn.
I scanned the grisly scene. Checking each upturned face for life.
One blank stare after another. Oddly enough I saw no women.
But hundreds of men, bobbing upright in their life vests.
I detailed a man at the bow of our boat to push the bodies away —
the water was so thick with the dead, we could barely row.
The first passenger we found alive was an enormous man
that took my entire crew of seven to pull in. He was soaked well through
and bleeding from the mouth and nose. We propped him up
at the stern of the boat. Took off his collar and loosened his shirt
so he might better breathe. But he was too far gone already.
Next we found a Jap who had tied himself to a door.
The water was washing over him
“What’s the use?” I said. “He’s dead, likely.”
I was about to turn the boat away when I noticed the knots.
He had tied himself to the wreckage
using a bowline loop knot with a half hitch.
“Hold on, boys,” I said. “I’ve changed my mind.
Let’s pull the Jap aboard. Why not?” And so we did.
One of the crew rubbed his chest.
Others rubbed his hands and feet.
And within not half a minute, the little fellow
jumped up and stretched his arms over his head.
Then he stomped his feet. He said something in his own
strange language. He placed an oar in an oarlock,
and he stayed at it all night. I’d never seen a better sailor.
I’d trade any thirteen of Titanic’s crew for just that one Jap.
He was a boatman. Just like me. He knew his knots.
After that we pulled in two more, bringing the total to four —
three living and one dead. And by then dawn was fully breaking
so that we took in the full horror of the mass of floating dead.
A slight dragon’s breath of mist clung just at the surface.
For a moment of fancy, I felt as though I were a boatman in hell.
Then a wind picked up and blew the mist away.
And we saw it, plain as day: a ship. In the distance.
Coming our way. “Let’s step that mast, boys,” I ordered my crew.
“That’s a steamer as sure as I have saltwater in my veins.
But let’s waste no time waiting for her to find us.
We’re going to be sure she doesn’t bungle the rescue.
