Titanic
By Jon Sleeper
Part IV: Lifeboats
"What are you sending?" (Capt. Smith)
"CQD." (Jack Phillps)
"Send SOS. It's the new call and it may be your last chance to send it." (Harold Bride)
Apr. 15, 1912 12:10 a.m.
I must say, agreeing to help with loading the lifeboats must of been one of the best decisions I have ever made.
I’d lost a lot of time because of my fouled up memory. I only gave coins out to those who had asked for them, and only then because of a strange compulsion to do so had been so overwhelming that it was impossible to refuse it. I’d only given out about twenty or so since I’d came on board. But I also wondered if some these people were worth saving. Frankly, many of them were insufferable, arrogant, and just plain stuck up!
Like I had been.
Emily had been good enough to give me the benefit of the doubt. I thanked her much for it. More than thanked her, in fact. Perhaps many of these people were merely ignorant of those poorer than they were. I knew several that if they knew how many in third class had lived then they would help in any way they could. So I decided to give them what Em had given me. A second chance.
There were, of course, those at the opposite extreme. I won’t name any names.
Before I went out to help with the boats I assisted one of the crew (a Acolyte in fact, wearing a narwhal ring) hand out lifejackets in the gymnasium. I managed to put myself in a position where I had time to use a penknife to slit them open just enough to slip a coin in, then seal it with my talent. My pockets were filled with a couple hundred coins, a lot of weight but necessary.
"Lifeboats!" I heard one woman say. "What do they need lifeboats? This ship could smash a hundred icebergs and not feel it. Impossible!" Never say the word "impossible" to Nature. She does not take it very well.
It was very cold outside. As a result, most tended to stay inside the gymnasium or the lounge to stay warm. Not to mention the unearthly roar coming from the three forward funnels. I knew they were venting steam so the boilers would not explode when the cold water contacted them. One could not hear one's thoughts above the din of the escaping steam! I was still dressed warmly from my meeting with Emily on the bow.
And when I thought about it more, dredging up more pieces of the memory I was slowly putting back together, I remembered that even if I started to get cold I could invoke my ring and be as warm as I pleased. When my Acolyte friend said I was no longer needed, I took a moment to examine my memories.
Images of my original family-pod, dead nearly three hundred years, came to the fore. I felt renewed sadness over the loss of them by whalers. But Orca had said he needed me. Over the past quarter millennia or so, I'd begun to think of him as the only family I had. I love him now as I did my own father… but something in the morass did not seem quite right.
I remember my mother's death clearly. She beached herself when she knew it was too hard on the pod to take care of her. It was on a beach in Nova Scotia, in fact. Relatively close to here. I remember going often to that spot to pay my respects. The tooth in Ape's hatband had belonged to her. She had lost it while hunting for herring. She then asked me (it was just after my first Task) to give it to Ape. For some reason Orca had not been present, but my father had.
A funny thing about my father. I just don't remember his death. And I don't think it's because of my memory problems.
I began to have suspicions.
"Captain Orcan?" said a man in an officer's uniform.
"Yes, Mr. Murdoch. What can I do for you?"
"Would you give us a hand on the starboard side here? The Captain said you would be of service if you were needed."
"Ah, yes. My good man. I've had about as much experience as any seaman with evacuations. Had to do one myself not too long ago." I helped out Chief Officer Pitman, who was in charge of lifeboat No. 5. There, I recognized several of those crewmembers who were helping me. Most, in fact, had beluga or bottlenose pendants. Bottle's man Marcus seemed an amazing sort!
In a very short time, owing to the brand new davits, we had the boat flush with the Boat Deck within three minutes. The most terrible thing I'd noticed is that these particular davits were designed to carry at least a second set of boats! I've never seen a more flagrant disregard for human life!
"Ladies, this way," First Officer Murdoch called to those who'd ventured out on deck. Those who were there seemed very hesitant. When someone else said: "Put in the brides and grooms first," a few came forward.
I was left in a state of complete shock as the first lifeboat, No. 7, was lowered not nearly half as full as it could of held! I resolved to make my boat much fuller. I checked my pocket watch. 12:25 am. I sighed, then muttered under my breath. "Well, I guess there's no help for it." I looked at the water below, it looked very enticing, to me at least. But…
I put on my best Captain's voice. "Okay men, finish getting her ready." Pitman had gone to see the Captain. A man I recognized as J. Bruce Ismay had been bothering him to load the boat. Pitman had gone to confirm the order with the Captain. I turned towards the growing crowd on deck. I clapped my freezing hands to get the attention of those around me, then yelled above the blowing steam, "Women and children first please!"
Pitman returned, and we began with married couples, but after putting about twenty on board I was summarily pushed into the background by another crewmember (no pendant or anything) so I decided I had done my duty and therefore went to take a look around the ship.
I wandered forward towards the bridge when they started to lower the boat, it had forty people aboard. Still short of capacity but better than the one before it. Pitman had thanked me, and told me I ought to try the next one down.
I refused of course. What use did I have of a lifeboat?
I'd managed to get myself up to the bridge by posing as a member of the crew, courtesy Marcus. His clothes were rather big on me, but thanks to my pendant no one noticed. Fourth Officer Boxhall was just standing next to the wheel, a resigned look on his face. "You there, Seaman" he said to me. "What's the word on the lifeboats?"
"I don't know, sir," I replied. "That's what I came up here to find out. Though it seems that you know as much as I do." I grinned (what else?).
"I don't think I've ever seen you before…"
"It's a big ship," I said cheerfully.
His face went grim. "That it was, that it was." He sighed deeply, looking at his shoes. We had to yell this over the steam roar. I heard the Captain order the lifeboats to be readied, then several officers left to carry out those orders (I saw Darius in the bunch, but he did not respond to me, as he was supposed to). A minute or so later Boxhall called someone on a phone, I barely heard him say, "bring some distress rockets," Then he looked off the port bow…
There, probably ten miles distant, I saw a light. A masthead light as another ship would have. I rushed outside to the port wing bridge to get a clearer look. It did indeed look like another ship… but then I looked with my talent, and strained with my ears…
I heard two voices. Voices that had an eerie quality to them. They were speaking in a language I did not understand, which is quite unusual. I just could not place it. By the tone of their voices, they were in a heated argument. One female voice had an indescribable Tone. Even in it's anger I heard it's love, devotion, and reluctance, but also an incredible resolve and a deep loneliness that seemed to permeate all of her words.
The young male voice that responded was familiar. It also had a vehemence in it that I never expected of it. Funny, I never thought He'd grow up so soon… I guess events like this can make you grow up fast. Ape's voice also had a ring of new maturity to it. Amazing. The voices stopped a moment, realizing something.
[[DO YOU MIND, CHILD OF MY SON? WE ARE HAVING A CONVERSATION HERE. THANK YOU.]] The mind-voice nearly knocked me off my feet! My head throbbed and I rubbed my temples… then I realized that Nature Herself had spoken to me! Don't think I'll do that again… I thought.
A moment later a boy… ahem… young man in a cabin boy uniform appeared next to me. The light was still quite visible off the port bow, and I wondered what Nature was staying around for. Ape was looking at me with a serious expression. "You'll have to excuse Mother, Bottle." he said. "She oft forgets your senses are not quite the same as ours." He sighed. "In case you're wondering, that light is Mother's doing. She's deciding if she wants to make it a ship or not. I'm not comfortable with all these people dying. There are many aboard here who would help more than hurt. But if the light stays, she's decided in my favor. If it disappears… then the Carpathia will have to do. I at least got Mother to agree to let that ship through without harm. They should be here by sunup."
You know, I hate it when things get so serious? This business of saving lives like this… I mean, we bottlenoses are really not suited for it. Most of us think life is all fun and games; like riding the bow wave of a windjammer being pushed by the wind, your only worry which side of the bow to ride on. Frankly, though, for all it's seriousness, I know something good has to come out of this disaster. Something big.
Call me a terminal optimist.
We had to vacate the portside wing bridge when Boxhall came in and started to use the morse lamp to signal the "ship". But to no avail. Nature had apparently not decided yet. Then a man carrying several rockets came appeared on the bridge. "Ah, Quartermaster Rowe," said Captain Smith. "Fire one rocket every six minutes." It was 12:45 a.m..
Ape and I wandered onto the boat deck just as the first rocket went off. The steam had stopped it's unearthly roar some time earlier, and at my urging the Captain had ordered the band to start playing. And they did. Ragtime, in fact. It made the atmosphere on board almost surreal. A strange party-like feel that would stay with me for years afterward. Then the rocket exploded above our heads in a loud BOOM and a white flash. Then as if a switch had been thrown all voices stopped, and gasped.
A quiet murmur flowed throughout the boat deck. For a moment there was utter silence. After all, everyone knows what rockets at sea mean…
Ape and I ran into Darius moment later. "I saw the light, and heard your argument with Nature," he said to Ape. "It's still out there, too. Doe this mean Nature has decided to relent?" Ape just shrugged resignedly.
At boat No. 8, we arrived just in time to see Ida Strauss back out of getting into the lifeboat. Her speech to a couple of her friends nearly brought tears to the three of us. She returned to her husband's side, and said: "We have been living together for many years, and where you go, I go. I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so shall we die together."
Another man urged Strauss to get into the boat with his wife. "I will not go before the other men," he said.
Darius walked up to Mr. Strauss, his eyes still very emotional, and said, "May I speak with the two of you in private for a moment?" Then those three left Ape and I standing there while the boat was loaded. Something I helped out with, and very proudly, too.
There really was not much else for us to do. Our major Tasks were complete. We only had to wait for the ship to sink, then Orca and the jewelry would take care of the rest. I decided to go and see if I could find Marcus and see how he was doing. I left Ape here above, at his insistence, then went a-roaming the ship.
As I supported the ship with my mind, it was almost as if I became one with the ship itself. For moment I was overwhelmed with the sheer number of people aboard! Then I knew the extent of the complacency of the shipping companies like the White Star line and Cunard. I'd read once that they thought that having lifeboats for everyone was impractical! Ridiculous!
As time moved on, I found I could focus on individual places and conversations throughout the whole ship. As more and more boats were loaded, passengers wandered aft. Most of those on the boat deck were still blissfully unaware of the danger they were in.
I nearly lost my concentration when boat No. 1 left with only twelve people aboard! So I let my mind wander aft towards my cabin. There I saw… or felt rather, the mind of a crewman in panic. "Oh God," he was saying. "I can't get this ring off! But Bottle said I'd be saved… but I don't know if I want to be saved like that!" He was pacing back and forth in one of the hallways on D-deck, with a look that both said joy and horror. Then he finally seemed to come to a decision.
"But the voice needs me," he said just loud enough to be heard by others. "It says that the dolphin that saved my life did so for a reason. That I have something to do here. That I will be saved, in a fashion, when the ship goes down." He looked at his ring for a moment, thinking quietly. Then he smiled, blew on the ring, then shined it with his coat sleeve.
"Hell, I think I've wanted to be one ever since she… I know it's a she somehow. She saved me from sinking to the bottom. For a moment when this little bit did whatever it did… changed me for a moment… I felt… I felt… I don't know. I want to find out again. But there's only one way to do that. It's time to stop thinking, and start doing." He nodded once in finality, the horror aspect disappearing from his features, then he stopped pacing the deck and started to hand out lifejackets.
I continued to follow him as his words had interested me. He must of been a second class steward, because I'd not seen him before. There seemed a huge number of steerage passengers still below decks, so I let my consciousness roam briefly to the top of the third class stairway. At the top of the stairway were several crewmembers actively keeping any passenger who ventured to the top back down. Like it was their sworn duty to see that the first and second class passengers got off the ship first! If I'd not been otherwise preoccupied I'd of given those men a mental slap! In point of fact, when a man rushed up the stairs one of the stewards grabbed him and shoved him back down into the steerage place!
Those actions made almost made me lose my concentration, again. So I turned back to the steward. A woman I recognized as Minnie Coutts, with her two young sons, from just three doors down from my cabin, explained to him that she did not have a lifebelt. He then seemed to realize something, then he looked at his ring again, a smile on his face. "Come with me." he said.
He led them to through a maze of corridors, through first class even, to his own quarters. With glistening eyes he fastened his own lifebelt to Minnie. "There madam," he said in a voice thick with emotion. "If you're saved, please pray for me."
Then something I'd been dreading, happened. Orca had been using some of his talent to make others avoid where we were on the ship. He was standing like a statue in the middle of the hallway, while I was pressed against a metal bulkhead in harmony with the ship. He was obviously starting to tire (and so was I, frankly). He must of put too much strength into pushing back the water, and faltered in the Aversion Tone a moment.
I saw him first, but could not do anything about it. The light was dim, but bright enough to block out Orca's blue glow if one was far away, as this crewmember was. "You there, what are you doing?" Then he looked closer. Orca seemed only to notice the man then. Then the man gasped, obviously seeing something he did not like, and turned to run.
Without missing a beat, a wave of blue-glowing sound leapt from the melon on Orca's whale-like head. It hit the man square in the back. I did not see that he was wearing a ring or pendant.
The instant the wave hit him he tripped, and burst out of his clothes, swelling in size. His skin rapidly darkened above, and whitened below in a telltale pattern. A tall triangular dorsal fin erupted into existence on his back. His legs fused and his feet widened into flukes, then lastly I saw his arms flatten into flippers. He was (what else?) an orca. With a sigh, Orca hit the newly transformed human with another blue wave, and the new whale disappeared in a flash of blue light. "I really wish I had not had to do that…" He said sadly.
"Why?" I asked tiredly.
"You would not understand."
"Try me, Master. You seem distressed." I tightened my grip on the ship's weak points, even though I was growing more and more tired.
"He was not wearing any of my jewelry. He did not have a Whaleside, either. So I had to kill him."
"What? All you did was transform him."
"No. That's not it. Yes, he is now an orca. But I had to negate most of his human existence. If he'd been wearing a pendant I could of used that to keep his human existence real. But I had to alter reality, Emily. Not superimpose something else over it. The jewelry acts like a catalyst, so I can change things without really changing them, but I had to make it as if he'd never been born human. That is a death of another sort."
The water was starting to come in faster now, and down the long corridor I could see it surging slowly up the growing steepness from the plunging bow. I let my mind roam the ship once more…
"…so that is the whole story. It is what I am, and what you will be if you so choose. I will not impose my will on you, though I really have no choice in the matter."
The Strausses looked at me in utter disbelief. What else did I expect? The first words out of my mouth, "I'm not really human," had caught them off guard. So I had no recourse but to actually show them my orca part form. Strangely, they did not panic. All Isador said was, "I just knew there was something strange about you Darius."
"You might say that," I'd replied. Then I'd gone on to explain exactly what the coins meant for all who carried them. Isador flipped the coin in the palm of his hand, then looked carefully at the ornate orca on the back. "It's either this, or death, my love." He said to Ida.
"I know, but I just do not know… what kind of life will it be? Never to be human again, never to walk the streets of New York, never to walk again at all. But still, it's quite… alluring is it not?"
"There is one thing you should know, though." I interjected, having shifted human again. "We orcas are matrilineal. In other words, Ida would be in charge, while you, Isador, would basically be with her at all times. But we are also very family oriented. Whatever children you may have will stay with you for life. So we're very close knit, we live in family 'pods' with specific territories… but then there are the Meetings! Oh you'd have to experience them! I could go on and on… but I won't. Not yet.
"I should tell you though, those coins are bound to you. You will not be able to get rid of them. You will be transformed whether you want to be or not. The choice I am giving you is if you want to remember your human pasts. I'm sorry, my Master is ever so stubborn about these things! He hates to see lives lost in almost any manner. So what is your choice?"
They looked at each other, love and curiosity in their eyes. Surprisingly, Ape then walked up beside me. "Personally, my Children, I think you should accept," he said curtly. "But that's just me."
"Who are you?" asked Ida.
"A friend, and a relative of sorts." He smirked knowingly. The Strausses, interestingly enough, seemed to accept his explanation, because otherwise they really did not notice Ape again.
"We don't know," they both said. Mr. Strauss continued. "May we have time to think about it? I think we have a bit of time left."
Unwilling to force them into anything, we both left them alone in deep thought. "It looks like your mother hasn't come to a decision yet," I said to Ape.
"Don't hold your breath, Darius. All we can do I cross our fingers. Nature is a tough Mother." He grinned sadly. I was amazed. His personality seemed to have changed completely even over just a few hours! He even looked older, maybe around twenty or so. "This night has aged me in ways I'd never thought could happen," he said, apparently knowing what I was thinking. "Orca could only make enough jewelry and coins for about half of those aboard, many of those are in lifeboats. I just hope it's enough…"
Suddenly I heard a voice in my head, one that was not Orca's, [[that was very sweet, Darius,]] it said tiredly. [[I'm proud of you.]]
[[Em… Emily?]] I returned. [[Where are you?]]
[[It would take too long to explain. I'm with the Master on E-deck. We've been supporting the ship. How many lifeboats are left? Both of us are starting to tire.]]
[[Just a few, then the four collapsibles.]]
[[Good!]] She seemed to think a moment. [[Darius, I can read your thoughts. I'm sorry, can't help it. I… know you love me. And because I think I won't survive the night. I… I… loveyoutoo.]]
I shook my head in disbelief. [[Excuse me Em? What did you say?]]
[[I said: I love you dammit! What you did for the Strausses was the last straw, you've shown a side to me tonight that I never suspected in you, and if caring for someone enough to go to any lengths not to have him killed is love, then I DO love you. That is the largest reason that I'm doing what I'm doing. This ship, when the bow fills enough, is going to snap in two like a twig. So please, please get off now! I don't want to see you die.]]
[[But what about you?]] I asked alarmedly.
[[I am unimportant. I know you will worry about me, it's only natural. But we are different species, it could never work anyway. Good luck, Darius.]] And she was gone, and I could not return her Sending.
The slope of the deck was becoming very noticeable, the forward well deck was surely awash by now. It was after 1:30, and we could not be long from foundering. "Shall we go aft, Brother of my Master?" I asked Ape. "Perhaps your Children might benefit from your presence."
"I think I'd like that," there were tears in his eyes as we walked aft. The last lifeboats were being loaded. Emily was large on my mind as we awaited the death of a titan, and the new lives and deaths of hundreds of passengers.
The light was still off the portside, and I hoped beyond hope, as the what would turn out to be the last distress rocket leapt into the air, that Nature would relent and all would be saved.
The band started to play a hauntingly familiar tune, "I think this one is appropriate," Ape said to me. "You'll agree, I think."
I strained my ears to listen. I recognized the tune, I looked at Ape. The band was playing "Nearer My God to Thee."
On to the next part
Back to my Stories Page