Collision Course (11 page)

RMS
TITANIC
M
ONDAY,
A
PRIL
15, 1912, 12:00 midnight

The violent flow washed over Alfie and the girls. The force took their feet out from under them and swept them along the passageway.

So great was their shock that they were carried thirty feet aft before realizing how cold the water was. Alfie slammed into a bulkhead and spread himself as wide as possible to spare the girls such a jarring impact. They slipped and slid around the bend until the torrent abated enough for them to regain their feet, sputtering and coughing. The flood ran along E Deck several inches deep.

“Paddy —” Juliana gurgled.

“Right!” Alfie gasped.

The three splashed their way to the master-at-arms’ office. Water was streaming in the open door. The two cells at the rear of the room were occupied —
Paddy in one; Kevin Gilhooley and Seamus in the other. The sea was already at their ankles.

Gilhooley rattled the cage, bellowing for the master-at-arms in language the two young ladies had never heard in their lives.

“What’s going on?” Paddy demanded. “What did we hit?”

“An iceberg,” Alfie told him. “Where’s Master-at-Arms King?”

“The crash knocked him right out of his chair, it did. Ran off like he was shot from a cannon.”

“Cowardly git!” roared Gilhooley. “Leaving us here to drown!”

“But two big galoots throwing me overboard — that was fine and honorable!” Paddy retorted.

Sophie ran into the passageway. “Mr. King! Mr. King!”

There was no reply. The corridor was deserted, the inrushing sea pouring from the trimmers’ hatch. She ran for Scotland Road. Surely there would be crew there.

The thoroughfare was crowded, but not with sailors. The third-class single men, quartered near the bow, were moving aft, carrying their possessions in hastily assembled bundles.

“Is an officer among you?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh, dozens,” said one young Irishmen sarcastically. “And the bleeding Prince of Wales is there, too. Bailing, he is!”

An older man was kinder. “Don’t go that way, miss. The holds are swamped, and steerage, too!”

Sophie spun on her heel and raced back to the brig. Progress was slow now, and the fabric of her sopping dress was weighing her down. “No master-at-arms, no crew at all!” she reported, her voice sounding desperate. “Before you know it, E Deck will be underwater!”

Alfie began to rummage through King’s desk. “Where does Mr. King keep the keys?”

“On his belt, the fool!” growled Seamus.

“But surely there’s another set!” Juliana persisted.

“Stand back!” ordered Alfie. He picked up the wooden chair, which had begun to float, and aimed a mighty blow at the door of Paddy’s cell. The chair shattered, but the lock held.

“Find a fire ax!” cried Sophie, shivering as the water rose past her knees.

“We don’t need it!” Paddy exclaimed urgently.

“What are you going to do?” cried Juliana, panic-stricken. “
Wish
yourself out?”

“Give me your hairpins!” Paddy ordered the girls.

“Our
hairpins
?”

Alfie thought back to his friend breaking into the Astors’ trunk. For Paddy, a hairpin was as good as a key. “Do it!” he urged.

Without hesitation, both girls produced an assortment of pins in varying shapes and sizes, paying little attention as their upswept hair cascaded down around their shoulders.

Instantly, Paddy was all concentration. He selected a long gold pin and a short, flatter piece in mother-of-pearl. Pressing his face against the bars, he reached his fingers out of the cell, inserted his “tools” into the lock, and went to work, the muscles of his hands undulating beneath his skin.

Juliana’s teeth began to chatter as the water swirled at her waist. “You’ll never manage it!”

Despite the pressure, Paddy cast her a cheeky grin. “I may not be an accomplished gentleman, miss, but this is what I do.”

There was a loud click and the door swung wide. Paddy sloshed out into the room.

“You haven’t seen the last of me, wharf rat!” Gilhooley shouted from the other cell. “You’d best keep looking over your shoulder! Even if I die, remember, you’ll die, too, one day! And I’ll be waiting for you in hell!”

The threat was still echoing in their ears as they waded into the passageway.

The bottom five steps were completely submerged as Alfie, Paddy, Sophie, and Juliana dragged one another up the staircase across from the office.

Paddy brought up the rear, ushering the girls ahead of him. “I can’t believe you came for me,” he said in wonder.

“It’s my fault you were arrested in the first place,” Juliana declared.

Paddy’s eyes were wide. “But I’m nothing to you! I’m nothing to anybody!”

Sophie turned on him, splashing Alfie in the process. “What a terrible thing to say! You’re our friend!”

“And you’d do the same for us,” Alfie added.

I would, you know
, Paddy agreed silently. Before poor Daniel, Paddy had never even had a friend. Nor had he expected to have another after Daniel died. Yet here were these three, willing to brave icy water on a ship in distress in order to help him. What a time and place to discover there was something to live for!

Sophie felt her shivering abate as she cleared the fifth step. But her slippers still splashed in a thin
trickle from above. “There’s water on D Deck!” she breathed.

“That’s impossible!” Alfie exclaimed.

“Then why is it coming down the stairs?”

“But —” All at once, Alfie had the answer. “The bow has taken on so much sea that the watertight compartments are filling to the top! This is spillover!”

“But the ship can’t actually sink,” Juliana argued, “can it?”

Alfie repeated his father’s words. “I think we’re going to find out. It’s a good thing we went for Paddy when we did. The brig will be swamped in no time. Hurry!”

The girls rushed ahead, but Paddy ground to a halt halfway up the flight, his expression inscrutable.

“Did you not hear me, Paddy? The bow is being pulled down! We’ve got to get higher and aft!”

“I can’t leave them,” said Paddy, speaking as much to himself as to the others.

“Leave
who
?” Alfie puffed.

“Gilhooley and Seamus.”

The young steward goggled. “The
gangsters
?”

“I can’t let them drown.”

“Why ever not?” Alfie demanded. “They killed your friend! They nearly killed you! They
deserve
to
be in that cell! Whatever misfortune befalls them there, they brought it upon themselves!”

Paddy nodded. “Right you are. They deserve to die. But not like this — not penned up like rats in a cage. That’s no fate for anyone.”

Alfie grabbed his friend by the shoulders. “Do you expect they’ll show you gratitude for saving their lives? The moment you let them out, they’ll murder you as soon as shake your hand!”

“Stay with the girls,” Paddy told him. “Get them to safety. I’ll come find you if I can.” And he waded back into the flood that was inundating E Deck.

RMS
TITANIC
M
ONDAY,
A
PRIL
15, 1912, 12:09
A.M.

By the time Paddy reentered the master-at-arms’ office, the water was lapping at his shoulders, and not much lower on the two prisoners.

“If you’ve come to watch us drown,” Gilhooley sneered, “you might take stock of your runty self. You’ll be kissing fish before we are!”

Without a word, Paddy reached for the hairpins he had pocketed. Drawing a deep breath, he ducked under and went to work on the lock on the second cell door.

Totally immersed in the frigid water, Paddy felt paralysis creeping over his muscles, hampering his movements. Salt stung his eyes, and he fought to keep them open, as he struggled to maneuver his cramping fingers. Lack of oxygen darkened his vision, and he broke to the surface, gasping for air.

He caught a glimpse of Gilhooley and his man staring in utter disbelief that help should come from such a quarter. But he cared nothing for them. It was not Daniel’s killers he was endeavoring to free. These were two human lives.

Back underwater he plunged, trying to regain the delicate touch that enabled him to navigate the guts of the keyhole through the hairpins. Paddy had been picking locks practically since the cradle. But never before had he attempted the feat with numb hands, burning eyes, and lungs starved for breath.

When he came up next, panting wildly, the water was at his nostrils, and he had to stand on tiptoe, sucking air.
Alfie’s right
, he thought, his mind reeling.
Why am I wasting precious time on these worthless men? In another few minutes, the room will be full to the ceiling
….

Yet down he went once more, probing furiously. So deadened by cold were his extremities that he almost missed the silent click. In a single motion, he pulled open the lock and straightened up to breathe. But just as he was about to open his mouth, the awful realization came to him.

I’m still underwater
!

The office was awash over his head.

The panic was immediate and total. His brain begged for air, and he fought an impulse to inhale that screamed from every corner of his body and soul. Seawater in the lungs meant near-certain drowning. But if he couldn’t breathe, he would surely pass out, which would achieve the same result.

The cell door was kicked wide, knocking him off his feet. He sprawled, part falling, part floating, until his shoulder struck something hard.

He forced his eyes open. The desk!

Delirious from oxygen deprivation, he struggled onto the desk. Blackness danced at the edges of his vision. He was passing out….

No! Not when I’m so close …

Mustering what little strength he had left, Paddy pulled himself upright. His head broke the surface, and he wheezed hungrily, breathing in draft after draft of the sweetest air he would ever taste.

Barely eight inches separated the rising flood from the ceiling. Paddy could see Gilhooley and Seamus behind him, their heads bobbing as they struggled to swim out of the brig. Paddy filled his lungs once more and jumped off the desk. The salt water buoyed his weight, so that a few bounds carried him out of the office to the swamped staircase.

He scrambled up the steps until he was free of the water, splashing through the trickle toward D Deck. He had just made it to the top when Gilhooley’s voice reached him.

“Lad — come back!”

Paddy kept on running. Come back? Not likely, and it wasn’t just because the gangster and his henchman had already tried to murder him once on this voyage.

Maybe the White Star Line believed the
Titanic
was unsinkable, but Paddy knew better. Daniel had sketched out what might sink her. And Daniel was the smartest person Paddy had ever known.

The question was this: Had a mindless mass of floating ice somehow put the solution on Daniel’s mysterious drawing into action?

There was no time to ponder that now. Paddy Burns had no formal education, but the streets of Belfast had been a course of study in the school of survival.

He had a feeling that the coming hours would test him like he’d never been tested before.

RMS
TITANIC
M
ONDAY,
A
PRIL
15, 1912, 12:05
A.M.

Cocooned in the first-class comforts of stateroom A-17, Robert Master son had no idea that the
Titanic
was filling with water. A Deck seemed rock solid beneath him — indeed, more solid by far than the worthless legs that he used to stand upon it.

Besides, his mind was awhirl with the events on the forecastle. For the first time in twenty-four years, he had attempted to resume the work that had been interrupted by his accident. The fact that he had failed — alas, that was a technicality.

Jack the Ripper was reborn! And when the doctor in New York restored his legs …

His every impulse was to prowl the ship and finish what he’d started tonight. The young steward had already paid for his meddling with a broken head. What was left of him was going over the side. And that horrible girl with him.

But now was not the time. People were up and about, no doubt excited at seeing ice scattered about the deck. Weak-minded fools! To become overset by a silly iceberg when there were great matters afoot.

No, the stateroom was the right place for him at the present. If an officer came knocking at his door to investigate the girl’s wild tale, he could claim he’d been here since dinner. It would be his word against hers, and she was a mere female. Everyone knew that women were vaporish and unreliable. And who would believe that a poor cripple could be guilty of attempted murder?

He settled back in an armchair. In an hour or two, all this excitement would die down. That was when he’d take his revenge.

Once more, the night would belong to Jack the Ripper.

RMS
TITANIC
M
ONDAY,
A
PRIL
15, 1912, 12:09
A.M.

The
Titanic
lay at a dead stop in the Atlantic, her three active funnels bellowing as the great liner let off pent-up steam.

On the bridge, Captain Smith and Thomas Andrews returned from a quick sounding of the ship. Now they faced each other. Their quiet voices belied the shock and dread both men were feeling after their tour of inspection.

Smith checked the designer’s hastily compiled notes. “We have water in the forepeak, both forward holds and mail room, and Number 5 and 6 Boiler Rooms. It’s contained in five, but everything forward is flooded.”

Andrews nodded grimly. “That would indicate a gash of” — he performed a mental calculation — “three hundred feet in length.”

The captain looked into Andrews’s eyes. “And this means …?”

There was a brief flash of emotion in the shipbuilder’s normally placid gaze. “She can float with any two watertight compartments flooded. Even with three of the first five. She can survive a head-on collision that annihilates her first four compartments entirely.” He squared his shoulders. “But what we have is the first five compartments ripped open and weighing us down. In time, the bow will sink so low that the fifth will overflow into the sixth, which will eventually overflow into the seventh, and so on. It is a mathematical certainty.”

“What are you saying, man?”

Thomas Andrews drew in a deep breath. “The
Titanic
is doomed.”