Unsinkable

TITANIC

BOOK ONE

UNSINKABLE

GORDON KORMAN

F
OR
J
AY

Contents

Cover

Title Page

PROLOGUE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue

About the Author

Look for more adventure from Gordon Korman

Copyright

PROLOGUE

RMS
CARPATHIA

M
ONDAY
,
A
PRIL
15, 1912, 9:30
A.M.

They stood four deep on the afterdeck of the
Carpathia
, chilled to the bone, staring out at nothing.

Dark water, light swells — no evidence that barely seven hours before, the largest and most magnificent ship the world had ever seen had sailed here in all her glory. The truth was nearly impossible to believe: The
RMS Titanic
lay at the bottom of the sea, along with everyone who sailed in her, save the 706 souls rescued and now aboard the
Carpathia.

“Look!”

The cry energized the exhausted throng. A flash of color among the endless waves. A survivor?

And then the swell turned over the item that stirred their frozen hearts with momentary hope. A deck chair. Nothing more.

How could this be? The
Titanic
was more than a steamship. She was a floating city, a sixth of a mile in
length and 90 feet abeam, 66,000 tons gross displacement. Was this piece of flotsam all that was left? How could so much have become so little?

A uniformed steward — no more than seventeen years old — tried to take the arm of a lady who was shivering in the folds of a Cunard Line blanket.

“There’s tea and soup below, ma’am,” he said. “Please come out of this cold and wind.”

She shook him off, mindless of his attempted kindness. “Go away. We have just seen our husbands drown.”

The young seaman bit his tongue. She would probably take no comfort in knowing that, of the 1,517 passengers and crew lost in this tragedy, very few lives had been snuffed out by drowning. The sea that had swallowed their ship was 28 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the freezing point of freshwater. What the victims had suffered was unimaginable, as if their entire bodies had been suddenly packed in ice. Shock would have set in after barely sixty seconds. Next, unconsciousness, followed swiftly by death. No human could survive more than a few minutes in water that was as cold as the ice that had ripped open the belly of the great ship.

That ice was very much in evidence around the
Carpathia.
The horizon was dotted with distant bergs and, to the north, pack ice.

Many ships had encountered ice on the North Atlantic crossing the previous night. All but one had survived. The greatest of them all. The unsinkable
Titanic.

CHAPTER ONE

BELFAST

W
EDNESDAY,
M
ARCH
27, 1912, 2:12 P.M.

The punch struck Paddy square in the jaw, rattling his teeth. It hurt more than he expected — more than it
needed
to hurt. He wasn’t even acting when he staggered backward into the man in the houndstooth cloak.

A slim white hand slipped out of the boy’s ragged sleeve and found its way into the cloak’s patch pocket. It emerged a split second later, the small fingers deftly clutching a gold money clip fat with banknotes. That, too, disappeared, flicked under his threadbare jacket.

The man shoved him away, growling, “Keep your brawling from decent people, boy!”

Paddy suppressed a grin. He always enjoyed it when the mark helped out by sending him off with the stolen purse. By the time the rich fool realized he’d been robbed, Paddy would be far away, counting the windfall.

All that remained was to finish the street theater that had provided cover for the theft. He lunged at Daniel, burying his fist in his partner’s stomach — revenge for that haymaker to the jaw.

“I’ll do you for that!” Daniel wheezed.

Then, like so many times before, Paddy fled the scene, Daniel in hot pursuit, bellowing threats. The crowd parted to let them go, as if the passersby were their accomplices, and the horse-drawn buggies and electric trolleys had been placed there as obstacles to aid their escape.

The pair kept running, dashing down side streets and through the back lanes they knew so well. At last, they collapsed against each other, laughing and celebrating their success.

“Curse your evil heart, Daniel Sullivan!” Paddy cried. “Were you trying to break my jaw? I’ll be black and blue for a week, thanks to you!”

“It can only make you handsomer,” Daniel chortled, rubbing his stomach. “You talk like you didn’t just knock the breath out of me. If I can’t run away, who are you going to start your next dustup with? Yourself?”

“To listen to your whining,” Paddy bantered, “you’d think I couldn’t get along without you. With you clapped up in jail, this fat purse would be all mine.”
He took out the money clip, and the two examined their prize.

Daniel’s eyes bulged. “I didn’t know the Prince of Wales was walking down Victoria Street!”

Paddy nodded. “This is a fortune!”

They fell silent, counting the haul over and over again. They were accustomed to worn purses containing a few meager coins. But the clip held twelve crisp banknotes worth one pound sterling each. This was enough money to replace their rags with warm clothing and proper shoes. It would keep their always-empty bellies full for a long time.

Paddy caught his breath first. “If I’d known about this, I’d have had his watch, too! And maybe the gold out of his teeth!”

At fifteen, Daniel was a year older than Paddy and considered himself more worldly. “We’ll have no easy time spending these,” he predicted. “When the likes of us hands over a brand-new banknote, there’s not a shopkeeper in Belfast who won’t know we stole it.”

That wasn’t what Paddy wanted to hear. “Are you saying we fell on a king’s ransom, and it’s worthless to us? Maybe you’re afraid to spend it, but I’m not.”

Daniel tried to be patient. “Think, Patrick. What kind of man likes his money in paper notes printed by a bank? Someone who’s got so much of it he’d need
a barrow just to carry the silver. When you spy your reflection in a window, do you see that person?”

Paddy was stubborn. “I’m going to be that person someday, so this will be good practice.”

Daniel threw his hands up. “I’m just saying we should be careful. And if you had half the brains God gave geese, you’d know it.”

They argued often, but never with lasting effect. Despite all their insults and bickering, Paddy Burns and Daniel Sullivan had been closer than brothers since the day they’d met. It was a bond forged by friendship, but also by something darker. Daniel was an orphan who had fled the life of a chimney sweep’s climbing boy. Paddy had walked sixty-seven miles to Belfast after the last whiskey-driven beating he intended to endure from his stepfather. There was no question that each was all the other had in the world.

They stashed the money in their secret hiding place behind a loose brick in an ancient wall — “There are pickpockets and footpads out there,” Paddy reminded his friend. “Look what happened to the gentleman who used to own all this lovely money.”

Then they headed back toward the most crowded part of the city — Queens Island, home of Harland and Wolff, the largest shipyard in the world. It was a hub of activity, with more than fifteen thousand
employees working shifts around the clock. All Belfast seemed to orbit this center. It was a pickpocket’s dream.

The boys watched from across the road as a trolley let off dozens of passengers. Paddy’s eyes settled on a short, squat man whose overcoat bulged where a purse might be carried.

Daniel read his friend’s mind. “No, not him. Look how down-at-the-heel his boots are. He needs the money.”

The two had an informal agreement never to make a victim of a poor man — even though they themselves were always much, much poorer. Their unfortunate situation forced them to live by their wits and steal to survive. But there was a line they would not cross, knowing that they weren’t the only hungry youngsters in Belfast. Besides, there were plenty of peacocks, plump in the pocket, just waiting to be plucked.

And there’s one right now, thought Paddy.

The gentleman stepping down from the hansom cab wasn’t dressed so differently from the other men on the street — in a tweed coat, a suit, and a bowler hat. Yet every article seemed pressed and perfect, down to the elegant knot of his silk cravat. There was a quiet confidence to his bearing, a sureness to
his step. And, Paddy guessed, a fullness to the purse concealed by his overcoat.

With an almost imperceptible signal to his friend, he fell in line behind the new mark, heading toward the shipyard gate.

“No!” rasped Daniel, rushing to keep pace. “Don’t you know who that is?”

Paddy nodded vigorously. “A proper swell who can well afford to part with a few coins for our favorite charity.”

“That’s Mr. Thomas Andrews, the designer of the
Titanic!”

Paddy was impressed. Even though the name Thomas Andrews meant nothing to him, a fellow would have to be deaf and blind not to know about the
Titanic,
the world’s greatest ocean liner, under construction right here at Harland and Wolff. Those four towering smokestacks dominated the Belfast landscape. There was hardly a spot in the city where they couldn’t be seen.

Paddy and Daniel had first met in the enormous crowd that had gathered to watch the launch from dry dock a year earlier. Paddy had been there to help himself to a purse or two. But as he watched the massive hull sliding down the ramp and into the Belfast Harbor, he’d forgotten the emptiness in his pockets
and his stomach. It — she — Daniel constantly corrected him that ships were always
she
— was a dazzling sight.

The
Titanic
had only grown more magnificent as she lay in her slip to be fully outfitted. It was said that neither a millionaire’s mansion nor a king’s palace was more lavishly appointed than this mistress of the sea.

And, Paddy reminded himself, had it not been for the
Titanic,
he would not have tried to pick Daniel’s pocket on that launch day. Then he would have been alone, or perhaps even dead. So he owed Mr. Thomas Andrews that much.

Just before the main gate, Andrews suddenly wheeled on them. “If you two young gentlemen have your eyes on my purse, you’d best know that I’ll not part with it easily.”

It was the first time that anyone had referred to Paddy Burns as a gentleman, and possibly the last time anyone ever would.