After losing my way in the warren of corridors, I reached the right corridor on deck C and I knew then that the sailor had been right. The sea water was ankle deep, and rising all the time. And once I opened the door to number 52, I saw the carpets were already under water. I looked around me frantically for Kaspar, but couldn’t see him anywhere, not at first. It was Kaspar himself who told me where he was, yowling at me from the top of the wardrobe. I looked around for the picnic basket to carry him in, but couldn’t find it. I reached up and took him off the wardrobe, and held him tight; but then, as I went out, I had the presence of mind to snatch a blanket off the nearest bed. All the way back along the corridor, I was wrapping Kaspar up in the blanket, not against the cold, but to stop him clawing at me, for I knew that even if he wasn’t frightened now, he very soon would be.
But as I ran back down the corridor I was beginning to realise that the blanket had another use, and a much more essential one too. If no luggage was being allowed in the boats, I reasoned, then they would hardly accept a cat. This was why, by the time I got back up on deck again, Kaspar was well hidden deep inside the blanket. And now he was beginning to yowl.
“None of your fuss, please, Kaspar,” I whispered to him. “Quiet now, and stay quiet. Your life could depend on it.”
I pushed my way through the stokers, ducked under the cordon of crewmen, and saw to my great relief that the lifeboat was still hanging there. But then I found my way suddenly blocked by an officer in a peaked cap, who grabbed me by the shoulder. “No, you don’t, lad. No men allowed in the boats until all the women and children are loaded,” he said. “I can’t let you on. I can’t let you pass.”
“He’s not a man,” someone shouted behind me. “He’s only a kid, can’t you see?” All around me the stokers were suddenly clamouring at him to let me through, and they began pushing angrily against the ring of sailors desperately trying to hold them back. I could see the officer was taken by surprise at the sudden rage of the crowd, and that he was hesitating.
I saw my chance. “I’m not going on the boat,” I told him. “I just went to fetch a blanket. It’s for a child, a friend of mine. She’ll freeze to death out there without it.” I still don’t think he’d have let me through if Mr Stanton hadn’t come up at that moment and vouched for me.
“It’s all right. He’s my son,” he said to the officer, “and the blanket’s for his sister.” I was through. With Mr Stanton holding me fast round the waist I leant across and handed the blanket, and the miraculously silent Kaspar, into Mrs Stanton’s outstretched arms.
“Be careful,” I told her as meaningfully as I could. She knew as she was taking it from me that Kaspar was inside the blanket. She hugged it to her and sat down again in the boat. I could see from the way Lizziebeth was smiling up at me that she knew it too.
Distress rockets were fired up into the sky, lighting the ocean all around us, lighting too the scattering of little white boats out on the open sea, each of them crammed with women and children.
I remember thinking how extraordinarily beautiful it all was, and wondering how something as terrible as this could be so beautiful. On board behind us the band played on, as Lizziebeth’s boat was finally lowered into the water. Mr Stanton and I stood side by side and watched from the railings as it was rowed slowly away. “That was a fine and noble thing you did, Johnny,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “God will guard them, I know it. And for us there’ll be a boat along soon enough to take us off. Mr Lightoller says they’ve seen the lights of a ship not five miles away. The Carpathia. She’ll be on her way. They’ll see these rockets for sure. They’ll be alongside soon enough. Meanwhile, I think we should help with the women and children, don’t you?” That was how we busied ourselves for the next hour or so, passing the women and the children into the boats.
I marvel now when I think of it, at the courage I witnessed around me that night. I saw one American lady waiting to get into a boat with her elderly sister, but she was told there was no room. She didn’t object or protest in any way, but merely stepped back and said: “Never mind. I will get on a later boat.” I never saw her again. I saw no man ever try to push his way to the boats. To a man they accepted that it was perfectly right and proper for women and children to go first. I heard later that some men on the starboard side of the ship had tried to rush one of the lifeboats, and that shots had to be fired over their heads to drive them back. But I never saw it with my own eyes.
There were many heroes that night, but if there was one I remember best it was Mr Lightoller. He was everywhere, quietly ensuring the safe loading and launching of the boats, and picking out the seamen to row each one. I can hear his voice even now echoing in my head. “Lower away there. Lower away. Are there any more women? Are there any more women?” And one of the waiting men answered him back, I remember.
“No more women, officer. There’s plenty of men though, but I don’t see plenty of boats.”
It was something every one of us now had come to realise, that there were hardly any boats left to take the rest off, and that many of the lifeboats that remained could not now be launched because of the severe list of the ship. When I saw the sea water come washing over the bow, and rushing down the deck towards us, I knew that our chances of survival were fading fast. Like so many others, I scanned the horizon desperately for the lights of the Carpathia. We were all aware by now that she was the only ship close enough to come to our rescue. But there were no lights to be seen.
The Titanic was sinking fast, and we knew now we were going down with her. With every minute that passed now the list to port was telling us the end was near. The deck was at such an angle that it was well-nigh impossible to keep our footing. We heard Mr Lightoller’s voice ringing out. “All passengers to the starboard side.”
So that’s where Mr Stanton and I went, slipping and sliding, clutching at each other for support, until we reached the rail on the starboard side and clung on. Here we looked out at the sea, and waited silently for our end. There was nothing more to be done. “I should like to say,” Mr Stanton said, his hand resting on my shoulder, “that if I am to die tonight and I cannot die with my family, then I’d rather die in your company than any other. You’re a fine young man, Johnny Trott.”
“Will the sea be cold?” I asked him.
“I fear so,” he replied, “but don’t worry, that’s all to the good. It will all be over very quickly for us both.”
Michael and his parents are on the voyage of a lifetime, sailing their yacht around the world. But on one dreadful night, Michael and his dog Stella are swept away by the waves …
he terrors came fast, one upon another. The lights of the Peggy Sue went away into the dark of the night, leaving me alone in the ocean, alone with the certainty that they were already too far away, that my cries for help could not possibly be heard. I thought then of the sharks cruising the black water beneath me – scenting me, already searching me out, homing in on me – and I knew there could be no hope. I would be eaten alive. Either that or I would drown slowly. Nothing could save me.
I trod water, frantically searching the impenetrable darkness about me for something, anything to swim towards. There was nothing.
Then a sudden glimpse of white in the sea. The breaking of a wave perhaps. But there were no waves. Stella! It had to be. I was so thankful, so relieved not to be all alone. I called out and swam towards her. She would keep bobbing away from me, vanishing, reappearing, then vanishing again. She had seemed so near, but it took several minutes of hard swimming before I came close enough to reach out and touch her. Only then did I realise my mistake. Stella’s head was mostly black. This was white. It was my football. I grabbed it and clung on, feeling the unexpected and wonderful buoyancy of it. I held on, treading water and calling for Stella. There was no answer. I called and I called. But every time I opened my mouth now, the sea water rushed in. I had to give her up. I had to save myself if I could.
There was little point in w
asting energy by trying to swim. After all, I had nowhere to swim to. Instead, I would simply float. I would cling to my football, tread water gently and wait for the Peggy Sue to come back. Sooner or later they had to discover I was overboard. Sooner or later they would come looking for me. I mustn’t kick too much, just enough to keep my chin above the water, no more. Too much movement would attract the sharks. Morning must come soon. I had to hang on till then. I had to. The water wasn’t that cold. I had my football. I had a chance.
I kept telling myself that over and over again. But the world stayed stubbornly black about me, and I could feel the water slowly chilling me to death. I tried singing to stop myself from shivering, to take my mind off the sharks. I sang every song I could remember, but after a while I’d forget the words. Always I came back to the only song I was sure I could finish: ‘Ten Green Bottles’. I sang it out loud again and again. It reassured me to hear the sound of my own voice. It made me feel less alone in the sea. And always I looked for the grey glint of dawn, but it would not come and it would not come.
Eventually I fell silent and my legs just would not kick any more. I clung to my football, my head drifting into sleep. I knew I mustn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. My hands kept slipping off the ball. I was fast losing the last of my strength. I would go down, down to the bottom of the sea and lie in my grave amongst the seaweed and the sailors’ bones and the shipwrecks.
The strange thing was that I didn’t really mind. I didn’t care, not any more. I floated away into sleep, into my dreams. And in my dream I saw a boat gliding towards me, silent over the sea. The Peggy Sue! Dear, dear Peggy Sue. They had come back for me. I knew they would. Strong arms grabbed me. I was hauled upwards and out of the water. I lay there on the deck, gasping for air like a landed fish.
Someone was bending over me, shaking me, talking to me. I could not understand a word that was being said. But it didn’t matter. I felt Stella’s hot breath on my face, her tongue licking my ear. She was safe. I was safe. All was well.
I was woken by a howling, like the howling of a gale through the masts. I looked about me. There were no masts above me, there were no sails. No movement under me either, no breath of wind. Stella Artois was barking, but some way off. I was not on a boat at all, but lying stretched out on sand. The howling became a screaming, a fearful crescendo of screeching that died away in its own echoes.
I sat up. I was on a beach, a broad white sweep of sand, with trees growing thick and lush behind me right down to the beach. Then I saw Stella prancing about in the shallows. I called her and she came bounding up out of the sea to greet me, her tail circling wildly. When all the leaping and licking and hugging were done, I struggled to my feet.
I was weak all over. I looked all about me. The wide blue sea was as empty as the cloudless sky above. No Peggy Sue. No boat. Nothing. No one. I called again and again for my mother and my father. I called until the tears came and I could call no more, until I knew there was no point. I stood there for some time trying to work out how I had got here, how it was that I’d survived. I had such confused memories, of being picked up, of being on board the Peggy Sue. But I knew now I couldn’t have been. I must have dreamed it, dreamed the whole thing. I must have clung to my football and kept myself afloat until I was washed up. I thought of my football then, but it was nowhere to be seen.
Stella, of course, was unconcerned about all the whys and wherefores. She kept bringing me sticks to throw, and would go galloping after them into the sea without a care in the world.
Then came the howling again from the trees, and the hackles went up on Stella’s neck. She charged up the beach barking and barking, until she was sure she had silenced the last of the echoes. It was a musical, plaintive howling this time, not at all menacing. I thought I recognised it. I had heard howling like it once before on a visit to London Zoo. Gibbons, “funky gibbons”, my father had called them. I still don’t know why to this day. But I loved the sound of the word ‘funky’. Perhaps that was why I remembered what they were. “It’s only gibbons,” I told Stella, “just funky gibbons. They won’t hurt us.” But I couldn’t be at all sure I was right.
From where I now stood I could see that the forest grew more sparsely up the side of a great hill some way inland, and it occurred to me then that if I could reach the bare rocky outcrop at the summit, I would be able to see further out to sea. Or perhaps there’d be some house or farm further inland, or maybe a road, and I could find someone to help. But if I left the beach and they came back looking for me, what then? I decided I would have to take that chance.
I set off at a run, Stella Artois at my heels, and soon found myself in the cooling shade of the forest. I discovered a narrow track going uphill, in the right direction, I thought. So I followed it, only slowing to a walk when the hill became too steep. The forest was alive with creatures. Birds cackled and screeched high above me, and always the howling wailed and wafted through the trees, but more distantly now.
It wasn’t the sounds of the forest that bothered me, though, it was the eyes. I felt as if I was being watched by a thousand inquisitive eyes. I think Stella did too, for she had been strangely quiet ever since we entered the forest, constantly glancing up at me for reassurance and comfort. I did my best to give it, but she could sense that I, too, was frightened.
What had seemed at first to be a short hike now felt more like a great expedition into the interior. We emerged exhausted from the trees, clambered laboriously up a rocky scree and stood at long last on the peak.
The sun was blazing down. I had not really felt the burning heat of it until then. I scanned the horizon. If there was a sail somewhere out there in the haze, I could not see it. And then it came to me that even if I were to see a sail, what could I do? I couldn’t light a fire. I had no matches. I knew about cavemen rubbing sticks together, but I had never tried it. I looked all round me now. Sea. Sea. Sea. Nothing but sea on all sides. I was on an island. I was alone.
The island looked perhaps two or three miles in length, no more. It was shaped a bit like an elongated peanut, but longer at one end than the other. There was a long swathe of brilliant white beach on both sides of the island, and at the far end another hill, the slopes steeper and more thickly wooded, but not so high as mine. With the exception of these twin peaks the entire island seemed to be covered in forest. So far as I could see there was no sign of any human life. Even then, as I stood there, that first morning, filled with apprehension at the terrifying implications of my dreadful situation, I remember thinking how wonderful it was, a green jewel of an island framed in white, the sea all about it a silken shimmering blue. Strangely, perhaps comforted somehow by the extraordinary beauty of the place, I was not at all downhearted. On the contrary I felt strangely elated. I was alive. Stella Artois was alive. We had survived.
Hero is a migrating swallow, about to undertake the long journey south to Africa. But as the flock sets out there are dangers in the skies …
ero joined the others as they flocked to a nearby lake, and for several days he hunted there, skimming over the water after midges and mosquitoes. He was safe here with his family, in amongst the thousands upon thousands of milling swallows and martins; and all the while his strength grew within him. At dusk they gathered to roost in the trees and reed beds around the lake. Every night in the roost the air of expectancy grew. Every night the birds were slower to settle to their silence and their sleep.
Then one morning, early, the hobby falcon came gliding high over the lake. They heard his killer kew-kew call and scattered in terror. Down came the hobby, swifter than any bird Hero had ever seen. Hero felt the wind of him as he passed by, and swerved aside only just in time. But the hobby was not after him, he was after a young martin, slower and more stuttering in flight than Hero – and for the martin there was no escape.
The flock flew that same morning, a spontaneous lift-off, swirling out over the lake, a whispering cloud, darkening the sky as it went. They wheeled south, south towards
the sea, hoping they had seen the last of the hobby falcon. But the hobby was not far behind, for he too was bound for Africa. He would fly all the way with them, picking off the youngest, the slowest, the weakest, whenever he felt like it. He had done it before.
Out over the coast of France he struck once again. Hero knew, as they all knew, that they must stay together, stay close and never fall behind. They flew high, where they could see the danger, where the flying was easier anyway, where they could float on the warm air. But they had to come down to drink, to feed, and that was when the hobby falcon pounced. He would appear in amongst them out of nowhere, wings cutting through the air like scythes, shadowing them, stalking them. He took his time, but once the hobby falcon had singled out his prey, there could be only one outcome. No amount of fancy aerobatics could deceive him. He would simply follow, close and kill. He was remorseless, tireless, merciless. There was always a strange sense of relief when he had killed – the survivors knew they were safe, then, for a while at least.
On they flew, on over the vineyards, on over the mountains.
It was evening over Spain, and the air was heavy with a gathering storm. The birds tried to rise above it, but the storm was suddenly upon them and could not be avoided. They bunched as they flew into it, desperately seeking each other’s shelter, but were scattered at once by a whirling wind that whipped them about the blackening sky. Hero found himself alone. Lightning flashed and crackled all around him. Pounded by the rain and by hailstones too, Hero dived earthwards, faster now in his fear than he’d ever flown before. Still the storm was all around him, still he could not see the ground. Then, below, a glow of sudden light, some small hope of escape. But Hero found that his sodden wings would not beat as they should. He was falling like a stone – down, down towards the light. He could only spread his wings wide, willing them to take flight again. When at long last they did, he found himself floating down into the pool of light, a light dazzling bright and full of noise. But Hero was not afraid. He was out of the storm and that was all that mattered.
Of Lions and Unicorns Page 31