by Dan Gutman
Titanic was at a forty-five-degree angle now. The forward funnel broke off and tumbled down, hitting the water with a loud slap and almost landing on top of a lifeboat. Sparks shot out of the funnel and sizzled when they hit the water.
The weight of the three enormous propellers was just too much at that angle for the Titanic to hold together. There was a terrifying crunching sound of bending steel and iron as the ship broke in two pieces, almost right down the middle. The front end filled with water and snapped away like a twig, disappearing beneath the surface.
Free from the weight of the bow, the stern of Titanic rose so it was standing straight up. It looked like a duck that had dipped its beak into the water. For a minute or two the Titanic just sat there like that, as if it couldn’t decide what to do next. But the stern was filling up with water too.
It was twenty minutes after two o’clock in the morning.
And then, the whole thing slid down. There was no suction, as Mr. Strong had predicted. There was barely a ripple on the water. The only noise was the collective gasp on the lifeboat as the great ship slipped straight down. It was like the ocean took a mighty gulp and swallowed it.
The unsinkable Titanic was gone.
CHAPTER 14
THE DEAD AND DYING
BACK IN BOSTON, MISS Z WAS FRANTICALLY TAPPING keys and fumbling with her computer. Droplets of sweat had appeared on her forehead.
“Why did Isabel stop responding to my texts?” she said to Mrs. Vader, who was looking over her shoulder at the screen. “They were supposed to go to the meeting spot so I could pick them up. Where is she?”
There had been a horrible mistake, and Miss Z did not tolerate mistakes—by herself or by others. She thought she had carefully prepared for every possible circumstance. But she hadn’t anticipated this last-minute glitch. She was frustrated.
In her mind, Miss Z imagined the Flashback Four being swept off the Titanic by a big wave and thrown into the sea, like so many others who lost their lives on that horrible night.
She thought, what if she couldn’t retrieve the kids? How would she explain to their parents what had happened to them? There would be lawsuits, for sure. Multimillion dollar lawsuits. As much money as she had, this could bankrupt her. Her reputation would be shot. The police would get involved. She could go to jail.
Miss Z wiped her face with a tissue. All the money in the world couldn’t help her get out of this mess, just as it couldn’t help John Jacob Astor or his wealthy friends on the Titanic.
She and Astor probably had the same thought going through their minds—maybe technology isn’t the answer to every problem. Maybe mother nature is more powerful than anything we can build.
Miss Z was suddenly questioning things she had never questioned before. Maybe she should have never invested so much time and money into the Board. Maybe she should never have allowed the kids to choose a meeting spot at the front of the ship—the part that would be underwater first. Maybe she shouldn’t have sent children on this mission in the first place—just to get a photograph to add to her collection. It was too much responsibility for kids. And she never even got the photo! She wiped her face again, cursing herself.
Then there was the other little problem Miss Z had to deal with. Still standing in front of the Board was Mr. Maloney, the Titanic deckhand whom she had accidentally summoned into the future. What was she going to do about him?
Where would he sleep that night? How would she explain him to the police? He stood there, still unclear where he was or how he got there.
“Uh, can I go home now?” he asked timidly.
“No!” Miss Z barked, barely looking up from her computer screen.
“Something must have gone wrong,” said Mrs. Vader, trying to be helpful.
“Well, of course something went wrong!” Miss Z snapped back. “The question is, what went wrong, and how can we fix it?”
Neither of them had any way of knowing that the TTT had slipped out of Isabel’s hand as she fell on the deck of the Titanic, and it was now at the bottom of the ocean. They also had no idea that the Flashback Four were sitting in a lifeboat floating about a quarter mile from where the Titanic used to be.
She racked her brains to come up with a solution. By now, the meeting spot was probably underwater. How could she bring back the Flashback Four? The Board was an amazing piece of technology in being able to send human beings through time, but it did not have the capability to find human beings who were lost. She tried anyway, clicking everything on the screen, even things she knew wouldn’t work.
“It’s not working!” she said, frustrated. “Why isn’t it working?”
“Maybe you oughta send ’em a telegram,” suggested Mr. Maloney.
“Shut up!” barked Miss Z.
In the second or two after the Titanic slipped under the surface, it was strangely quiet and peaceful on the ocean. The mirror image of the stars hanging in the sky was reflected in the water. A light gray, smoky vapor hung over the surface. It was all that could be seen in the inky darkness.
In the lifeboat, bobbing up and down gently, were the Flashback Four. Shivering and groaning quietly in the dark, all the kids were filled with fear of the unknown, wondering what would happen next.
At least he’d taken the picture, Luke thought. Even though he had no way to deliver it to Miss Z, he had completed the mission. That counted for something.
The other passengers in the lifeboat just stared at the spot where the Titanic had been visible moments earlier, as if it was going to resurface like a whale and continue on its way. It didn’t seem possible that an object so large could even fit inside the ocean. Some of the people in the lifeboat felt guilty for having survived while so many others had perished. And some just sobbed.
After a few moments of silence, after the survivors had the chance to digest what they had just witnessed, they became aware of a horrible sound—screaming. The water was filled with people shouting, gasping, thrashing in desperation to keep their heads above the surface. There were hundreds of them. Maybe a thousand or more. All kinds of junk was floating around, some of it tied together to form makeshift rafts. People were clinging to crates, chairs, planks, anything that would float.
Mr. Strong stopped rowing and turned around to watch the spectacle. But he seemed more concerned when he noticed that his shoes were wet.
“The blasted boat is filling up with water!” he shouted, throwing in a few curse words to show his displeasure.
Indeed it was. There was a two-inch circular hole at the bottom of the lifeboat. In fact, there was a hole like that at the bottom of every lifeboat. The holes had been put there intentionally so that when the boat was sitting on the deck of the Titanic, rainwater wouldn’t pool up at the bottom. Somebody was supposed to plug the hole before lowering a lifeboat into the water. That somebody would have been Mr. Strong. But in his haste to launch the boat, he’d forgotten.
“Where’s the blasted plug?” he shouted, as if any of the passengers could help, or even knew what he was talking about. He got down on his hands and knees until he found the plug and managed to jam it in the hole.
“Start bailing!” he ordered. “We need to get rid of this water.”
“Where is the bucket?” one of the ladies asked.
“We ain’t got no bloomin’ bucket!” Mr. Strong shouted at her. “Use your hat, lady! It ain’t doing no good up on your head!”
“There’s no need to be rude, young man,” she replied as she took off her hat and started bailing out the water with it. A few other women did the same. The Flashback Four joined in to help, bailing out water with their hands. It took a few minutes to empty out the bottom of the boat.
“My feet are cold and soaking wet,” an older lady complained.
“Shut your yap!” Mr. Strong barked at her. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
“The same could be said of you, young man!” the old lady said. “Why are you here anyway? I thought these boats were reserved for the women
and children.”
“Somebody has to row this thing,” Mr. Strong mumbled.
“I don’t see you rowing,” another lady said. “You’ll have some explaining to do when we get rescued.”
“That’s if we get rescued,” somebody at the other side of the boat added.
It was a big if. The people in the lifeboats had no expectation, no assurance that they would ever be rescued. For all they knew, the nearest ship was hundreds of miles away. They could be floating there for many days. There was no food or drinking water in the boat. And even though the ocean was calm, a wave could come along at any time and easily flip over a lifeboat.
Their teeth chattering, the shivering Flashback Four huddled close together under a blanket for warmth. David’s fingers had gone numb. Isabel’s and Julia’s long hair was frozen solid into stiff clumps.
“I’m soooo cold,” Julia groaned.
“Imagine how cold the people out there feel,” said Luke, pointing at the sea of men, women, and children bobbing in the distance.
Few of the desperate swimmers had probably ever heard of hypothermia, but that’s what they were experiencing. The water temperature was below freezing and body heat is lost more quickly in water. If your core body temperature dips below ninety-five degrees, that’s the definition of hypothermia.
Shivering is the first symptom. After that, a person’s heart rate and breathing get faster. They become pale and have trouble moving their muscles. If they don’t warm up, their lips, ears, fingers, and toes turn blue. They can’t speak or think clearly. Then their pulse gets slow, and they become sleepy and confused. They may have hallucinations. Finally, they stop breathing and their heart stops.
Some of the people in the water were already dead. Some were dying. Everyone else was struggling. Their voices carried across the water.
“Boat ahoy!”
“Room for one more in a boat?”
“Help!”
Isabel stood up so she could look around and count the people on the lifeboat. It was hard to see them all, but she guessed there were about sixty. That meant there was room for at least five more.
“We should go back and rescue some of those people,” she said to the group, but directed her words at Mr. Strong. “There’s room for five or six more on this boat.”
“Ain’t gonna happen,” Mr. Strong barked. “We take one of ’em and all the rest of ’em will wanna climb aboard. That’ll swamp the boat and we all die. Is that what you want?”
It was a fair point, but Isabel couldn’t bear to just sit there and do nothing while people in the water were fighting for their lives.
“I say we put it to a vote,” she suggested.
“Take all the votes you want,” said Mr. Strong. “I’m not going back there.”
“All those in favor of going back to rescue some people, say aye.”
“Aye,” said all the members of the Flashback Four.
“All those opposed, say nay,” said Mr. Strong.
“Nay,” came a chorus of voices.
“See? I told you so,” he said.
“But people are dying out there!” Isabel begged.
“Sea travel is risky business,” Mr. Strong told her. “They knew what they was gettin’ into. I’m not here to worry about the dead. I’m here to take care of the living.”
“How will you people sleep at night?” Isabel shouted at the ladies before sitting back down, disgusted.
“Cut them a break,” David whispered to her. “They lost their husbands. They lost their fathers.”
“All the more reason why . . .”
There was no point in arguing. It didn’t matter anyway, because during the discussion a man in the water had somehow managed to swim over and grab hold of the side of the lifeboat. He didn’t have a life jacket on. There was a pleading look in his eyes as he tried to climb aboard.
“Save one life!” he begged. “Please . . .”
When Mr. Strong saw the struggling man, he lifted one oar out of the water and almost casually poked the guy in the head with it. He screamed in pain, let go, and slipped under the surface.
“No!” Isabel shouted.
David and Luke looked at each other. Both of them had seen some pretty bad stuff in the rough neighborhoods of Boston, but neither of them had ever seen anything as cruel as that. No words had to be spoken. The boys got up from their seats and went over to Mr. Strong, who had his hands on both oars.
“Sit down!” Mr. Strong shouted at them. “You’ll capsize us. I’m in charge here. You listen to what I say.”
David and Luke grabbed him around the neck and together they yanked him backward off the seat and threw him roughly to the floor of the boat. Julia and Isabel grabbed for the oars before they could fall into the water.
“Shut up!” Luke shouted at Mr. Strong. “This is a mutiny. We’re in charge of the boat now.”
“Keep your mouth shut or we’ll throw you overboard,” David added.
Mr. Strong was shocked and speechless. No child had ever spoken to him like that. He looked up at the ladies on the boat, as if one of them would rise to his defense. None of them did. They looked frightened. It didn’t seem to matter to them who was in charge, as long as somebody was in charge.
“You heard him,” said Julia. “Keep your mouth shut or we’ll throw you overboard.”
David and Luke took Mr. Strong’s seat and each grabbed an oar. They were big and heavy, but with a good deal of effort, the boys managed to turn the boat around and head back toward the spot where Titanic had gone under. Mr. Strong sat there sullenly.
“Over there!” Julia said, pointing ahead. “I think I heard voices coming from over there.”
It took about fifteen minutes to reach the spot. The cries for help could still be heard, but they were growing fewer and fainter with each passing minute.
When they finally got to where Julia had pointed, they were confronted by a sight that nobody should ever have to see—hundreds of lifeless bodies floating in the water.
Most of them were men, but there were some women and children too. Luke leaned over to grab one of them by the life jacket and turn it over to see if the person might still be alive. He wasn’t. It looked like he was sleeping, but he was dead. One of the ladies in the boat vomited.
There was nobody left alive to rescue.
CHAPTER 15
STAYING ALIVE
“LET’S GET OUT OF HERE,” ISABEL SAID SOFTLY.
Luke and David turned the boat around slowly, being careful not to touch any of the floating bodies with the oars.
“See? I told you not to go back,” grumbled Mr. Strong.
The women in the lifeboat had been quiet up until now. Most of them were from the upper classes and hadn’t encountered much adversity in their lives. They were still in a state of shock. It was impossible for them to comprehend that the Titanic had disappeared, and now—less than a half an hour later—most of the passengers were dead. Hypothermia works fast.
Nobody wants to believe their loved one is gone. The women on the boat held out hope that their husbands, brothers, and fathers might possibly have found seats in other lifeboats. A chorus of their voices began calling out.
“Thomas! Can you hear me, Thomas?”
“Is there a William Johnson in your boat?”
“We have no men in our boat at all,” came a reply.
Mr. Strong sat in the corner, sulking.
Except for the stars dotting the sky, it was pitch dark. That’s when the eyes can play tricks on you. In the distance, a small white light appeared to flicker for a moment.
“Did you see that?” somebody asked.
“It was a light,” another passenger said. “I saw it too.”
“Is that a ship?” one of the ladies asked.
“Where?”
“Over there!”
“We’re going to be rescued!”
There was a brief celebration. Everyone stared at the spot where the dot of light had appeared, bu
t it didn’t appear again. Hope quickly faded.
“Maybe it was just a mirage,” Julia guessed.
“I think mirages only happen in the desert,” said Isabel.
The survivors in the lifeboats were beginning to worry about their own survival now. They didn’t know whether or not a rescue ship was coming to pick them up. The Flashback Four didn’t know what might happen next either. They never thought it would come to this.
“Move over,” one of the ladies said to the woman sitting next to her. “You’re taking up the whole seat.”
“You move over,” the second lady said. “I was here first.”
“But I was in first class,” the first lady replied.
Luke stood up to face the two ladies.
“Knock it off!” he shouted at them. “You’re both alive! Be thankful for that!”
“There are no classes here,” David added. “We’re all together now.”
It was quiet for a minute while everyone calmed down.
“He’s right,” one of the other women said. “We’re all together here.”
“Perhaps we should say a prayer,” a lady in the back suggested.
“I am Episcopalian,” said a voice in the back.
“I’m a Methodist,” said another.
“I am a Lutheran,” somebody on the left side of the boat said.
“I’m Jewish,” said somebody on the right.
It seemed like a problem. Isabel interrupted the silence by starting to recite the only prayer she remembered by heart. One by one, other people in the boat joined in . . .
“Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.