“We. Need. To. Run,” King Leon panted.
Above their heads a light flashed red. Wailing alarm bells rang out, echoing around the corridor and deafening Mutt so that he could barely hear the kittens’ screams. Mutt ran to them and crouched down. “Jack, Violet, climb onto my back and hold on. Any way you can—even if you have to use your claws,” he barked quickly.
Then he grabbed Cosmo by the scruff of his neck, hoping he wouldn’t hurt the kitten. Mutt bolted as fast as he could with two passengers clinging to his back, trying not to choke on Cosmo’s fur, which tickled his tongue and throat. King Leon scurried after them, then to Mutt’s surprise overtook them to take the lead. “Follow me!” he shouted back as the alarms continued to wail around them.
Ahead, Mutt could see that the doorway seemed to be lowering toward the ground. He paused for a second, putting Cosmo carefully down. “What’s that?” he asked. “What’s happening?”
“They’re closing the watertight doors!” King Leon said. “This is bad. This is very bad. We have to get through before the water reaches us.”
Mutt glanced behind them. “Too late!” he said, scooping Cosmo up again in his mouth as water seeped along the floor, creeping toward them.
He overtook King Leon and sprinted toward the door as it lowered to the ground. The space between the bottom of the door and the floor was getting smaller and smaller each second. For a moment, Mutt didn’t think they would make it. He felt a flash of fear that they would be crushed by the thick metal door. He dived forward, hoping the kittens would keep their grip, sliding between the smallest of gaps and sending Violet and Jack flying over his head to tumble onto the floor in front of him in a furry heap.
“Is everyone all right?” he asked after he set Cosmo down. “Violet? Jack?”
Cosmo nodded, but he was shaking all over. Violet stood up and sent Mutt a glare that said she didn’t appreciate being thrown around, and Jack gave him a small nod.
“Where’s King Leon?” Cosmo asked in a small voice, barely more than a squeak.
Mutt spun around to look down the corridor, but it was no longer there. In its place was a steel door meters thick, cutting them off from the stairwell that led to the upper decks. And King Leon.
CHAPTER 16
MUTT
Monday, April 15, 1912
12:25 AM
“King Leon!” Mutt barked. “King Leon!”
He sniffed around the edges of the steel door and along the walls, hoping to find a vent or pipe that King Leon might have crawled through.
“Maybe he turned back and found another way out?” Mutt said to the kittens. But his hope faded as he heard King Leon’s voice call out to him.
“Mutt!” King Leon shouted, his voice muffled by the thick door. “The water’s coming in fast. Take the kittens as high as you can. Remember what I told you—follow the rats.”
“What about you?” Mutt asked.
There was a pause, and for a moment Mutt was afraid that King Leon had been washed away by the water, but then his voice came back more clearly. It sounded slightly echoey but closer.
“I think I’ve found a way out,” King Leon puffed. “But Mutt… if I don’t make it out… If I can’t…” There was a long pause, and Mutt feared the worst, but then King Leon’s voice rang out again. “Remember I said I might ask you for a favor one day? In return for me helping you onto the ship?”
Mutt nodded, even though he knew King Leon couldn’t see. “I remember,” he answered. Although much good it had done him—he hadn’t found Alice, and now it looked as though he was going to end up drowned anyway.
“I want to call in that favor now,” King Leon said. “Just in case.”
“King Leon, we can talk about this later. We need to get above decks and away from the water.”
“Wait!” King Leon shouted. “Please…”
“I’m still here,” Mutt said.
“Mutt,” King Leon started. “Did you know that rats don’t live very long? A few years at the most. I’m an old rat, Mutt. I’ve been back and forth on these ships more times than I can count, and I’ve seen so many different places and met so many different friends along the way—like you,” he added.
Mutt gave a small smile.
“I’ve lived a good life, Mutt,” King Leon said. “And I want the same for you and those kittens—and your girl, Alice. Will you promise me that?”
Mutt’s stomach dropped. “That’s the favor?”
“I guess so,” King Leon said with a small chuckle. “And if you ever find yourself in Brooklyn, tell my family I was a hero.”
Mutt’s chest felt tight but he answered anyway. “I will,” he said, wishing with all his heart that King Leon were on this side of the door with them. “King Leon?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“Thank you for helping me,” Mutt said. “I’m sorry I called you a stinking rat. You are a hero to me.”
He waited for a moment, but King Leon didn’t reply.
“Mutt!” Violet screamed from behind him. “Look!”
Water had started streaming out through the slatted vents and pouring down the walls. In seconds it had risen over their paws, until it seemed to swallow up the carpet entirely.
“Let’s go!” Mutt said. “King Leon, if you can still hear me, I hope you make it out.”
He turned and crouched low so that Violet and Jack could climb onto his back again, and grabbed Cosmo’s scruff in his mouth. Then he splashed through the frigid water, turning left and right, and left again, trying to remember where the stairwell was. When he reached the end of the corridor, his heart dropped as he found himself at a dead end where another steel door had cut off the hallway.
“We’re trapped!” Jack shouted.
Mutt searched around, desperately trying to find higher ground. He cocked his head and listened for a moment. Then he heard a small squeak. Rats! he thought. Follow the rats. He turned and splashed back the way they had come, this time turning left. The water was up to his knees now. Ahead he saw a service trolley sitting outside another closed door.
Mutt stopped alongside and gestured with his head to the trolley, waiting for Jack and Violet to climb on. Then he let go of Cosmo, gently placing him beside his siblings. “Wait here,” he told them. “I’m going to find a way up, and then I’ll come back for you. It will be quicker if I go alone.”
“Don’t go!” Violet squealed, her whole body shaking.
“I won’t be long, Violet, I promise,” Mutt panted. “Jack will take care of you while I’m gone.”
Jack gave Mutt a solemn nod, despite the fact that his jaw was trembling and his eyes were wide with fear. “I’ll look after them.”
Mutt splashed back down the corridor, trying to recall which way they’d come when Clara had led them down. There were no signs of any rats now—they had probably already reached the upper decks, Mutt thought. Or… he didn’t let himself think of what else might have happened to them, because then he’d have to think about King Leon. Mutt had to believe that King Leon would find a way out. That he would see him again with that silly toothy grin of his and that stump of a tail.
But at the next corridor he found only more closed doors and more dead ends where the hallways were cut off by the watertight barriers, which, it turned out, were not so watertight after all.
A loud squeal echoed down the hallway far behind him, and Mutt turned to race back to the kittens. It was almost impossible to move fast now. His legs and fur were weighed down by the rising water and his feet barely touched the floor. It felt as if he were wading through thick snow.
“Mutt!” Cosmo cried as he saw Mutt heading toward them. “It’s Clara!”
Mutt sighed with relief and spun around, looking for the captain’s cat. She would be able to lead them to safety. “Where?” he asked.
Cosmo sniffed at the air. “I… I don’t know.” He frowned. “I can smell her, I’m sure I can. She smells just like Mother.”
Mutt glanced at Viole
t, and she gave a slight shake of her head.
Mutt’s tail drooped, the tip dunking beneath the cold water, making his breath catch in his throat. “I’m sure she will come,” he told Cosmo quietly. “We’ll wait here for her.”
There was nothing else he could say. Nothing else they could do. There seemed to be no way up or out. He couldn’t carry the three kittens through water this high, and he certainly couldn’t swim. They would weigh him down, and they would all drown before he got much farther than the next hallway.
Cosmo saw the defeated look in Mutt’s eyes and stood up on the trolley so that they were eye to eye. “She will come,” he said sternly, his voice steady and sure. “Miss Clara would never abandon us.”
“Mother did,” Violet said solemnly.
“Miss Clara is different,” Jack told his sister. “She is the captain’s cat. She would never leave a shipmate behind.”
Mutt started to say that she was probably caught up with the captain when Cosmo stood up to yell at the top of his lungs, almost deafening Mutt. “Miss Clara! Miss Clara! We are here!”
Mutt shook his head as Jack joined in. After a pause, Violet began yelling, too. Mutt barked as loudly as he could, adding to the racket they were making in the hope that someone—anyone—might hear them.
CHAPTER 17
CLARA
Monday, April 15, 1912
Midnight
Clara raced down to the cargo hold as fast as she could with her injured leg, to where she had left Mutt and the kittens, but when she reached the corridor, the watertight doors were already down, blocking her from going into the next compartment. There were no humans around, and already water had started to seep along the floor. She hobbled back up to E deck and along Scotland Road to the emergency stairwell to head back down to the cargo holds, hoping that the dog had had enough sense to move the kittens as soon as the ship had struck the iceberg.
When she descended, she found herself in the same predicament. This corridor, however, seemed to be filling up much faster than the previous section. Clara peered up at the metal barrier separating compartments and hoped nobody was trapped behind it. She had turned to climb back up the stairs when she heard a small cry coming from down the hallway. She paused, looking at the water. It was already a few feet high, certainly too high for her to wade through, not that she wanted to. Although she had been forced to swim once before (when she was a young cat and had accidentally lost her footing walking up the gangplank onto a smaller ship, and had ended up having to swim to the jetty to save herself), it wasn’t an experience she particularly wanted to repeat.
She had almost convinced herself that she had simply imagined it, when she heard her name being called: “Miss Clara! Miss Clara!” Accompanied by the earsplitting noise of a barking dog.
Clara’s heart froze. It was Mutt, and Cosmo. If they were somehow trapped along the corridor, they would have no way of escaping. She had to help them! She took a deep breath and jumped into the freezing water, her paws barely scraping against the waterlogged floor as she paddled back and forth frantically. Clara couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to the kittens. She just hoped she could reach them in time.
She turned one corner, then another, her claws scrabbling along as she tried to propel herself faster. Where are they? Finally, around the next corner she found Mutt trying to keep his head above water beside a service trolley on which the kittens were precariously balanced. They were shaking from fear and cold as the water rose rapidly around them.
Mutt noticed Clara and barked again, his eyes wide with surprise, then he turned to the kittens, whispering calming words to each of them.
“We couldn’t find a way out!” he told her. “The ship is a maze.”
Clara lifted her head, trying to keep her mouth and nose out of the water. The freezing temperatures had at least numbed her injured leg slightly, and she found that it was actually easier to move in the water than out of it.
“There’s a narrow stairwell this way,” she managed to spit out between breaths. “The water is rising fast, though, so we have to hurry.”
She rested a paw on the bottom shelf of the trolley, which was submerged, and managed to pull herself out of the water to crouch, shivering, beside the kittens. “Cosmo, can you climb onto my back?” she asked.
Cosmo looked up at Mutt, then peered down at the water and shook his head.
Mutt nudged Cosmo gently with his nose. “We’ll be right behind you,” he said gently.
Clara gave Mutt a grateful smile, then gestured to Violet and Jack. “Can you take these two? I don’t think I can manage them all without being sunk myself.”
Mutt nodded, and Violet and Jack carefully clambered once again onto his back. Clara saw him wince as they dug their tiny, razor-sharp claws into his skin, but he didn’t utter a word of complaint.
“Stay close,” Clara said, easing herself gently back into the water after Cosmo had settled onto her back.
The water had already risen by another few inches, and Clara struggled to keep both herself and Cosmo above the water so that they could still breathe. After a number of twists and turns, they reached the stairwell, and Clara finally felt solid ground underneath her paws. She thought she might collapse then and there in blessed relief.
Cosmo jumped from her back and scrambled onto the first available dry step, with his brother and sister not far behind. To her surprise, Mutt waited for Clara to pull herself out of the water before he followed. Being a fair bit bigger than her, he was able to keep his head out of the water when his paws touched the bottom stair—although if they stayed there for much longer the water would rise over his head.
Clara shook herself as dry as she could manage, then turned to Cosmo. “How did you know I was down here?” she asked.
“Your scent,” he replied, his teeth chattering together with the cold. “You smelled a bit like how I remember Mother smelling.”
Clara blinked at Cosmo for a moment, wanting to correct him to make sure there was no confusion. To tell him that she was not now, nor could she ever be, a replacement for his mother, but the water was still rising fast and the time for worrying about their future was long gone. She needed to make sure that the kittens survived the night. That was all that mattered.
“What happened?” Mutt asked, pulling Clara from her thoughts. “Why is there water pouring into the ship?”
“We hit an iceberg,” she replied, turning her back on the kittens briefly so that they wouldn’t hear. “Mutt, the ship is sinking fast. The humans are already loading the lifeboats on the top deck. We have to make sure the kittens get on one with them, but I’m afraid we don’t have much time.”
“What about my girl?” Mutt asked. “I need to find her and make sure she gets onto a lifeboat, too.”
“If you help me with the kittens, I’ll help you find your girl,” Clara said.
Mutt glanced back at the kittens and nodded. “Let’s go.”
Clara led them back up to the boat deck, where the officers and crew had already begun to load the first lifeboats with humans. One of the officers was shouting out: “Women and children first!”
Some humans waited patiently in line to get into the lifeboats, first-class passengers mainly. But for some reason that Clara couldn’t fathom, many others seemed reluctant to get into the lifeboats despite the peril they were facing, choosing to take their chances on the doomed ship. Clara turned away from the bow, toward the boats farthest away, which the officers hadn’t yet begun to load. The covers had already been removed in preparation for launching, and Clara nudged the kittens toward the closest boat. It was the same lifeboat that she had found them hiding in, and she could still smell the faint scents they had left behind, lingering like a distant memory, even though it had only been four days ago.
“Do you remember where I found you?” Clara asked the kittens.
Violet watched the ever-increasing commotion at the front of the ship with wide eyes, while Jack and Cosmo nodded
slowly.
“I need you to be brave, Violet,” Clara said to get her attention. “Can you do that for me?”
“I’m scared,” Violet said.
“There is nothing to be scared of,” Clara told her. “You three are exactly like me—sea cats. And if I am the captain’s cat, that makes you three my officers and second-in-command. I need you to stay inside this lifeboat to make sure that the passengers stay in line.” She glanced over at Mutt. “And if any dogs happen to join you on board, you make sure to keep an especially close eye on them. You know how disobedient those dogs can be.”
“I’ll keep you safe,” Jack told his brother and sister, and Clara felt a small burst of pride in the small but fearless kitten.
Mutt’s eyes shone back at her, and he gave a small bark to clear his throat. “We need to hurry,” he said. “The humans are moving closer.”
“Come along,” Clara said, nudging the kittens closer to the boat. “I will lift you into the boat. Now, this is important: I want you to make sure you remain hidden beneath the wooden bench. There should be some blankets that you can hide under to keep you warm.”
She grabbed Jack by the scruff of the neck first and lifted him over the rim of the boat, then Violet. She reached down for Cosmo, but he backed away. “What about you, Miss Clara? And Mutt? Will you stay with us?”
“Cosmo,” Clara said, gently rubbing her head against his. “I am the captain’s cat. I still have work to do here on the ship, making sure all the other animals get safely away.”
“But we’ll see you again, won’t we, Miss Clara?” Violet squeaked, jumping up onto the bench and peering up at her with those beautiful blue eyes.
Clara felt her heart break into tiny pieces. She didn’t want to lie to the kittens, but she couldn’t tell them the truth, either. Before she could find the words to tell them that this was goodbye, Mutt interrupted.
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