Survival Tails_The Titanic

by Katrina Charman

  Mutt barked, but the cold and all the salty water he had swallowed meant that it came out as barely more than a hoarse screech. He tried again, not caring that his throat felt as if he had swallowed a thousand pins.

  “I’m here. Alice! I’m here.”

  He paused for a moment, waiting for a reply or any sign that they might have heard him, but all was quiet. He barked again, and again, and again. But as the seconds turned into minutes, his heart sank and he felt a chill shudder through him that was more than just the cold night air. He rested his head on his paws. He felt his eyelids start to droop and his heart slow. He was so tired.

  Just as his eyes closed and the darkness drew in around him, he heard a small bark and a shout. A single word made his eyes fly open and his heart race once again: “Mutt!”

  Mutt barked and barked, blinded by the light of an oil lamp that shone brightly through the gloom. As the lifeboat drifted closer, the light grew bigger and brighter, until Mutt squinted up to see a group of faces peering back at him. He searched among them until he found what he was looking for—Alice! His Alice! She beamed back at him, wiping away tears with the back of her hand as she called his name again and again, clambering over the other humans to reach him. “Mutt! It’s really you. Mutt!”

  The officer steering the boat set down the oil lamp and reached out to lift Mutt from the trunk, stopping short at the sound of a shrill shriek from the back of the lifeboat.

  “It’s just a dog!” a woman cried. “We should leave him behind. He’ll get us wet and cold and…” She trailed off, glancing at the water, then quickly away again.

  Alice turned on the woman, jabbing a finger in the air at Fifi, who was snuggled beneath the woman’s fur coat. “You have your dog!” she cried. “Why can’t I have mine?”

  Mutt saw the look of pure fire burning in Alice’s eyes, and her hands clenched into fists. He had seen that look before, and it meant that Alice wouldn’t be backing down. Not now. Not ever. “She has her dog!” Alice yelled at the officer, her eyes red-rimmed. “We can’t even save one frozen dog?”

  Alice dropped down onto the bench, and the woman sitting beside her pulled her into a hug as Alice sobbed into the woman’s overcoat, which had been thrown on over her nightdress. “We can’t save one?” Alice whispered.

  The officer reached out and pulled Mutt toward him, rubbing at the frozen droplets around his eyes before passing him over the heads of the other humans to Alice. Alice hugged Mutt tighter than she’d ever held him before, and Mutt licked at her face, his tail wagging even though it was freezing.

  He couldn’t believe that they had both made it, despite everything—they were here together and they were alive! Mutt thought he would gladly stay in Alice’s arms for the rest of his life if it meant they would never be apart again.

  Alice kissed Mutt’s head, then wrapped a warm blanket around his shoulders, sobbing into his fur, saying “Mutt” over and over again until, finally, she fell silent. The officer carefully rowed the lifeboat through the debris and away from the site where the Titanic had once been.

  Mutt felt his eyelids droop as he and the humans seemed to float aimlessly on the big blue, waiting for someone to rescue them. None of the humans talked about what would happen if nobody came.

  “The girl’s right,” the woman beside Alice said suddenly, startling Mutt awake. “We have plenty of space in this lifeboat. We need to search the water. There might still be survivors out there—we should have returned as soon as the ship was lost.” She glared at the officer, a steely look in her eyes. “Take us back.”

  “No!” shrieked the yappy dog’s mistress. “There are too many and there’s not enough room on this boat. They would sink us all!”

  “This boat isn’t even half full!” the woman replied, pointing to the empty benches. “If we can save one more life,” she added, “just one—then we should.”

  Alice stroked Mutt’s head and nodded as the women argued back and forth.

  Then Mutt heard a faint sound on the wind. His ears pricked up as he strained to listen beyond the woman’s incessant shrieking and her yappy dog.

  “Shut up!” Mutt barked at the dog.

  Fifi scowled at Mutt. “You should be thanking me!” he yapped. “I saved your life.”

  “You?” Mutt growled. “How did you save my life?”

  “I could smell you,” Fifi replied. “I knew you were close, so I barked to get my owner’s attention.”

  “Well,” Mutt growled, quieter this time. “Thank you… I suppose.”

  “You suppose?” the yappy dog squeaked.

  Mutt was about to argue some more, but the noise came again. “Be quiet!” Mutt and Alice snapped at the same time, and both Fifi and his owner finally shut up.

  Mutt scanned the water, looking for the source of the noise. A little way ahead, he could see the faint outline of something large rising up and out of the water. It was too large to be a dolphin—Mutt had seen them visit the beach back home—but it was too small to be a whale. A sudden thought jogged his memory as he realized what he was looking at—it was one of the collapsible lifeboats, but it was upside down.

  The sound came again. Barely more than the tiny shred of hope he had left within him, but it was there. Mutt hoped with all his heart that the sound wasn’t just a figment of his imagination grown from the sliver of hope. He jumped down from Alice’s lap and barked. His throat was still hoarse, but he leaped up and over the other survivors to the front of the lifeboat and placed his paws on the bow, barking in the direction of the collapsible. The lady was right, he thought—if they could save just one more life, they should.

  The officer changed course at the insistence of Alice and some of the other humans, raising the oil lamp to search for any signs of movement in the gloom. The collapsible had somehow flipped in the water, but there were still humans clinging to it. There were almost ten men, maybe more, sitting on top of the boat. As they rowed closer, though, the hope in Mutt’s heart faded. The humans looked like icicles themselves. Their hands and lips were blue.

  Then, slowly, one by one as they saw what was in front of them, saw that salvation had arrived, the men moved their freezing limbs to face the lifeboat. Their frozen mouths spread into smiles as they hugged one another.

  “We are saved!” they shouted in shivering voices. “We are saved!”

  The officer and another passenger still dressed in his pajamas helped the men climb into the lifeboat, handing them blankets as the others made room. One of the men who had been in the water the entire time, clinging to the collapsible, and was miraculously still alive, gave Mutt a grin as he dripped into the boat and over Fifi’s mistress’s head, much to her annoyance.

  Mutt watched Alice scan the faces of the men as they boarded, desperately hoping that one of them might be the master. But as she shook her head at each one in turn, she looked to the collapsible. There was only one man left, and he lay still on the very end of the boat, his face turned away.

  The officer hailed the man a few times, but he did not move or return the call.

  “It’s too late,” the officer said quietly, looking back at the other passengers. “I’m sorry.”

  He set the lantern down beside Mutt and turned to pick up the oars.

  Mutt couldn’t take his eyes off the man on the boat. Something about him was familiar. Something… He jumped up as he saw the slightest movement. The man lifted his head slowly away from the boat and turned to look at Mutt, his lips trembling as he tried to form the words. He stared right at Mutt, and his eyes widened as though he could hardly believe what he was seeing. Mutt’s tail wagged as he barked as loudly as he could to make the officer stop. To see what he had.

  “Mutt, what is it?” Alice said, climbing back over the other humans to get to Mutt.

  The man in the water finally managed to form a single, stammered word. Not much more than a whisper: “A-A-Alice!”

  “Papa!” Alice shouted as Mutt joined in, barking along with her. �
��It’s my papa! He’s alive!”

  CHAPTER 25

  MUTT

  Monday, April 15, 1912

  4 AM

  A shower of shooting stars streaked across the endless black sky. The cries had long since died out, but the silence was worse than those awful sounds, because at least while the voices had called out, there had still been hope. The deafening silence meant that all hope was lost—at least, for those who had never had the chance to make it onto one of the lifeboats. Mutt couldn’t understand it. He might be an animal whose ways were different from those of the humans, but it still made no sense. Why hadn’t they saved more people? Why hadn’t they gone back for more?

  The answer, he realized as he thought about Fifi’s human’s words, was fear. The terrible fear that if they took on more humans their boat might be swamped and flooded and they, too, would be as helpless as those poor souls now floating as silent as stone on the surface of the big blue—although now Mutt could see it as nothing but a black emptiness that surrounded them. Closing in, as they waited. And waited.

  There was nothing to do but wait. In the cold, dark morning, wet and freezing, until someone came to their rescue. A man sitting opposite Mutt pulled something from his pocket and extended it to Alice, who hadn’t stopped shaking since they had found the master.

  “This will do you good,” the man said kindly, handing Alice an orange.

  The master smiled at the man gratefully and tore the orange open, handing the other half back.

  The man shook his head. “You and the girl share it,” he said, smiling as Alice sucked at the fruit’s sweet juice and a bit of color returned to her cheeks.

  “Thank you,” the master said, holding his hand down to Mutt to let him lick the juice from his fingers.

  The man gave a small laugh. “It’s funny,” he said. “When I knew we were sinking, that’s all I took with me—a handful of oranges. I could have taken my money, jewelry, everything else that I had that can’t so easily be replaced. But at that moment, the only thing that entered my mind was that we would need sustenance to survive the night.”

  The master nodded and pulled Alice close to him. Mutt knew what the man meant. In the end, few things truly mattered.

  After they had pulled the master on board, their boat had floated aimlessly somewhere in the middle of the big blue. There had been the terrible sounds of bumps and scrapes against the sides of the lifeboat. Some of them were made by the luxurious things from the Titanic—furniture, deck chairs, luggage. Mutt had even spotted a crate filled with apples bobbing on the water’s surface. Some of them were made by things Mutt couldn’t bring himself to think about.

  Alice, too, was silent now. The master, swaddled in blankets and a fur coat that another passenger had offered to him, had pulled her into a hug, and she’d drifted off to sleep. Every so often, Mutt could hear the master whisper to Alice: “We made it, Alice. Everything’s going to be all right now. We made it.”

  The relief they all felt was overwhelming, accompanied by guilt—that they had survived when so many others hadn’t.

  Mutt nudged Alice’s legs with his head every so often to make sure she hadn’t succumbed to the freezing temperatures of the night. He huddled beneath the bench, tangled up in the hem of Alice’s nightdress and blanket. But there was no warmth to be found. No matter how close he got, Mutt could not stop the shivering, shaking feeling that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside and wouldn’t let go.

  The lifeboats that were closest to one another had been tethered together, but despite the number of survivors on each boat, it was eerily quiet. Mutt thought of the kittens, hoping they had stayed hidden inside the lifeboat. Hoping they were warm and safe. The thought of losing them, too, was almost unbearable. He briefly considered barking to see if they might hear, but then thought better of it. He didn’t want them coming out of their hiding place to be discovered by the humans.

  The sun had not yet started to rise. One of the men on the boat had thought he’d spotted it rising in the distance, but it had been something the officer called the northern lights. Appearing like a mirage to give them false hope.

  And then, finally, it did come—salvation. In the form of another ship, called the Carpathia. Not as big as the Titanic but big enough to easily accommodate a few hundred extra passengers. But although rescue was so close, the humans didn’t have much energy or will left in them to row, instead waiting for the Carpathia to draw near and haul them one by one onto the deck, where warm blankets and hot drinks waited for the humans.

  Mutt and Alice were unable to climb the rope ladder that had been let down over the side of the Carpathia. To Mutt’s mild amusement, they had tied a rope to a mail sack, and he and Alice had clambered inside to be hauled up to the ship’s deck. As the sack swayed perilously above the waves lapping against the Carpathia’s side, Mutt was surprised to find that his fear of water had gone—he had fought a fierce battle against the big blue and survived. Though now that he had survived two close calls with the water, once they were back on dry land he thought he would probably never voluntarily set one paw near the big blue again.

  Mutt and Alice were given warm blankets. They sat on a bench on the deck together in silence, watching the sun rise slowly above the horizon.

  Thursday, April 18, 1912

  Mutt and Alice sat on the deck, looking out over the water at the lights in the distance. The New World. They were nearly there. The captain and crew of the Carpathia had given them everything they needed over the last few days as they’d continued their journey. Food, shelter. Mutt was even allowed to go wherever he pleased, unlike on the Titanic, and apart from a few raised eyebrows and disapproving looks at his bedraggled appearance, there had been no threats of his being thrown overboard. Not even when he’d chewed the master’s new slippers.

  “Mutt!”

  A small voice called out across the deck. Mutt leaped down from the bench and ran. He would recognize that voice anywhere. Alice called after him, but he raced on, almost colliding with three small bundles of fur. They pounced onto Mutt’s back, covering him with tiny kitten kisses.

  “It’s you, it’s really you!” Cosmo laughed.

  “We thought you were lost,” Violet sobbed as the three kittens huddled against Mutt’s side, purring uncontrollably.

  “I searched for you everywhere,” Mutt said. “Where have you been?”

  Mutt’s tail wagged back and forth as he licked the kittens’ heads—despite Violet’s squealed protests. Then he smiled at the warm, vibrating feeling that spread through his body as the kittens snuggled up to him and purred. He’d never been so happy to see a cat—or three—in his entire life.

  “We were in a cabin,” Jack said with a sly smile. “But we managed to escape!”

  “We were hungry,” Cosmo added.

  Mutt laughed, thinking that some things never changed.

  “I’m so glad you’re safe!” he barked.

  Since he’d last seen them, he’d had a terrible niggling feeling at the back of his brain that they might somehow not have made it. But they had! They were right here with him, and safe. Never again would he consider cats his enemy. These three kittens were the closest he had ever come to having pups of his own (even though he knew they weren’t actually pups).

  Cosmo pulled away and looked around, sniffing at the air. “Is Miss Clara with you?” he asked.

  Jack nodded. “Or King Leon? Did he make it?”

  Mutt forced down the lump in his throat and looked away for a moment as he shook his head. How could he tell them that Clara and King Leon were gone? And what would happen to the kittens now? He had made Clara a promise, but how could he possibly keep that promise when he wasn’t sure he even had a home with the master and Alice anymore? He opened his mouth, trying to find the right words, but he didn’t need to.

  “They’re gone, aren’t they?” Violet whispered, her bright eyes glistening.

  “I don’t know what happened to King Leon,” Mutt said.
“But Clara was so very brave. You—we—wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for her.”

  “What will happen to us?” Cosmo sniffled, snuggling close to Mutt.

  “We’ll find you a human,” Mutt said. “Someone good and kind who will love you and take care of you.”

  Violet peered up at Mutt. “I think we might have found one already,” she said.

  As she mewed, a little girl no older than Alice rushed across the deck toward them, pausing for a moment as she saw Mutt. He could tell she was a first-class passenger from the way she wore her hair curled and tied into bright blue ribbons, and because the dress she wore wasn’t patched or stained like Alice’s.

  “There you are!” the girl sang, pulling Jack into a gentle hug. “I’ve been searching everywhere for you three.”

  She looked at Mutt and patted him on the head. “Have you found a new friend?” she asked the kittens.

  Violet smiled at Mutt and meowed in reply.

  The girl frowned. “I’m not sure Mother will let me take a dog home with us,” she said slowly.

  “You can’t have him!” Alice puffed as she finally caught up with Mutt. “He’s my dog.”

  “Oh,” the girl said. “That’s good. I was worried he had nowhere to go.” She gestured to the kittens. “Are these yours, too?” she asked quietly, biting her lip. “Only, only, I found them on the lifeboat and they seemed so lost and scared and Mother said we could keep them because they made everything seem a little less terrible for a moment, and—”

  Alice softened and forced a smile at the girl. “It sounds like you’ll give them a very good home,” she said.

  The girl beamed, then called down to the kittens, “Let’s go and tell Mother the good news.”

  Mutt bowed his head in farewell, and one by one, the kittens rubbed their own heads against his. He knew they would likely never see one another again once they reached shore, but he was glad that the kittens would be safe, just as Clara had wanted.