Flash at last found a blue-coated officer careening down the steep deck. Propping the man up by one shoulder, he told him about the stalled elevator with passengers trapped inside.
“Don’t worry,” the man replied, “the ship will not sink. We need everyone to stay calm.”
Flash leaned close to the man’s ear. “But there’s water flooding the Main Deck below,” he whispered.
“Oh, never fear, that’ll be corrected. We’re just trying to right this list at the moment.”
Another passenger struggled up, clinging to Flash for support. “Sir,” asked the officer, “do you know when the lifeboats will be lowered down to us?”
“Just you wait and be patient. All is under control.” Touching his cap to them, the uniformed man shoved free and went on his crooked way.
* * *
Winnie kept her place by the door, helping other latecomers drag themselves up out of the dark stairwell. Then she heard a voice—Alma’s, it had to be her, shrilling out in such clear tones from the deck above. She threw herself into a swarm of people pushing up the outside stair. No harm, since Flash would be bringing the others back this way in a few moments.
Squeezing through onto the boat deck, she looked around the crowd, listening for the voice to ring out again. The passengers were in a frenzied hurry, but no one seemed certain where to go. She didn’t see Alma, just throngs of people milling along the wall and clinging to the rail. As she edged through, an older woman in an unbuttoned coat with no life jacket confronted her.
“Oh, life vests! Thank you very much, my children can use these.”
Seizing hold of the two jackets that Winnie still carried, she turned and dragged them away. Winnie trailed after her a step or two but then released her grip on the last one, deciding it would go to a good purpose.
Looking around, she noticed that some passengers in the jackets had put them on backward, just as Ian Holbourn predicted. The realization brought her nurse instincts to the fore.
“Wait, sir,” she said to a small, hatless, balding man. “You have your life vest on wrong. Here, let me show you how to fix it so you won’t drown.”
Looking up in alarm, the man turned and fled. Even though Winnie was already wearing a life jacket, he must have feared that she would steal his. She tried again, but others with backward vests ignored her in their flight for survival.
The focus of the swarming energy, like a row of beehives, was the lifeboats hanging from their davits at regular gaps in the rail. None that she could see were being lowered. But people climbed into them, thrust women and children in, and climbed up to the top deck to unhook the ropes that would lower them. Meanwhile officers appeared and ordered the boats emptied. Willing or not, men and women eventually would climb out while others were busy climbing in. Scuffles and shoving matches broke out, but these class-conscious British eventually gave in to officers’ firm commands. Winnie wondered why they weren’t lowering the boats, but then she remembered Flash saying that the ship needed to stop moving.
Above her on the Marconi deck she heard singing, but it wasn’t Alma. Looking up, she saw two young girls in life jackets gripping the rail, gazing out above the dread and anguish below them, with eyes fixed on the lush coast of Ireland. They had altered the words of a popular hymn to comfort themselves.
“There is a green hill not far away,” they chorused, “without a city wall…”
Their sweet notes pierced Winnie’s veil of calm. Turning and staggering away from the sight with tears suddenly stinging her eyes, she found herself looking instead at Charles Frohman, the aging impresario. He stood, or rather leaned, against the inner wall, bracing himself with his cane.
Beside him was the actress Rita Jolivet, wearing a life vest that more than filled out her slender form.
“C.F.,” she was saying, “if I’d known you were going to give away your life jacket, I would have made you take that seat they offered us in the boat.”
“You should have taken the seat,” Frohman told her. “Why bother sticking with an old man?”
“Hello, C.F.,” Winnie said, blinking aside her tears and entering their little sphere of calm amid the turmoil.
“Hello, my dear,” Frohman politely responded, conveying a sense of composure. “I’m glad to see you well.”
“And, you, too,” she said turning to Rita. “Are they really letting any lifeboats go?”
“Over on the starboard side,” Rita answered with a jerk of her head. “Most of them just tip over or sink…it’s too dreadful to watch, so we crawled up here. But the boat they offered him got away clear,” she chided, poking Frohman in the shoulder.
Taking a last puff on his cigar and tossing away the stub, the producer shrugged theatrically.
“Why fear death?” he asked the ladies with a convincing smile. “It is the most beautiful adventure that life gives us.”
Winnie recognized the quote from his Peter Pan play, so she didn’t try to argue the point. But to herself, remembering what she’d heard at the party, she couldn’t help thinking that Frohman had ended up here because he preferred the threat of death to an Atlantic crossing with Isadora Duncan.
She then remembered her own purpose. “Good luck to you both! I have to go.” She turned away from them, feeling a pang of loss.
Not finding Alma, she’d begun to fear also losing Flash. She felt the sudden frenzy building in her chest and tried to suppress it, but it wasn’t easy. Some passengers were lurching about the crooked deck, bowling down others or even treading over them, and their panic was infectious. She strove to ignore the awful sights and sounds around her, watching for friends.
* * *
When Flash found that Winnie was no longer there, he ducked into the stairwell, dreading that she might have gone back down to the stuck elevator. He called her name into the pitch blackness but heard nothing—no cries, no thumping from the coffin below, only the rush of rising water.
Deciding that she could have gone up onto the Boat Deck, he turned to follow. The stairway astern was made steeper by the forward list, and the top opening was jammed with people, but he managed to force his way though.
Out under the blue sky the sights were more extreme. The upper deck was covered with soot from the explosions, and most passengers’ hands, faces and life-jackets were black-smudged. Amid the staggering, shoving throng, a huge stoker stood coal-black from head to foot, except for his severely wounded scalp. From what appeared to be his exposed skull a welter of blood dribbled down his dazed, white-eyed face.
Another crewman’s face was beet-red and swollen, having been badly scalded by steam. Where he sat blinded in the angle of deck, he was being helped by a kneeling woman in a nurse’s cap. It was Hildegard, Flash realized. At her side, getting supplies out of a medical chest and passing them along, were Flo and Hazel, both wearing life jackets.
“Hello, I found you,” he exclaimed, grasping a window ledge to steady himself. “Have you seen Winnie? She was with me just a moment ago, downstairs.”
Florence looked up at him, wide-eyed and obviously dazed, giving no answer. Was she unhinged, struck dumb by the magnitude and suddenness of disaster? Then her adorable young face lit up with its familiar radiance.
“Oh, look,” Flo said all at once, “there she is right behind you!”
Turning, Flash saw Winnie’s face smudged with soot and tears. He caught her as she rushed toward him.
“It was your beautiful hair, darling,” she said, clinging to him. “I couldn’t miss it, even in all this chaos.”
He embraced her and kissed away her tears. Then after helping her steady herself against the wall, he turned to the others.
“Miss Hildegard, you need a life jacket,” Flash said to the white-caped matron. “Here, just take mine. I’ll get another one in no time.”
As he reached to undo his ties, Hildegard stood up. “N
o, young man, you keep it. It would just get in my way. I have to go over and help that poor coal stoker.”
Having finished dressing the scalded man’s face and hands, she picked up the medical bag that she must have fetched from the cabin astern.
“You haven’t seen Alma or Matt since we left?” Flash asked her. “We didn’t find them on deck or in the stateroom.”
“They’ll do just fine on their own,” the nurse said confidently. But then she leaned close to him. “Flash, you be sure to get those girls into a boat. Anyone who says this ship will be afloat thirty minutes from now is a liar.”
She turned away, but Hazel stopped her.
“Miss Hildegard, wait! We’ll come along and help.” She glanced around them at the teeming desolation on deck. “It’s awful here, but we’re learning so much.”
“Yes we are,” Florence added. “It’s just like the Great War, almost.”
“No, girls.” Hildegard smiled. “You know how to save lives. There will be people in the boats and in the water who need you. Stay with Flash, and he’ll get you away safely.”
She glanced out to sea, where the green Irish hills fringed the miles of rolling blue. “I’ve never much cared for the ocean. I’ll stay here a little while longer.” With a visible shiver she left the group.
Flash, meanwhile, was looking at the boat situation. Those here along the port side had been swung out with the rest, but now because of the list they hung well inboard, canted atop the wood-and-canvas collapsible boats that had been stowed under them on blocks. To shove the dangling hulls out overside would take massive effort, all the more so once they were full of people. Then, as they were lowered, it would be a sliding descent down the sloping steel plating studded with heavy round-edged rivet heads. When and if the boats finally reached the water, they’d be out of sight of the deck due to the curvature of the exposed hull. But hopefully, the ropes would be long enough to let them all the way down.
Then there was the question of space. When Flash first came up on deck, the officers had been keeping people away and driving them out. But now, in spite of the crew’s efforts, or because they’d given up, the boats were filling rapidly
Flash led Winnie and her two friends amid the throng to the nearest lifeboat, already almost full. As he helped the women up onto the canvas-covered collapsible and then over the gunwale of the wooden craft, some kind of commotion broke out down the deck forward. Shouts, screams and crashing noises drifted back up to them over the general hubbub.
Flash craned his neck, but he was unable to see past the line of boats and davits. No one else seemed to pay attention. The ladies had found safe seats on the benches, he saw to his relief.
“Flash, come along and get in!” Beneath Winnie’s commanding tone he heard her desperate plea.
“Not yet, darling. First I’ll help get this thing over the side.” He smiled, doing his best to deceive her, but knowing he might need to jump overboard after the boat was launched.
Just then from ahead of them a further tumult sounded, with more shrieks, a rumbling and another distant crash. Flash propped himself up on the rail for a look, bracing against the davit, but he could only see crowds swarming in and readying the nearby boats. No lifeboats were visible on the sea, but it was possible they’d passed out of sight down below.
No sooner had he stepped off his perch than a third outburst of screams and crashes sounded, this time louder. Whatever the menace was, it was getting nearer. Were the smokestacks toppling? No; he looked up and saw them still smoking, though they leaned over to starboard like everything else.
Then at once Flash understood. The lifeboat next to his, full of desperate humanity, slipped suddenly loose from its moorings. Instead of tumbling down into the sea, it swung back inboard onto its handlers, taking them and the canvas-topped collapsible raft with it. Unstoppable it slid down the forward-tilting promenade, a loose juggernaut. Scraping against the deckhouse doors and windows, it scythed into helpless people huddled there as it gathered speed, trailing ropes and writhing bodies behind.
The boat passengers’ shrieks of dread had an eerie quality, borne swiftly away like some awful carnival ride. After slewing some two hundred feet it crunched into a pile of boats and bodies below the bridge, sending a culminating wail of agony back up the deck.
As Flash looked on in horror, he saw the still-rising sea wash up into the grisly mass, stirring the wreckage with fresh moans and screams for help.
Tearing his eyes away, he turned back to the boat before him, next in line for an unspeakable fate. He didn’t think the women on the benches had seen, but from the yells and wails they must have known something was terribly wrong.
A young officer was trying to control the mob. Flash followed his lead, grabbing an oar to pry against the boat, toiling in his bulky life-jacket.
“Push the boat out, all together,” the officer was saying. “We have to shove it over past the rail, and then you men on the ropes let out a couple feet of line, no more. On the count of three we’ll push—one, two, three, now heave!
The boat shifted.
“There, we almost had it! You there, give me the mallet! Don’t touch that chain or I’ll brain you with this, understand? Now all together, let’s push her out again. Put some back into it this time!
“Let’s go—one, two, three, push—there! Now slack out the fall ropes, just a meter or so. We’ve got her, but hold those ropes steady. Room for any more in the boat? We’re ready to lower.”
Like some others, Flash had been levering the lifeboat desperately outward with his oar. Now it hung safe alongside, but already the rivet heads of the Lusitania’s sloping hull were gouging deeply into the wood, raising splinters from the boat’s side-wale. As the mate triumphantly knocked loose the snubbing chain, the stout wood hull settled and began to shred against the rivets.
Flash saw at once what was needed. He stepped over into the boat, still prying with his heavy pole and forcing it in lower.
“The oars,” he called out to the other men. “Drive them in as rails, so the boat can slide down. Otherwise the bolt-heads dig into the timbers! Shove them down as far as you can! We’ll have to do it all the way down, or we’ll never make it.”
The officer shouted his approval and urged more oarsmen aboard as the rope hands began lowering. The boat skidded down the side, rocking and slipping as the falls were played out unevenly, and the black-painted rivet heads caught and dug at the timber. Yet half a dozen men and women plying four or five oars were able to do some good, prying and cushioning the downward skid with oar blades and hafts.
Working at the bow end, Flash could see the rivets lying in long vertical rows, angling forward with the list. He was able to wedge his oar deep down alongside a triple row of rivets as the boat slid onto it, preventing further damage. Looking over, he found Winnie beside him, bringing up a fresh oar from the middle of the bench rows.
“Wonderful, darling!” he said. “Now grab this one when the boat clears it, won’t you? We’ll need all of them once we’re in the water.”
Flash worried whether the next lifeboat in line might break free like the others and run over their rope handlers on deck. But glancing up, he saw it swung out successfully overside and lowered, using the oars to smooth its descent, as his boat had done. Still it faced a problem, for just astern of his own boat’s path, the open cutaway of the Shelter Deck began. The other boat dropped down and stuck inside the open railing, where eager passengers on the lower deck caught hold of it and tried to climb aboard. As the falls were lowered farther and the boat began to tilt, the oarsmen had to fight off the new boarders. It became a fierce struggle for survival, but Flash could no longer spare any time to watch.
Thereafter in brief upward glimpses against the noon glare, he saw boat passengers fending off the boarders with oars and fists, distracted from their own toil and unable to get their boat clear. The f
ighting went on, with bodies falling and tumbling past, down the hull incline into the sea. All for nothing, since the unlucky boat seemed to be jammed tight and didn’t descend further.
Meanwhile, Flash blocked off the next vertical row of rivets with his new oar, and then the next row after that with a fresh one as the rounded side of the lifeboat scuffed and grated down the hull. Seeing flaky red bottom-paint on the ship’s steel plating, he knew the sea must be near. The descent was smoother now, and glancing aside he could see the water a dozen feet below. But from its flow he realized the big ship was still underway. He worried that the bow current could be enough to swamp them.
Very soon he found out, as first the stern rope slipped free and then the bow. Something must have happened; maybe the ropes ran out, causing the heavy-laden boat to dip and plummet beneath them. The oar twisted out of his grip, toppling him over backward onto others. The heavy craft grated down the ship’s side, nearly capsizing. It struck the water bow-first, raising a wave that drenched the passengers, but luckily didn’t swamp them.
In the stunned seconds that followed, what shocked Flash most was the color he’d glimpsed in the water-curtain. Having washed back to them from the carnage forward, it rose pinkish-red against the bright blue sea and sky. The Lusitania, he dazedly knew, was sinking in a sea of blood.
Well, at least they were afloat and free–except for the ropes that tumbled down onto their heads in the next moment, causing curses and grunts of pain.
“Now I know why they call them fall ropes,” Flash heard Hazel feebly say.
“Yes, because they fall on you,” Florence added, untangling herself.
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