The Company of the Dead

by David Kowalski

  “The compartments above us must have flooded.”

  Astor was wide-eyed as they reached the cargo-hold entrance. The door was secured by a heavy lock. They prised it open and stepped into an expansive, high-roofed compartment, illuminated by a series of bare light bulbs that dangled forwards like magnets drawn to a pole.

  There was an intense stench, a riot of noise. Cries of distress echoed within the four walls as the assorted animals noted their arrival. They were packed into cramped pens that were lined with fouled newspaper. Bowls of food lay upturned, their contents spilt onto the grimy floor.

  Astor made his way to a larger stall at the far end of the cargo hold, calling out for his dog in reassuring tones. A sharp yapping reply was chorused by the other animals. Within moments he returned, smiling triumphantly. Behind him padded a small wiry dog, its coat dappled in gold and black.

  Wells began working on the other cages. Most of them were sealed with makeshift catches that opened easily. Soon the cargo hold was transformed into a menagerie: animals ran furiously around the room, snatching at portions of food and menacing each other.

  The two men made for the doorway with some difficulty, trying to avoid the animals underfoot. Astor had his dog tucked up under an arm. Wells held open the door while Astor scurried past, pursued by a small horde that raced, barking, into the damp passageway.

  Wells looked down to see rivulets of water escaping from the mottled carpet onto the metal floor. He heard a faint mewling sound. A scrawny ginger cat crouched behind him, backing away from the advancing puddle.

  “Swift and merciful,” he murmured to himself.

  He scooped it up in a single fluid motion. He considered breaking its neck.

  “Hurry up,” Astor shouted from up the hallway.

  The cat settled in his arms. He tucked it into one of his coat pockets. The door slammed behind him as he dashed up the corridor. Astor was waiting below the winding stair, his dog clasped firmly to his breast. Water spiralled down in a fountain of icy spray. Some of the dogs were milling around Astor’s feet; the rest had raced up the darkened corridor.

  “Let’s go,” he cried and began climbing the stairs.

  Wells followed at his heels, the dogs chasing them up the watery stair. At the top he saw Astor staring past him. Wells clambered up and turned to follow his gaze.

  The crew’s quarters were awash. A dark tide ebbed and flowed at the stair landing. The water stretched out to the corridor’s ceiling in the distance, the roof lights casting an eerie illumination at their depths.

  Wells clasped Astor’s shoulder and they turned to face the iron portal that opened onto Scotland Road. The dogs stood at the gate barking frantically. Astor got there first and held the gate wide open till the procession had passed through.

  Wells ran up the hall, catching Astor at the foot of the stairway to D deck.

  “After you,” Astor said.

  “Do you know the way from here?”

  Astor frowned. “Surely. But aren’t you coming?”

  “I’ll see you on the boat deck.”

  “If we miss each other tonight, we must catch up in New York.”

  Wells was unable to match the man’s bravado. “That’s not going to happen, Colonel.”

  Astor forced a smile. “Come, come. Things aren’t as dark as all that.”

  They stood facing each other, the ship creaking and groaning about them.

  “I’m afraid they are, Colonel,” Wells said. “You’re on my list. You don’t get to New York.”

  Astor paled.

  Wells reached out awkwardly with a free hand and grabbed Astor’s palm. “Goodbye.”

  Astor stood momentarily, the dogs swarming about his heels. Finally he began to ascend the narrow stairs. The howling pack was his sombre entourage.

  Wells started up Scotland Road towards the ship’s stern. He patted the warm bundle under his coat pocket, seeking reassurance. The axe was where he’d left it, cradled in the wooden case. He reached out to seize it by the shaft. Holding it in both hands, he gave it a few gentle swings. He walked up to the stairs to D deck, whistling a tune yet to be composed. At the foot of the stairs he heard a wailing marriage of screams and shouts. He concealed the axe along his flank and ascended.

  The crewmen were gone. His arrival on the landing was greeted by a sudden upsurge in the clamour. The steerage passengers were crushing themselves against the newly constructed barricade. Men gripped the metal bars in blanched fists but the partition refused to separate from its solid frame.

  Wells removed his coat and hung it on the banister. The crowds behind the barricade stared and fell quiet. The men at the front tried to force themselves backwards, only to be pushed forwards again by the agitated crowds.

  “Please,” he said softly. “Everyone stand back.”

  A small space opened up.

  He raised the axe above his shoulder and swung it down in a mighty arc against one of the hinges. It buckled but held fast. The passengers renewed their anguished cries.

  He lifted the axe a second time. It fell with a sharp crash, the hinge splintering wildly.

  Before he could begin working on the other hinge, the passengers resumed rattling the metal bars. The barricade creaked forwards under the pressure. He stepped back, letting the axe fall to his side, and reached out to retrieve his coat.

  The final hinge sundered with a heavy crack and the barricade slammed down onto the thinly carpeted floor. The steerage passengers surged through the doorway and up onto the second-class staircase. He leaned against the opposite wall and took his cigarettes from a coat pocket. He lit one and watched the corridor empty. When he’d smoked the cigarette to his fingertips he let it fall to the floor. Wearily he began to ascend the second-class stairs for the last time.

  IX

  Though he could hear the sounds of passengers in flight, the upturning of tables, the slamming of doors, Wells saw no one till he reached the aft boat deck entrance. He leaned out of the doorway, holding it for support. From where he stood he could see two lifeboats. With the ship’s pronounced tilt they hung well over the water. Thick ropes, stretched tight, secured them.

  Crewmen at the railing were still attempting to load the boats. Others had formed a barricade against the newly arrived steerage passengers. Women and children were ushered through. The men were held back at gunpoint.

  There was the sharp crack of pistol fire. Chief Officer Wilde stood on the railing by a lifeboat davit, one arm entwined around the braided cord, the other brandishing a long, thick weapon. A small cloud of smoke hung thinly in the air above him, slowly dispersing. He was shouting, his words lost amongst the hoarse cries of the passengers.

  Wells edged out of the doorway. Looking down to the ship’s bow, he could see no other lifeboats. Swarms of passengers were making their way towards the stern, which now drew high above the waters. He began to follow when a second shot rang out. He looked back.

  Wilde’s face was aghast. Wrapped around his feet, at the ship’s rail, a young man lay in a spreading pool of blood. The chief officer was screaming at the crowds, his voice shrill. He waved the gun wildly. Still the passengers threw themselves against the human rampart.

  A third shot and Wells saw Wilde falter. For a moment he swung with his arm caught in the rope, the corpse of the man he’d slain seeming to grip him. He was reaching out to disengage himself when a second man fell upon him. All three dropped into the ocean in a twisting heap.

  Passengers clambered across the securing ropes towards the fully laden lifeboats. Those within were shouting at the approaching men. Imploring them to turn back.

  A number of the scrambling passengers managed to climb aboard before one of the ropes snapped. The lifeboat’s prow fell free, spilling its occupants into the icy waters below. It swung wildly before crashing into the side of the other boat, which splintered at the sudden impact. Both boats tore away from the remaining ropes to plunge below.

  The Titanic gave another sickening l
urch. It seemed to twist as it rose into the night sky. Passengers tore past him, streaming towards the stairs that led to the poop deck, now level with the ship’s second funnel. From his vantage point he could see the starboard side. All the lifeboats were gone. The ship spread out beneath him. To either side, passengers were attempting to gain the poop deck. Some stood poised at various points along the railings. A few had already plunged into the polar depths in the desperate hope of gaining a lifeboat.

  The ship’s funnels were arrayed before him, angled rakishly towards the approaching waters, which washed the foredeck and swirled over the officers’ promenade. Crewmen were working on releasing the last of the collapsibles. A horde of passengers fell upon them and a frenzied mêlée broke out. The gunfire sounded like crackers. The bodies slipped in water and blood and were swept away with a final dismissive slap by the ocean.

  Wells looked away. He wrapped an arm about the stern rail and reached into his coat pocket. The cat clambered up his arm, seeking shelter in the folds of his coat near his collar.

  He glanced up at the clear black skies and the constellations winked back at him knowingly. All he’d managed to do was compound this night’s terrors and there were no more bargains to be made.

  Out to sea he saw a number of lifeboats scattered across the ocean’s expanse. Lanterns flickered, a mundane reflection of the panoply above. The ship’s stern twisted again and began to rise heavenwards. Wells grabbed the protesting cat and replaced it in his coat pocket. He took a firmer grip on the railing that seared his flesh with ice.

  A terrible grinding sound ensued from below. He could see it in his mind’s eye. Every unfixed object crashing forwards. Grand pianos tearing through elegantly papered walls. Plates, tables, chairs—people—hurtling into the chasm. The boilers would be shearing themselves from their fixtures, dropping through bulkhead after bulkhead till they finally ripped through the bow to pepper the ocean floor.

  The waters seethed as the great ship slowly began her corkscrew descent. He pressed himself into a tight ball, locking his legs under and around the railing. The world began to spin. The first of the ship’s funnels slapped into the roiling waters with a furious thunderclap. Two huge waves shot away from the descending funnel to sweep into the enlarging circle of waters and dissipate.

  Wells looked on in horror as he saw first one and then another of the lifeboats drift towards the forming maelstrom. The air was filled with one long scream. It was as if a new voice joined in as the previous one faltered, to continue the hellish, unbroken chorus of misery. His own throat felt hoarse and dry. He bit down hard on his lower lip. The taste of blood was bitter and thick in his mouth.

  The ship began to revolve faster, the ocean rising in great gulps to meet him. The second funnel snapped as it slammed into the water, sending a towering spume into the air. The two lifeboats began to circle rapidly in the spiralling ocean.

  The airborne mass of the great ship was now almost perpendicular with the boiling surface of the ocean. He swung himself back over the railing and gripped the ship’s metal floor, now almost upright. A deluge of passengers fell from the decks above, crashing into portions of the superstructure or plunging straight into the unforgiving waters.

  The Titanic began her final ear-splitting descent into the vortex she had created. She sliced into the heart of the whirlpool.

  As the last of the funnels smashed into the ocean he felt himself cast from the railing. Unsure if he jumped or fell, he tumbled through the air and landed in an icy explosion of pain. All was black. A million frozen needles speared him.

  He clawed at the razor-cold water, a seizure of blind movement that brought him spluttering to the surface. His coat billowed around him, dragging him down. He flailed wildly, finding purchase on a jagged piece of wood, a fragment from one of the shattered lifeboats. He scratched his way up the sodden flotsam and threw himself onto its widest portion, laid outstretched on the wooden shell, his feet dangling in the burning cold waters.

  He reached to his coat pocket and undid the flap. The cat’s waterlogged mass lay unstirring beneath his probing fingers. He raised his eyes to observe the Titanic’s stark silhouette, now entirely unlit, standing black against the cimmerian night.

  With a last protracted groan, she vanished into the churning waters.

  He felt the deathly cold rising to envelop him. It stole its way up nerve endings, through the hollow stems of his bones. The air was filled with a low keening sound. Around him, bodies bobbed and jerked in the ocean’s eddy amid the detritus of man’s boldest creation.

  His makeshift raft was moving faster now, caught up in the inexorable swirl of the mighty ship’s departure. His eyes stung with salt, his breaths were a concertina of stabbing gasps and wrenching hacks.

  He cleared the crest of the whirlpool’s eye and stared down into the abyss, his face frozen in a bare-toothed snarl. The black ocean’s wall broke down upon him. Thoughts were starbursts and he experienced them all in an engulfing whorl. That first night in the desert, his rude arrival in this era, and for the first time in memory he was no longer afraid. He thought of the mystic, Stead, and wondered what would happen next. But only briefly.

  X

  Dawn broke over the North Atlantic, transforming her still waters into a carpet of diamonds.

  Throughout the early hours of the morning, a few of the lifeboat passengers, communicating by shouts, cries and whistles, managed to locate one another. Their boats lay drifting, moored together by frail ice-encrusted ropes. Further out, rippled by the Titanic’s departure, other lifeboats lay scattered amid wide sheets of field ice and the flotsam of the great ship.

  The survivors spoke quietly amongst themselves, conversations punctuated by sobbing and soft moans of realisation. When not looking at one another, they cast their gaze at sodden feet on the damp lifeboat decks or out towards the glowing horizon. No one could bear to look at the bodies that bobbed to all sides in the gentle ocean’s swell.

  At around six-thirty that morning ship’s time, Wireless Operator Evans of the Californian finally received the news that had already raced around the world. The White Star liner Titanic, out of Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York, had struck an iceberg and foundered in the North Atlantic off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The coordinates marking her last known position put the ship less than thirty miles from the Californian’s current location.

  Evans rushed to the bridge to find Captain Stanley Lord, first officer Stewart, and second officer Stone in earnest conversation. He caught snatches of their words concerning the rockets that had been seen the previous night, before blurting out his own news.

  Captain Lord, eyes widening in horror, asked him to repeat the message. He then turned to his second officer.

  “Captain, they were white rockets. Not red. We thought there was some kind of party going on.”

  “At four o’clock in the morning?” Lord shook his head in disbelief. “Mr Evans, see if you can find out anything more. Mr Stewart, set a course for the Titanic’s last known position.”

  “What about the ice, sir?” Stewart stammered.

  “Set a sharp lookout and damn the ice, Mr Stewart.” White-faced, Lord continued barking commands as Stewart relayed the orders to the wheelhouse and engine room. “Summon the surgeon, the nursing staff, we’ll need plenty of blankets...”

  Throughout the ship, men ran to their posts as the Californian slowly inched its way out of the ice field and swung north. She caught up with two lifeboats within the first hour. Lord was on hand to greet the survivors. Apart from three of the Titanic’s crew, both lifeboats were occupied entirely by women. It took little over half an hour to secure the passengers.

  By the time they had resumed their course, Evans had brought the captain further news. The Mount Temple and La Provence had found more lifeboats to the north. Captain Rostron of the Carpathia had telegraphed that his vessel, was on its way.

  Lord stood at the bow railing, binoculars pressed firmly to his
eyes. As the morning’s mist thinned, burnt away by the encroaching sunlight, he saw first one and then another of the rescuing ships take form in the distance. As the Californian closed the gap between the vessels, evidence of the disaster became more apparent. Deckchairs and parasols, fragments of wood and children’s toys littered the surface of the ocean. After the first body was sighted, floating serenely face down among the wreckage, Lord ordered that all passengers be taken below decks.

  By early afternoon, the last of the lifeboats had been recovered. Captains Rostron and Lord stood on the forwards deck of the Carpathia. All up they had located eleven of the Titanic’s original sixteen lifeboats and two of the four collapsibles. The five remaining lifeboats appeared to have been lost with the wreck. Of the two-thousand-two-hundred-and-twenty people thought to have been aboard the Titanic only five-hundred-and-twenty-four had been rescued. Search parties from the Carpathia and Californian had sifted among the bodies that rose and fell in the frozen waters. The crews of the rowboats returned, ashen and pale. Not one of the bodies they had recovered had shown any sign of life.

  “And what did Ismay have to say?” Lord asked.

  Bruce Ismay, president of the White Star Line, had been brought aboard the Carpathia in one of the last lifeboats to be found.

  “Not much, actually. Asked me to contact the White Star offices in New York. Arrange matters with them. Hasn’t spoken to anyone since. Says he would like to be left alone, if possible. He’s currently in my stateroom with the doctor.”

  Lord nodded in response.

  “By the time I contacted the New York office they had already spoken to my superiors at Cunard,” Rostron continued. “They have come to some arrangement. I’ve been asked to bring the survivors back to New York.”

  “Cunard wishes to be magnanimous in its support, I suppose,” Lord said.

  “Precisely.”

  “Sirs?” They were interrupted by Bisset, the Carpathia’s second officer, who’d arrived unnoticed on the boat deck. “We’ve found five more survivors on one of the collapsibles.”