by catt dahman
Freeze fell to the ground as the frog came away in his hands. He tossed it to the floor where Perkis finished smashing it. Scrambling on his hands and knees, Freeze got to Everett and turned him over. He held back a scream as he saw that the man’s face was gone. The eyes, lips, cheeks, nose, and all of the flesh were eaten away as if tiny mouths and teeth had been at work. Everett’s skull showed beneath the blood.
To their horror, Everett made a ghastly keening sound deep within his throat. Perkis clenched his jaw, removed his big knife, and slid it across the man’s throat, ending his agony. He used a sheet to cover the man’s face and body. “God forgive me and have mercy upon our souls.”
“Mr. Perkis?” Smyth called down, “Are you all right, Sir?”
“We will be up in a second. Keep your eyes open for any problems or irregularities.” Perkis caught Freeze’s shoulder. “What I did…there was nothing to be done for him. I felt it was best to set him free of his agony and fear.”
“I understand, Mr. Perkis. It was an act of mercy.”
Perkis and Freeze ran to the ladder to ascend, and they slammed the hatch closed. If a monster frog could be in a jeweled box, another could be anywhere, just waiting to attack them. “He was attacked and killed,” Perkis told the other two men, “we must be careful, and we cannot stay aboard if there are dangers.”
“We are so tired, Sir. We’re exhausted,” Smyth said.
Perkis looked at him curiously. In the space of a few moments while they were below deck, Smyth’s skin thinned, age spots appeared, and heavy lines filled his face. He looked as if he had aged twenty-five years. Perkis asked the men to come over to his side of the vessel as he eyed the mist.
The wispy mist still floated upon that side around the chair where Compton sat and Smyth stood.
Smyth reached a hand over to awaken the other man, reaching for his shoulder, “Time to wake, old boy.”
Compton was slumped over and to one side, curled up in the chair. As Smyth pulled at him, Compton fell from the chair and onto the deck. He looked a hundred years old or older, his face a mask of wrinkles and dark spots, his athletic body petite and frail. It was if something had sucked his youth, vitality, and life force from his body. If he were alive, they could not tell.
“Get away from the mist, Smyth.”
Smyth was retching and moaning as he saw Compton. His bones ached, and he felt his knees popping as he walked. Freeze gave him a hand, “Come along now.”
“What has happened to him, Sir?” Smyth asked.
“I cannot even guess.”
“Is he alive?”
“If he is, he will not be in a minute more,” Perkis said.
As they made their way to the stern again, Perkis looked at the water below, illuminated by the golden mist. Far away, he heard thundering, clunking footsteps. What creature might make such a loud noise, he could not imagine.
“Mr. Perkis, please hurry,” Maddy Astor called.
“On our way, Ma’am.”
The behemoth must be unbelievably large to make such loud footsteps; it trumpeted a bellow that was so deep that they actually felt the sound deep within their bones. All three men fell to the deck as their legs gave way. Many more bellows and their bones would compress into dust.
Perkis crawled.
He climbed hand over hand down the rope, knowing that if the monster let loose with another call, he would fall, but he made it into the lifeboat. “Prepare to row, and row fast, ladies.”
Smyth began his descent. Body smaller, his clothing flapped on him, and he looked down to show sunken cheeks. Before their eyes, his hair turned grey, then faded to white, then fell out, blowing away on the breeze. His pate was covered in age spots.
“What is happening?” one of the women asked.
“I do not have any idea, Ma’am, but whatever it is on this ship, it is evil. This Mary or Marie whatever is filled with evil straight up from hell itself,” Perkis told them. “It took the people onboard and my men, and if we do not hurry, it will take us as well.”
Smyth was like an eighty-year-old man, trying to manage a rope. His gnarled hands could not manage the rope, and he lost his grip, falling into the water below. Everyone looked at the spot, ready to yank him to safety, but he did not surface; instead a blossom of deep red bubbled merrily to the surface, causing several of the women to scream and cry hysterically.
Perkis, although sick over the loss, could not imagine the reaction from the women had they seen the frog eat the face from Everett or had they seen what became of poor Compton.
Perkin untied the boat, yelling for Freeze to hurry down the rope. Freeze was half way down when something massive lunged between the boats and plucked Freeze from the rope as it swam on.
Perkis blinked as everyone on the boat screamed. What he saw was impossible. He had been a sailor a long time ago, and although he had seen whales, dolphins, and large sharks, what he saw now was unbelievable. It was the most muscular, heavy, old shark that he had ever seen.
It had eaten Freeze.
“Row,” Perkis yelled, “everyone, if you want to live, row for your life.”
He knew deep in his gut that if they did not hurry, they too would be part of the mist, and either live or die, but endlessly be a part of it. The mist was a universe with power, and it was exceptionally greedy and very, very hungry. The things that were part of it were terrible.
Her cheeks flushed with activity, Maddy Astor rowed and shouted in a loud, commanding voice that they had to row hard, “Row, ladies, row. We can do this.”
In a few minutes, they were at the edge of the mist, and while the shark circled them, he did not molest them. As soon as they were past the mist, they felt a weight lift from their chests, and they could breathe very easily. The trepidation and wretchedness that they felt lifted. Along the way, there were bodies, some clinging to pieces of wood or chairs, but all were frozen, dead, and frosted over. The people, hard like ice, bumped against the lifeboat.
A woman, sitting atop a floating table precariously, managed to moan. She was so far gone that she could not raise her hands or arms, but she slid her almost frozen eyes over the boat and pleaded silently for them to help her.
They pulled alongside her and carefully pulled her to the boat.
A few women fainted, and everyone aboard screamed when her frozen arm broke off above the elbow when they pulled her aboard. Staring at the place her arm had been, she felt no pain since she was numb. The women struggled to understand what had happened.
The others pulled her on board and covered her as best they could; Hemming fashioned a tourniquet for her arm in case she warmed up, but he did not think she would survive.
He shook his head, “I do not know what else I can do. It may be better if she never awakens to the pain she will feel when…if she warms.”
Perkis nodded and set the arm and hand on the bottom of the boat under a seat. As they rowed beyond the mist and ice field, they cried and mourned the woman’s predicament, but forgot all about Freeze, Smyth, Compton, and Everett as if they had never been rescued. Instead they focused on the ten others they had pulled from the water and who remained alive in the boat.
Six of them pulled from the sea would survive.
Although Maddy Astor had no memory of the shark and the men who had died, she kept the flush to her cheeks as she and Mr. Perkis commanded the lifeboat, and she had not only a purpose, but people depended upon her to think logically and act quickly and decisively. It might have been the pregnancy, but Mrs. Astor glowed, her voice was no longer meek and quiet, and she trusted her judgments.
Some died.
Some were reborn.
Chapter Twelve : Boat B
Collapsible Boat B was never launched since there was no time. The ship settled deeper into the water, and in turn the water washed over the deck, releasing the boat so that it landed right atop Harold Bride. He grasped the seats, terrified of being pulled down in the suction when the ship plunged to its watery grave.
When the funnel collapsed, crushing many swimmers, it sent out a wave that washed the capsized boat and Bride away from the danger and into the midst of hundreds of swimmers, trying to find a way out of the sea. Officers Lightoller and Wilde dove from the deck just before it went under. As the funnel fell and caused the large wave, they washed almost two hundred feet away from the wreckage.
Lightoller reached Boat B and found Bride crawling from under the boat. “Glad to see you, Bride,” Lightoller said as he took charge, “we need to get atop the boat and out of this freezing water. Make haste.”
Bride and Lightoller climbed aboard the hull. They pulled a Titanic cook, baker, steward, and engine trimmer to the hull with them. Lightoller looked all around, “Do you see Murdoch? Where is Wilde? Where is the Captain?”
Jefferies, from third class, climbed aboard, “My lifebelt was falling apart, it was and Mr. Murdoch, there in the water, took off his own and snapped it about me. He saved my life, he did.”
“Murdoch,” Lightoller yelled. With the water so cold, a person would go numb and not be able to swim; Murdoch would have had less than five minutes before he drown. Lightoller took a precious second to think of his fellow officer with fondness and regret. “And Wilde?”
The next man shed some light on the whereabouts of the First Officer, “I saw Mr. Wilde swimming, but he wasn’t getting far, and he was muttering about how cold he was. I heard a gunshot, Sir; I did not look, and I do not know. If he used his gun, I would not call him a coward, Sir, but only say that he took a faster pathway to Heaven than the rest of the poor bastards in the water have.”
They pulled several more aboard, all classes. When they had more than thirty-five, Lightoller, with sad eyes and a disconsolate manner, said softly that they could take no more unless it was the Murdoch, Wilde, or the Captain. “We’ve no choice. If we take more aboard, we will all die.” It was his job to save as many men as possible. He would give his own life for the men.
“It won’t be Captain Smith, Sir. I watched him standing proudly in the bridge, and there he remained, like a true captain. He almost went down with her, Sir, but dove into the cold water at the last second.”
Lightoller, a man not prone to emotional outbursts, nevertheless, had to wipe his eyes. He ordered the men to paddle, using their hands, for if the swimmers all grabbed onto the over turned boat, they would fall into the water and die.
All around them, men begged for help. It hurt Lightoller’s soul not to help them.
“I am sorry. We cannot take on any more. We will find another boat and send them to help,” Lightoller said.
A man, freezing in the water, called back, “I understand. Godspeed, boy and God bless.”
Lightoller had a sudden vision that the man who had just spoken was Captain Smith.
“Captain? Captain Smith?”
“Godspeed.” The voice was farther away.
Lightoller knew it had been his Captain. He stood on the over turned boat and wept.
Mr. Gracie cried unashamedly. His father was a brigadier general with the Confederate States Army and fought in the Battle of Chickamauga. He died in The War in Virginia, and Mr. Gracie had just finished writing a book about his father and the bloody battle. As a treat, he left his family at home and did a grand tour of Europe and was headed back to his home in Alabama when tragedy struck the ship.
That night he escorted single ladies to the lifeboats, helped Lightoller hold off men who wanted to take over the boats, convinced Lightoller to allow a thirteen-year-old boy to get into a lifeboat, cut the ropes holding the collapsible boats, and more.
When the ship sank, he held on to a ladder and was drawn down deep. His ears ached with the water pressure. He let go, grasping his ears, popped to the surface, and found a crate that he clung to until he reached the overturned boat. He didn’t know how he had survived so far, and the pain was so exquisite; he wondered if it were what he wanted.
“Bride, was QED sent? Did anyone answer?”
“Yessir, Mr. Lightoller. It was sent as ordered. We had many responses, Sir. The Carpathia is closest and will be here in about four hours.”
“Four?” Lightoller almost wept again with despair. How could he rally these men to hang on that long?
Forcing himself to concentrate on the situation, he designed a plan so that everyone faced the bow and lined up in two columns. They were told to counteract the swells and waves, using their legs in unison. “We may not be dry, but we will survive.”
“Concentrate, like Mr. Lightoller said,” Gracie encouraged.
Jack Thayer, only eighteen, was relieved to be on the lifeboat, as he had not expected to survive when he stood on the deck with over a thousand people, listening to the band play a waltz.
For the most part, people had been calm. First class passengers sat calmly on the deck chairs, second class gathered in small groups, and third class walked about aimlessly, dazed. A priest was surrounded by about a hundred who listened as he gave last rites.
Jack visited with friends he had made, and finally he and a friend decided to jump into the water and swim so as not to be sucked down when the Titanic went down. He had not imagined the pain of the ice water.
He was shocked when the ship split apart but glad he was not on the bow that plunged first. He was then glad he wasn’t on the stern when it tilted at a seventy-degree angle and everyone slid several hundred feet to the water and broke bones. When he saw Boat B, he was hopeful for the first time since he had discovered the ship was sinking.
“Mr. Lightoller, does that look right to you?”
“Eh?”
“That there. Afore and port, Sir. See that?”
Lightoller strained to make out what he was seeing. Familiar with the sea and its life, he thought it looked to be a dorsal fin, followed by a caudal fin, but the distance was wrong. The measurements were wrong, unless it was a whale that had appeared. How curious to see a whale at the shipwreck.
“It is eating those men,” Harold Bride moaned, “Mr. Lightoller? Why is it doing that? Do whales eat people? They do not, do they?”
Lightoller was about to snap back that it was not eating anyone, but as he watched, the fish ate another. The megaladon swam around, scooping up men like tiny morsels and sometimes biting them before swallowing, but other times just ingesting them whole.
When the leviathan turned and came towards them, he breached the surface, showing off his tooth-filled mouth.
“Holy Mother of God, Mr. Lightoller, that ain’t a whale,” Bride shouted.
“It’s a giant shark, men. Stay alert, and keep using your legs to keep us afloat. So far, he is just after the dead and dying and not looking at us. If he does notice us, he may be only curious. Do not panic and falter, men.” Lightoller’s voice was even and calm, as always, and he rallied all the men.
Those men, about to panic, took pause, relaxing under Lightoller’s orders.
The wake from a wave, caused by the giant beast, caused them to struggle. Jefferies lost his footing and slid off the overturned boat.
“Swim, Sir, and we shall get you back aboard,” Gracie called.
Before the man could get more than a yard, the devilish fish swam by and gulped him down, biting first so that blood stained the water red-black against the regular black of the sea.
Several men cried out, and a few prayed loudly.
“Damned fish,” Lightoller cursed, “is playing games. Stay alert, I say. Don’t lose your head.”
One of the few women they had rescued watched the fin circling; instead of concentrating, she lost her balance, and she fell, taking a steward with her as she flailed her arms, “No, oh, help me.”
Lightoller, Bride, and Gracie prepared to yank both to safety, but again, the shark found them first, swallowing them whole. Lightoller would have sworn under oath the shark grinned maliciously at him. “Ye son of a bitch. Ye fecking coward, face me when I have a harpoon, and let us see who makes it out alive.”
Several c
heered Lightoller.
Eugene Daly, who often entertained third class passengers with his uilleann pipes and caused impromptu parties deep in Steerage and who took care of unescorted, fellow Irish-women spoke up, “It was not Mr. Murdoch who saved Mr. Jefferies but another officer, I believe. On the deck, Mr. Murdoch was a hero and made sure the ladies were aboard the lifeboats. When he was rushed, he shot two men dead for being cowards and bully-boys.”
“Good for him,” Gracie said.
Daly went on, “We waited a bit, and then after a while, I heard another shot. Mr. Murdoch, it was. I did not see him myself, but everyone said Mr. Murdoch did not want to go into the freezing water, and he felt a mighty guilt at the orders he gave for the ship. But for his orders, he said we might have missed the berg.”
“He did what the Captain or I would have done. He was not at fault,” Lightoller said.
“Most assuredly he wasn’t. I wish he had made it as he was a good man, but how he must have feared the pain of the icy water. I can understand that. I would rather depart this life than go into the water again,” Daly said.
Daly grabbed a man next to him and kept him from falling.
“Thank you,” the man said.
“Maybe it was not Mr. Murphy but someone else. Maybe he is aboard another boat and safe. I sorely hope so.”
“Maybe the Captain as well,” someone suggested.
“Maybe,” Lightoller felt a pain in his chest and throat as he answered. He would not tell the others they had left the Captain back in the water to perish. He didn’t have a lifebelt.
At the stern, two slipped off at once, hitting their heads as they fell. One was knocked unconscious. The other one kicked and fought to get back in the lifeboat, and they pulled him back up alongside them. Besides being wet and cold again, he was all right. The man who was knocked out floated a while and maybe drowned, but it was a few minutes before the megaladon scooped him up.
