Unsinkable

by Gordon Korman

  “He’s an important man,” Daniel insisted. “If nothing else, we can ask his advice.” He turned to the guard at the shipyard gate. “My name is Daniel Sullivan. Mr. Thomas Andrews is expecting me and my friend.”

  The man checked his list, then regarded Daniel suspiciously. “You’re Daniel Sullivan? Can you prove it?”

  “He knows something important about the Titanic,” Paddy chimed in. “He’s brought sketches to show Mr. Andrews.”

  The man looked doubtful. “Well, all right,” he said finally. “Mr. Andrews is aboard the ship right now, supervising the loading of stores. She’s just back from sea trials, and a right lovely job she made of it, too.” He smiled. “You can’t miss her. She’s the big one with the four funnels.”

  They started toward the wharf. If the Titanic dominated Belfast’s silhouette, at Harland and Wolff she stood out like a mountain range. The boys needed no directions to find her at her slip. As they made their way through the lineup of delivery wagons, they had to crane their necks to see the top of her mast and towering smokestacks. Yet despite her impressive height, the truly incredible dimension was her length — nearly 900 feet, a full sixth of a mile. Stood on end, she would have almost reached the top of the Eiffel Tower, the tallest man-made structure in the world.

  At water level, the main gangway was so much lower than the gleaming upper decks that it seemed more like a pathway under the great ship than an entrance. It was crowded with dockworkers carrying equipment and bales of material aboard. At the bow, a huge hydraulic crane was loading the larger and heavier gear and provisions.

  “When are they leaving?” Paddy wondered aloud.

  Daniel noted the position of the sun low in the sky. “Soon. We have to find Mr. Andrews right away.”

  It happened so suddenly that Paddy could barely remember it afterward. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of houndstooth fabric. And then the shillelagh came down across his back, knocking the breath from his body. It was not pain so much as an explosion and an overwhelming force slamming him to the wharf. He heard blows falling elsewhere, and tried to see what was happening. All he could make out through the waves of nausea were several pairs of scrambling legs and big rough boots. Gilhooley’s men?

  Where’s Daniel?

  He heard his friend cry out. “Run, Paddy!”

  He tried, but his legs were jelly and would not support his weight. He crawled across the weathered planks of the wharf, waiting for the shillelagh’s next blow, the one that would kill him.

  Running feet pounded across the dock, and a voice yelled, “You take your thuggery elsewhere!”

  “Gilhooley’s the name!” came the reply. “If you’ll mind your own business, my brother and I will be much obliged!”

  To Paddy’s dismay, the Harland and Wolff employee retreated. He and Daniel were at the mercy of men who had no mercy.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BELFAST

  TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 1912, 4:40 P.M.

  A large object blocked Paddy’s way. He reached for it, and his hand ripped through thick brown paper. Inside was something white and very soft. Sheets and blankets, Irish linens as feathery as clouds. Without even thinking, he rolled over sideways and wriggled his way into the bale, praying to heaven above that no one had seen his escape.

  All at once, there was a cry of terror from Daniel, followed by the crack of the shillelagh striking something hard.

  Paddy shifted inside his cocoon and peered out to see a dozen papers borne on the wind. One of them slapped against the bale, and he reached out and pulled it in. The four smokestacks jumped out at him immediately. It was one of Daniel’s Titanic sketches! His friend never would have let go of these unless he couldn’t hang on any longer.

  Paddy began to struggle madly in an effort to free himself of the tight embrace of the linens. In a part of his mind, he understood that he had no chance of prevailing against a group of brutal Gilhooley gangsters. Yet at that moment, it seemed preferable to emerge and be murdered rather than leave Daniel to die alone.

  As he wriggled and thrashed to disengage himself, his body felt a lurch that put his stomach down at his toes. And then the bale of linens lifted from the dock and rose straight up into the air.

  He was so totally astonished that, for several terrifying seconds, he was sure that he was being plucked from danger by the hand of God. The reality came to him slowly as the foredeck of the Titanic hove into view.

  I’m being loaded onto the ship along with the cargo!

  But where was Daniel?

  He tried to push his head farther out of the bale to gaze beyond the blowing wrapping paper, but it was no use. He couldn’t see the wharf. Not unless he wanted to risk falling and splashing his brains all over their brand-new deck.

  Frantically, he managed to turn himself around and burrow to the other side of the bale. He punched through the wrapping paper and looked down at the dock. There was no sign of Daniel or Gilhooley’s men. The only evidence that they had ever been there was a dark stain on the planking.

  Blood.

  Daniel’s blood.

  Even when he’d left his village, his mother, his sisters, and everything he’d ever known, Paddy had not wept the way he now sobbed into the linens that had hidden him and preserved his life.

  Daniel was dead. Paddy’s fourteen years had been no garden party, but most of his pleasant memories had something to do with Daniel Sullivan. And now his friend was gone, murdered by Kevin Gilhooley and his men.

  It never would have happened if I’d listened to Daniel and not tried to spend that banknote. Now he’s dead, and it’s my fault as surely as if I’d swung the shillelagh myself!

  He felt the paper in his hand. The sketch — Daniel’s last. He folded it and placed it inside his shirt, next to his heart.

  It was peculiar — alone in the world, marked by murderous gangsters, dangling from a crane 30 feet above the deck of a luxury steamship, it wasn’t until that moment that the obvious question occurred to Paddy: What’s to become of me?

  One thing was clear: Whatever the White Star Line, or the shipyard guards, or the Belfast police, or even Kevin Gilhooley had in mind for him, it would be no more than he deserved for causing the death of his best friend.

  Yet self-preservation was as strong in him as a beating heart. He had not walked halfway across Ireland, had not survived by wits alone in a cruel city, to give up now.

  The thump of the linen bundle on Titanic’s deck spurred him to action. With a quick look in every direction he could see, he squirmed out of the bale and hit the polished hardwood running. He dashed through an obstacle course of weights and counterweights of various sizes and flattened himself against the housing of a cargo hatch. He peered down and almost lost his purloined meat pie from sheer vertigo. It was at least a 90-foot drop.

  Two cast-iron spiral staircases twirled their way to the bottom, exiting at different deck levels. Paddy stepped onto one of them — and froze. He felt rather than heard the footfalls of someone far below climbing up, and retreated to the deserted foredeck.

  Beneath the crow’s nest, he scampered down a companion stairway to the well deck, and then darted for the immaculate white superstructure. As soon as his worn boots hit the first-class passageway, he was aware of a strange feeling, as if he were running in molasses. It was the carpet — so plush, so thick, that you sank down nearly to the ankles. Paddy had never slept on anything so soft, much less used it just for walking.

  The walls — bulkheads — were covered with paneling, freshly painted gleaming white, and dotted with polished brass electric lamps. And, thought Paddy — though he was hardly an expert — the framed pictures looked expensive.

  A cabin door stood ajar, and he peeked inside to make sure it was empty. His breath caught in his throat. He had never been to Buckingham Palace, but he could not have imagined that it would be more lavish than this: brass canopy bed, plush velvet draperies, silk wallpaper, vaulted ceiling, delicate furniture, and elegant
French doors that opened onto a private promenade deck.

  It was hard to believe that the dilapidated, filthy print shop he and Daniel had shared existed on the same planet as this place.

  Out the window — a real one, not just a porthole — the buildings and church spires of Belfast stood tall before the surrounding hills. The city had been his home for more than a year. But with Daniel gone, it meant nothing to him. Besides, he couldn’t stay there. Gilhooley’s men would find him sooner or later. If not tomorrow, then next week, or the week after that.

  So here he was, aboard a floating city — and a much nicer version than the one on the other side of the window.

  His mind was made up on the spot. On a ship this size, with room for thousands of passengers and crew, who would notice one little stowaway looking for a better life?

  He was going to America.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  OVER THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 1912, 8:20 A.M.

  The waves of the Channel glittered in the early morning sun like diamonds.

  Not that Juliana Glamm noticed it. At this moment, no subject occupied Juliana’s mind other than the safety of the Sopwith aeroplane that carried her and her father a thousand feet above the rocky coastline.

  Aeroplane! A glorified kite would be more like it! The biplane was barely more than fabric stretched tightly over a flimsy wooden framework. The slightest puff of breeze sent it reeling. What kept it up in the sky was understood only by a — so far — merciful God.

  “She has to be light, Julie,” her father had explained. “It’s all based on the science of aerodynamics.”

  Juliana held on to her leather seat strap, which was the only thing keeping her tethered to this flying machine. Her father, the seventeenth Earl of Glamford, knew less than nothing about science. His area of expertise tended toward activities that landed him on the society pages — polo, pugilism, gambling, and, now, aviation.

  The only part of this flying handkerchief that was remotely substantial was the motor, which was fixed between the double wings, roaring and vibrating, the propeller twirling in front of it. Even this was not particularly reassuring, since the craft was so overweighted toward the front that a nosedive seemed inevitable. At fifteen years of age, Juliana was far too young to be expected to sacrifice her life just because Papa wanted to be a twentieth-century pioneer.

  She craned her neck to look back at her father in the pilot’s seat. “When are we going back?” she called over the engine’s buzz.

  He grinned at her beneath his goggles. “I have a little surprise for you!”

  She was wind-battered, terrified, choking on exhaust fumes, nauseated by the bouncing motion, and possibly part deaf from the noise. Her long hair, she was certain, was crushed and limp under her aviator’s hood. Who knew how long it would take to brush it out again? This — her first-ever aeroplane ride — was surely surprise enough for today.

  But one simply didn’t say those things to Rodney, Earl of Glamford. He was a man accustomed to doing as he pleased. Lady Glamm, his long-suffering wife, had given up on trying to cool his passion for gambling and outrageous hobbies. What chance did their fifteen-year-old daughter stand?

  She made the mistake of looking down. They were over the rugged coastline now. Gone was the possibility of a soft water landing on the aeroplane’s pontoons. If anything went wrong here, they would crash into the chalky gray cliffs.

  “Are you sure this is safe?” Juliana asked. “What if the engine stops?”

  “As long as there’s petrol, the engine doesn’t stop,” came the reply. Her father took his hand from the stick momentarily to point past the circular shadow made by the whirling propeller. “There, my girl. Take a gander!”

  Ahead of them, the dramatic shoreline flattened out, and in the distance, the city of Southampton crept from its bustling seaport onto the English coast.

  “What? The town?” The houses looked like matchboxes, the harbor a tiny crisscross of docks.

  And then the ship came into focus. At first glance, she looked like just another small boat — until Juliana realized how far away she was. At least a mile. No, several miles. She counted the smokestacks — one … two … three … four.

  “Is that —?”

  “The RMS Titanic, just down from Belfast last night,” the earl finished, his grin so wide that it threatened to split his face in two.

  In a week’s time, Juliana and her father would be a part of the Titanic’s maiden voyage, sailing to New York to meet with an associate of Papa’s — a man who owned several oil wells in a place called Texas. Gushers, he called them. Such a vulgar word. In truth, the whole thing seemed rather vulgar to Juliana, smelling strongly of the shop. Why would her father rub elbows with a man who drilled holes in the ground, no matter how wealthy he happened to be?

  But just as it was futile to predict the patterns of weather that brought, alternately, torrential rain and parching drought to the family’s estate outside London, so was it to attempt to understand the mind of the seventeenth Earl of Glamford.

  “Isn’t she beautiful, Julie?” her father crowed.

  That she was. And vast. As the biplane drew nearer, the Titanic’s sheer size began to reveal itself. Her immense black hull seemed more like an offshore island than anything man-made. And what an island! Sleek and very long, with a polished deck that shined nearly as bright as the whitecaps, topped by a gleaming superstructure that was, by itself, one of the largest and most modern buildings in the world.

  “Shall we go for a closer look?” Her father pushed forward on the yoke, and suddenly, they were falling.

  No, not falling — diving, the circle formed by the propeller’s motion fixed on the Titanic far below.

  “Papa!” Juliana wheeled around to stare in horror at the pilot’s seat behind her. Her father’s expression was pure bliss.

  Juliana felt her ears pop and pop again as the great ship grew larger and larger. By the time they were within 200 feet of the mast, her astounding length filled Juliana’s field of vision. On the poop deck, a terrified dockworker was waving and bellowing.

  A common laborer shouting at Rodney Glamm as if the earl were a lunatic escaped from an asylum! Juliana would have been offended — if she hadn’t toyed with the thought herself more than once.

  And still their wild descent continued.

  The earl was in his glory. “What do you say we provide the men with a little entertainment?”

  Father and daughter swooped down over the pride of the White Star Line until they were perhaps 50 feet above the top of the Titanic’s gigantic smokestacks. Just when Juliana was sure they were about to be dashed to bits, her father pulled back on the stick to bring the aeroplane out of its dive. The craft shook for a moment and then leveled off, taking them directly over the four funnels.

  All at once, a deep roar assailed her ears, and a blast of torrid air exploded from the forward stack. Juliana’s lungs filled with smoke. She began to cough convulsively. The world around them disappeared, replaced by an acrid black cloud.

  But that was not the part that terrified her.

  The flying machine dropped, sucked into the down-draft. Frantically, the earl wrestled with the stick in a desperate attempt to pilot the small craft out of harm’s way. The biplane heeled over on its side, the double wing passing within a few feet of a catastrophic collision. Juliana saw the enormous smokestack swinging up at her, a giant swatting at a pesky insect. Then, just as suddenly, the pilot regained control, and they climbed out of danger, soaring up and away from the Titanic and Southampton.

  Even the swashbuckling Earl of Glamford was shaken by the near miss. “Well, that was a bit of excitement, wasn’t it, Julie?”

  Juliana held on to the seat strap until the thumping of her heart slowed to the point where she could resume breathing. She peered longingly over her shoulder at the immense bulk of the Titanic, dominating the seaport and the English coast.

  The rock-solid deck
of the largest ocean liner in the world — right now, that seemed like a pretty safe place to Juliana Glamm.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SOUTHAMPTON

  SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 1912, 1:45 P.M.

  Rich people were mad as March hares.

  Of course, Paddy had not met very many wealthy people except to reach into their pockets. But the gymnasium provided for the first-class passengers aboard the Titanic was enough to prove that the swells were barmy.

  There was a bicycle that was mounted on a stand so the wheels never touched the deck. You could pedal until your legs turned to gruel and not move a single inch.

  If I was lucky enough never to have to lift a finger in my life, I wouldn’t build some fancy contraption to make me just as tired as everybody else, that’s for certain!

  He had been sleeping on the exercise mats in the gymnasium’s equipment locker for the past four nights — ever since the cargo crane had deposited him aboard the ship. He hadn’t planned on being here, but he had to admit it wasn’t a bad life. Only a skeleton crew had sailed the Titanic down from Belfast, so Paddy had the largest ocean liner in the world pretty much to himself.

  Living on the nearly empty Titanic was a sight easier than trying to survive on the cruel streets of Belfast. There was plenty of food in the galley, and judging from the size of the cavernous pantries and iceboxes, there was going to be a whole lot more — enough to feed an army. Why, when these shelves were full, even Mrs. O’Dell’s meat pies would seem like the meager scraps he and Daniel used to scrounge from dustbins.

  Daniel. Just the name was enough to suck the air out of Paddy, and to turn this glittering dream ship into the black dust of the coal that powered her. Daniel was gone, murdered by the Gilhooleys, leaving Paddy with his heartbreak and a string of “if onlys.” If only he had chosen a different pocket to pick; if only he hadn’t tried to spend that banknote; if only Daniel had been there to talk some sense into him, instead of back in their print shop home, trying to devise a way to sink the Titanic for Thomas Andrews.