Survival Tails_The Titanic

by Katrina Charman

  Mutt turned to King Leon. “What was that all about?” he asked, wondering if Clara had found them and was on the prowl.

  King Leon frowned and glanced back and forth along the corridor, his tail stump twitching as though he didn’t know whether to stay or go after them. “I’m not sure. They’re not Brooklyn rats, so I couldn’t understand what they were trying to say, but…” His whiskers twitched in the air. “Remember what I told you? About rats sensing danger?”

  Mutt nodded, an uneasy feeling rising in his stomach. “But there isn’t any danger, is there?” he asked.

  “Wait here,” King Leon said, heading in the opposite direction to the other rats, despite what he’d said. “I’m going to investigate.”

  CHAPTER 13

  CLARA

  Sunday, April 14, 1912

  11:35 PM

  Clara padded silently along the deserted promenade deck, thinking about what the dog, Mutt, had asked. What would she do with the kittens when they reached land? If she turned them over to the humans, they might be separated, or worse. Maybe she could keep an eye on them on the return trip to Southampton and then see if she could find their mother? Clara wasn’t sure, though, whether they’d found their way onto the ship in England or at one of their stops in France or Ireland. They might even have come from the shipyard where the Titanic was built in Ireland—that could explain how they’d gotten into the lifeboats. Clara shook her head to herself. The chances of the kittens ever finding their mother again were slim at best. Besides, all kittens left their mother sooner or later and had to learn to fend for themselves. It had been that way for Clara, and look at her now—a captain’s cat on the finest ship in the world!

  But… she thought, the kittens still weren’t old enough or strong enough to fare well on their own on the streets, especially without a grown cat to teach them how to scavenge and hunt… and fight if they had to. Perhaps she might be able to somehow convince the captain to bring the kittens home with him? Maybe if she showed that she could be a kind of surrogate mother—or kitten-sitter, that would be better—and that they would be no trouble. There would be no more long trips on the ocean to consider, so that wouldn’t pose a problem, and the captain had more than enough space to accommodate them all. Clara decided to think on it some more over the coming days. Maybe before they docked, she would introduce the kittens to the captain. She could even go so far as to try to convince him that they were her own. Surely he wouldn’t abandon them then?

  Clara continued toward the bow, slinking past the few remaining first-class passengers—all men—playing cards and drinking in the smoking room. Most passengers had already retired for the night, as had the captain after a lengthy dinner held in his honor. The temperature had drastically dropped in the last couple of hours. Ice had begun forming on the windows, and many of the passengers who had been sunning themselves on the deck only that afternoon were now huddled inside their cabins to keep warm. The cold didn’t bother Clara much. She’d been on enough voyages and had seen her way through enough storms to be hardier than most of the crew, let alone the fragile humans—especially the first-class passengers and their dogs, with their weak constitutions.

  But then, Clara was unlike most cats, too. Most cats she had met wouldn’t dare go near the water, let alone willingly sail across the ocean numerous times a month. Few would be suitable to be a ship’s cat. Clara, however, felt as if she’d been born to live on the water. She couldn’t imagine a life away from the ocean—the gentle, almost hypnotic sound of the waves lapping against the hull; the sweet tang of salt on the air; the gulls who called out to her when they were close to shore, welcoming her home. Clara was looking forward to spending her final days with her master on solid ground, but she would miss moments like these, when she was free to wander the decks as though the vast ship belonged only to her and she was queen of the waves.

  Clara looked up at the night sky. It was close to midnight—the time some humans called the witching hour, and the time when, on many voyages, Clara had seen the spectacle of colored lights playing in the sky like silk ribbons dancing on the wind, tempting her to chase them.

  Tonight, though, there were no such lights. No moon, either. The sky was the clearest Clara had ever seen it, dotted with what seemed like a million twinkling stars. The sea, too, was just as clear and still. So clear that it was difficult to make out where the sky ended and the ocean began. There was no crest of a wave, no swell or imperfection ruffling its surface. It stretched out in front of the ship for miles as though they were sailing across an endless piece of polished glass at the very ends of the earth.

  Clara decided that it was quiet enough for her to return to the kittens and bring them to the galley, where they might scrounge some scraps. The galley staff sometimes worked late into the night, but one of the chefs had taken a liking to Clara, and she knew he would turn a blind eye to her if she needed him to. As she moved toward the stairwell, something rising above the water’s surface in the distance caught her eye. The smallest glimpse of something out of the ordinary—like an imperfection in her vision. Something that moved and grew, slowly taking shape before her as it rose from the very depths of the ocean floor like a monster made entirely from ice.

  An iceberg.

  But this one was unlike anything Clara had seen before—usually, icebergs were easy to spot, reflecting the moonlight like beacons upon the water, but tonight there was no moon and so the iceberg appeared as black as the night itself. It was only her heightened ability to see in the dark that had enabled her to pick it out to begin with.

  It loomed directly in the Titanic’s path as the ship sailed onward. Clara’s fur prickled with fear. They were sailing too fast. They had to turn! Where was the warning bell from the lookouts? Why were the officers on the bridge not taking action and changing course?

  Closer and closer, they sailed toward the iceberg. Toward danger.

  Clara realized that she might be the ship’s only hope. She shook away her fear and paused for a fraction of a second, unsure whether she should go directly to the bridge to alert the officers or to the crow’s nest. If the captain was on duty, she knew he would take notice, but his officers dismissed her as nothing more than a glorified ratcatcher and would likely just shoo her away. She was already closer to the crow’s nest than the bridge, so she decided to head to the lookouts.

  She raced to the bottom of the crow’s nest, which stood fifteen feet high, extending in a semicircle toward the bow of the ship. Clara leaned her head back to try to catch a glimpse of the lookouts; then she glanced out into the ocean. Any longer and it would be too late—if they continued dead ahead, they would almost certainly hit the iceberg directly.

  Clara entered the hollow mast that led to the lookouts. Her claws scrabbled to climb the metal ladder set inside. Ordinarily, she was an excellent climber, but in her fear and haste, her claws slipped halfway up and she dropped to the ground with a screech, twisting and contorting her body into a landing position a second too late. She landed with a thud on her back leg. She heard the crack before she felt it. She tried to ignore the pain, turning immediately back to the ladder and attempting to climb again, but her throbbing leg gave way beneath her. The lookouts had still not spotted the iceberg. The brass bell above remained silent, and Clara had no way to warn anyone of the impending danger. No way to stop the catastrophe that was about to occur.

  She took a deep breath and screamed a terrible high-pitched scream—one that she usually reserved for a fight over territory, or a piece of fresh fish—not out of pain or frustration, but to get the attention of the lookouts above. Surely they must have spotted the ice monster by now? Surely they would sound the alarm. Just as she had filled her lungs, ready to scream again and again until they took notice, the brass bell above rang out three times, sending a loud, vibrating echo around the foremast and through Clara’s skull.

  And to her relief, finally, she heard one of the men cry out: “Iceberg! Dead ahead!”

  Clar
a sank to the floor, her throat raw and her body exhausted. She hoped they were not too late.

  CHAPTER 14

  CLARA

  Sunday, April 14, 1912

  11:40 PM

  Clara allowed herself a moment to catch her breath before pulling herself to standing with a wince. Her leg pulsed with a painful heat that radiated up to her hip. She didn’t think it was broken, though she had definitely done some damage. But she had no time to feel sorry for herself or to inspect her injury further. She had to wake the captain and alert him to the danger ahead. She half-hobbled, half-limped along the deck, trying not to set her injured back leg on the ground or place too much pressure on it.

  The captain’s quarters were directly behind the bridge and wheelhouse on the starboard side, but by the time Clara had reached them, the captain had already been awoken and the quartermaster steering the ship was turning the wheel hard to starboard, away from the iceberg.

  Clara held her breath as the nose of the great ship began to glide away, painfully slowly, from the iceberg that they were rapidly gaining on.

  “It’s going to be close,” one of the officers said.

  The captain made no reply. He left the bridge to stand outside for a clearer view. Clara followed him out onto the deck as they stared up at the huge iceberg bearing down upon them. “Hold on, Clara,” the captain said, bending to lift her into his arms. He stroked her head gently, which seemed to calm them both.

  For a moment it seemed as if they were going to be fine. It would be a near miss, but a miss nevertheless. But one thing Clara knew about icebergs was that often the tip—the visible part that rose above the water—was far smaller than the mass of ice that lurked below, and although there was no head-on collision, as Clara had feared, they did not miss it entirely.

  There was a high-pitched screech that made Clara’s fur stand on end as the ship scraped past the very edge of the iceberg. The captain lost his balance and stumbled slightly, but he held Clara tightly, drawing her closer into his chest. His heart thumped as fast as Clara’s as huge chunks of ice rained down upon the deck. The great ship swept past and the captain leaped out of the way, enclosing Clara within his arms to keep her safe from the shards of ice that scattered across the promenade.

  Then, as quickly as it had seemed to sneak up on them, the iceberg was gone. When Clara looked back, all she could see was the darkness of the ocean and the starry sky above, as though nothing had happened. The captain lowered Clara to the deck, then strode back toward the bridge with Clara limping along behind.

  Clara meowed, unable to keep up with him. The captain glanced back with a frown. “You’re hurt!” he said, scooping her up again and examining her leg. “What have you been up to?”

  There was a shout from the bridge and the captain hurried on, careful not to jolt Clara’s leg.

  “Stop the engines!” he called, and an officer sent the order down to the engine rooms. “We need to assess the damage.”

  The captain set Clara down by his feet. “Stay here,” he told her. “I will tend to your leg once this is all dealt with.”

  The ship continued for a little way as the pistons driving the steam engines slowed to a stop. For a few breaths, all was eerily still and silent. The captain headed to the hull to find out what repairs needed to be made. Passengers awoken by the collision came out on the decks to see what was happening.

  Despite what the captain had said, Clara couldn’t wait to find out what had happened. She hobbled after the captain, watching some of the third-class passengers on the steerage deck, where most of the shaved ice had landed. A few of them laughed and played with the ice, throwing snowballs as if it were the first day of winter and nothing was amiss.

  A barefoot girl in a thin nightgown caught Clara’s attention. She had the brightest red hair Clara had ever seen. It bloomed among the dark and gray clothes of the other steerage passengers. The girl ran across to a large chunk of ice, struggling to break a piece off to show to a man who had come onto the deck with her.

  “Look, Papa!” the girl called. “It’s snowing! Can you believe it? In the middle of the ocean.”

  But the look on the girl’s father’s face told Clara that he knew as well as she that any kind of snow or ice on the deck of a ship was not a good thing. As Clara hurried on after the captain as best she could, she heard the father call the girl away.

  “Come inside, Alice.”

  Clara froze. Alice? Could this be Mutt’s girl? she wondered.

  But there was no time to investigate. She finally caught up with the captain, who had been stopped by the same group of first-class passengers she’d passed in the smoking room. She hid beneath a chair so that he wouldn’t reprimand her for following. He was reassuring them that all was well and they would be continuing on shortly, but to put on their life jackets. He told them it was standard procedure to halt the engines to check for any damage, and Clara heard one of the men proclaim: “How could there be any damage? We’re on the unsinkable ship!”

  The other men laughed in agreement, but the captain didn’t share their humor, and when the chairman of the White Star Line, J. Bruce Ismay, joined them, Clara could see that he felt the same unease.

  “We’ve hit an iceberg,” the captain told Ismay. “We need to prepare the lifeboats. What is the damage, Thomas?” the captain asked the ship’s architect as they headed back toward the bridge, with Clara trying her best to keep up.

  “It’s worse than I thought,” Thomas replied. “The iceberg sliced a gash in the side of the hull that runs across at least four compartments—if not more. They’re pumping the water out as quickly as they can, but it’s coming in fast. I fear that some of the crew closest to the collision might already be lost.”

  “Close the watertight doors,” the captain ordered the officer at the bridge.

  “Already done, sir,” the officer replied.

  “I thought she was unsinkable?” one of the younger officers said.

  The architect shook his head. “Only if the damage is restricted to one compartment. Any more than two or three, and the water will continue to pour in and eventually rise up and over, spilling into the next compartment, and so on. The doors are watertight, but the floor of the deck above is not. We need to start loading the lifeboats immediately.”

  The captain took the architect’s elbow and gently pulled him to the side, out of earshot of the other officers. Clara followed, fearing the worst.

  “How long have we got, Thomas?” the captain asked, his face as white as the ice on the deck.

  The ship’s architect caught Clara’s eye. His own eyes widened in surprise at seeing a cat sitting there eavesdropping on the conversation. “With the amount of damage sustained by the hull plates, my estimate is that she’s got two hours, maybe less, before the entire hull is flooded.”

  Captain Smith took a deep breath, then cleared his throat before turning back to his officers. “Send out a distress call to any boats in the area immediately. Tell them to come at once. The Titanic is sinking.”

  Clara didn’t wait to hear any more. Water could be coming in that very second, and the kittens and Mutt might be trapped. She raced as fast as she could down into the ship, ignoring the fire in her leg and the fear building in her stomach, praying that when she’d taken the kittens into the hold, she hadn’t led them to their death.

  CHAPTER 15

  MUTT

  Sunday, April 14, 1912

  11:40 PM

  “What’s happening, Mutt?” Jack called sleepily, his eyes still half closed.

  “Is Miss Clara back?” Violet asked with a yawn, having been woken by her brother.

  “Not yet,” Mutt answered as he paced the floor, looking out along the corridor for any sign of King Leon. He didn’t know much about rats or their sense of danger, but he could feel something himself. Something that he couldn’t quite explain, deep in the pit of his stomach. He thought maybe it was just that he was tired or that his belly still wasn’t quite full desp
ite the three bowls of oodle he had demolished. Or maybe it was just that he hadn’t found Alice yet, but the look in King Leon’s eyes when he’d left made Mutt believe that it wasn’t hunger causing his unease.

  “Wake up, Cosmo,” Mutt said. “We need to find King Leon or Miss Clara and see what’s going on.”

  Violet nudged Cosmo with her nose, and he woke with a start.

  “Follow me,” Mutt told the kittens. “And stay close. If we see any humans, I’ll distract them while you three head to the upper decks and find Miss Clara.”

  “I’m scared,” Cosmo wailed.

  “It will be fine,” Violet told him. “Mutt will look after us, won’t you, Mutt?”

  Mutt wanted to say yes, but his throat felt too tight. Instead he gave Cosmo a quick nod, then trotted along the corridor to a spiral stairway, hoping it would lead to King Leon.

  On the next level down, Mutt found himself back at the long corridor that King Leon had called Scotland Road. He gave a short, sharp bark, hoping that King Leon would hear, and waited for a few breaths. When the rat didn’t appear, Mutt jerked his nose at the kittens and went down the next set of stairs onto F deck, past a room with a large pool, heading back toward the engines.

  His ears pricked up as he heard something—a creaking noise that rose above the rumble of the engines and the firemen in the boiler rooms still loading the coal into the furnaces. It was almost like the scraping of claws down metal, but louder. Much, much louder. The ground beneath their feet shook and the great ship rattled and shuddered as though it had run aground.

  “What is that?” Violet squeaked, huddling close to her brothers.

  Mutt opened his mouth to answer, then he spotted King Leon racing toward them at full speed.

  “What is it?” Mutt asked, his hackles raised. “What was that noise?”

  King Leon held up a paw as he tried to catch his breath, but he didn’t need to say anything, because at that moment, a river of rats ran past them. Mutt counted thirty at least. They were closely followed by the distinct sound of rushing water, like the tide upon a pebble beach, which made his fur stand on end.