by Joseph Rubas
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Things on deck were starting to get out of hand. More and more people crowded noisily around the lifeboats, clambering for admittance, pushing and shoving, and even more people were dressed in their lifebelts. Whatever semblance of order there may have been just moments ago was gone, replaced by rapidly mounting panic.
Watching one boat, Van Helsing was sickeningly sure that hysterical masses on deck would swamp it and that all the women and children would be dumped into the sea. But the officer, standing tall and clinging to the rope, aimed away from the ship and let roar three mighty gunshots that stopped the men dead.
“Women and children!” he cried, “woman and children!”
A few huddled women, cringing at the men around them, came forth and were helped into the boat by an able seaman. An ocean of arms passed forth a small child, and another, two small cherub boys with dark, curly hair. The sailor, seeing that there were no more women or children, climbed up into the boat, and it began dropping haltingly to the black sea.
“Dr. Van Helsing,” Seward said, putting a hand on the older man’s shoulder, “come.”
By unspoken consent, they moved up the tilted deck, passing several people they had met on the voyage. Thomas Andrews and J. Bruce Ismay were tossing deck chairs into the water, working in grave and frantic silence. Archibald Butt, done with cards for the night, was calmly smoking a cigarette and gazing out to sea, seemingly to a twinkling light on the horizon.
“A steamship,” a small man standing next to him said.
Butt shrugged. “Maybe, Clinch, but why isn’t it coming any closer? It’s been there for over an hour, or so one of the officers said.”
“Maybe she can’t make it through the ice.”
Butt grunted.
From above, three more shots rang out.
“It’s nearing the end,” Seward observed.
“Yes,” Van Helsing replied.
