Titanic by Stephen Davies

Author:Stephen Davies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic UK
Published: 2016-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

16

I half swam, half ran up the common room steps, then smashed up through the surface of the water and took a desperate, gasping breath of air. My legs were cramping. My fingers curled like claws. But I was alive.

The third-class common room was a mess. The tables and chairs had all slid down to the bow end of the room. Water was pouring in through open port holes and through the well-deck doors. An abandoned accordion floated past.

“Beryl!” I screamed.

She was not here. For all I knew, she could have found her way into a lifeboat already.

I waded to the well-deck doors, and pulled myself up the banister, fighting against the downward flow. Up on the well deck, the water lapped and swirled. I made my way to the pedestal of a cargo crane of a cargo crane and edged my way up onto the crane itself, dragging myself clear of the freezing waters. I was no longer thinking about Beryl. I was simply trying to stay alive.

I was not the only person clinging to the cargo crane. There was a man above me. I recognized him as one of the Irish passengers from third class, a cheery chap from Limerick.

He did not look so cheery now. He clung there, teeth chattering loudly, not moving up or down.

“Hey, mister!” I called. “If we climb to the top of this crane, we can get to the upper decks and the lifeboats!”

He did not answer. He just stared down at me, his eyes wide with fear.

I grabbed his left boot and shook it gently. “Don’t give up, mister. You’ll be right as rain, you hear?”

The man took a deep breath and started to climb, dragging himself slowly up the crane towards the first-class deck.

I clambered up after him, patting his boot from time to time and talking all the while.

“Were you at the party, mister? Did you hear the Yanks? I heard they played ragtime tonight.”

The man smiled weakly. “Never heard anything like it in all my life,” he said.

“Mister, did you see a posh English girl called Beryl at the party? She came down from first class. Ten years old. Red hair, red shoes, blue duffel coat?”

The man nodded. “She’s a nutter, that one.”

“Why?” I said. “What did she do?”

The man continued to heave himself slowly up the crane as he told the story:

“The Yanks were playing their ragtime songs and we were all dancing and carrying on, when suddenly the iceberg hit. At first it was a bit of a giggle, you know? People were having snowball fights and putting bits of ice in their drinks. Laughing fit to burst, we were. But then folks started coming up from below saying there was water in their cabins. Well, that wiped the laughs off our faces, I can tell you. One of the stewards told us to get up on deck, but your Beryl wasn’t having any of it. She rushed off downstairs like a mad thing. Down the stairs, mind, where the water was pouring in.

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