Chapter One
Cal finished his hot coffee and handed it to the steward.
"Thankyou" he said nonchalantly as he stared off out to sea, over the horizon. He threw off the blanket from around his shoulders and stood.
They had floated in the darkness for hours in the early morning, waiting for the Carpathia, waiting for help, waiting for death. Just waiting for something to bloody happen instead of being trapped in between death and life, floating between deckchairs and bodies.
He had sat with one of the chef's who shared around his small flask of whiskey to those with them on lifeboat sixteen. The officer manning the boat had tried to go back to rescue the thousands of screaming people in the water as the ship went down, but Cal had stopped him. The suction created by the ship would've dragged them down too and if they survived that then the masses in the water would swamp the boats and kill them all.
Even though the boats were only half full.
Finally Fifth officer Lowe gathered a group of lifeboats together and reassembled all the passengers leaving one boat empty to collect any other survivors.
Cal had heard nothing as lifeboat fourteen left to salvage any of those who had withstood the cold and water. The cries for help had stopped ten minutes earlier, the faint sobbing was gone. All that was left was the stunned silence of those in the boats.
He had been told that when the officers came to the spot where she had gone down it was like nothing they'd ever seen before; a mass of cold frozen bodies, floating in their life preservers, their eyes wide and open in fear. Deckchairs and rubble floating all around, a woman still holding her baby, both long dead and frozen.
They had returned with six people.
Out of fifteen hundred that had gone into the water.
One of the six had died twenty minutes later in the boat, the hypothermia already in action when he was rescued. Cal had seen them heaving his body into the water to make room for others and the cries of the women who had also seen this act of cruelty.
The Carpathia had arrived at 3:30 in the morning; they all saw its rockets being launched. Everyone quickly lit anything that was flammable; handkerchiefs, newspapers, letters and gloves to attract their attention as the officers lit the flares.
As they rowed slowly to the ship the sun rose and they saw the mess that lay around them; bodies floating across the waves tinged pink, deckchairs and pieces of rubble everywhere and ice; they were surrounded by ice as if someone had taken a giant iceberg and crumbled it across the Atlantic.
They were all aboard the Carpathia by 8:30 am and soon the counting and name taking began, the whole crew of the Carpathia stunned into silence when they realised only seven hundred of fifteen hundred had survived the disaster.
Less than half.
Cal walked to the rail and looked down into the deep dark blue ocean below, not a breath of wind, not a single wave. Just as it had been last night.
He shuddered and realised; He had to know. He had already seen her damned mother sleeping with the rest of the 1st class survivors. He had been glad she was asleep; he wanted to be rid of that damn family for once and for all.
So Cal began to carefully descend down the stairs to the survivors of steerage; if she was anywhere it would be here with her damn gutter rat.
"You won't find any of your people down here sir, it's all steerage" Piped up a flustered looking steward and Cal nodded, overwhelmed by the grief that was possessed by these people.
He walked in shock, and upon hearing a distraught woman talking to an officer he turned around to see a young woman's heart tear in two.
"But surely this isn't the only list?" She said in panic, grabbing the officer's list of steerage survivors from his hands.
"Madam I am deeply sorry but this is the only list for steerage," He said calmly and the woman's eyes widened and she clutched onto the rail in fear.
"But this is only two hundred people! Not even that! It's not even a quarter! Don't you dare say such things!" She began to cry out in alarm, her face as white as a sheet as she shook the paper at the officer in anger.
"Madam I'm afraid that if his name's not on the list then he's probably-" the officer began but the woman cut him off.
"But he may be on another ship! This cannot possibly be the final word…" She moaned and sat down on the deck as she began to weep despairingly.
Cal turned away from this sad moment and continued to walk slowly around the distressed people of 3rd class. There were groups of people crying and drinking warm broth out of mugs, single people looking hopelessly out to sea wrapped in blankets, children without parents and parents without children.
Neither she nor the gutter rat were there.
She must've gone down with the ship.
And rightly so.
The whore had gotten what was coming to her.
She had it coming from the very beginning.
Cal walked to the railing and looked over once again at the cold blue sea, lapping against the side of the boat, knowing she was down there, somewhere.
With her damn rat.
With his diamond!
He felt someone staring at him and he whipped around.
Nothing, just a group of steerage survivors huddled in a group on the deck looking woefully at the ground and an old woman wrapped in a blanket with her back to him, sitting on a bench drinking from a mug.
Though he was sure someone had been staring at him…
Oh well…