I took a train all the way to New York City, my first time there, where a British ship, called the Magic, was preparing to leave. As they did not allow animals with third class, I had to sneak my cats aboard in another cardboard box.
As I walked along the gangway, I glanced at the top most deck. Several people were looking down upon the crowd. Some wore traveling clothes, others wore uniforms. I continued studying them, trying to see if all of the passengers were wealthy or not. Then I realized that I was blocking the gangway.
"Move on, little girl, make haste," a voice said behind me. I walked on as quickly as I could while struggling under the weight of the box in my arms. "Hurry, then. I must get my family to my room," the man repeated. He spoke his English with an accent; he was probably from a different country.
"I am walking as fast as I can." I gained speed, feeling immediately guilty for causing trouble for a stranger.
"Is your package there too heavy for you, then? I can carry it for you," he offered.
"That would be nice, but…"
"No problem, then." He stopped and waited for me to do the same. "Here are my things, rather light, as you see." I turned around and met a man with long hair coming out of his hat, and kind eyes. "Go on. My room is E-112."
"So is mine."
"Oh, then, come with me and my wife and children."
I noticed that behind him were a woman and two children. One boy, one girl. An average family. Unlike mine, consisting of three brothers and a sister, no parents.
"Come along, then. You must be the other girl the ticket man was talkin' about," he said, grabbing the box. He carried it with ease. We walked the rest of the way inside, another uniformed man took our tickets. We found our room and claimed our bunks, unpacked, and they let me take their children up top deck to see the departure. It turned out that Phillip was shyer than Agatha, his sister. She was quiet the whole way up the six flights of stairs, but once we got up top, she pulled herself onto the rail and exclaimed, "Oooh, look at all them people down there!"
"Those people, not them people," Phillip corrected timidly.
"They are watching us leave," I reported. I turned my head around. The ship was not so big. It had two big smokestacks. A large blow from the whistle came along. I actually felt the leviathan moving. Astonished, I jumped.
"You ever traveled?" Agatha asked.
"No, never."
"We have twice. We're Englandish."
"English, Agatha, English," Phillip corrected.
"English," Agatha groaned.
Just then I saw a face that caught my attention as it came by. It looked like Raoul. He seemed to be coming to me.
"Oh, we must go now," I told the children.
"But…" they protested.
"Now," I said firmly. I rushed them towards the front of the ship. 'Raoul' was coming closer, appearing to be looking at me. I kept telling myself that it might not be him, that there were other tall blond men in this world, but I still rushed on through the blurry crowd, clutching the children's hands. I reached a hallway that extended the width of the ship. I pulled Agatha and Phillip through the hallway. In it was a wheel and other devices used for steering the ship. What would I know?
Out of nowhere, a man in uniform stopped me. He was one of the ones I had seen from the gangway.
"What are you doing here?" He carried the same accent that Agatha and her family did.
"I-
"Crew members only," he said, rather sourly.
"I'll be going," I said.
"Out!" he snapped. I gripped the hands of the children and ran the direction I was facing, the opposite end of where I had come from. Outside again, I was lost. Well, I felt like it. Then I remembered that the ship was going to have the same thing on both sides. This side was rather empty of people.
We made it back to our room eventually, but then we were called to dinner. We finished unpacking and decided that I would devote the next day to exploring the ship with the children. Their parents, Patrick and Clara, chose to stay in the general room and meet others. That was not what I enjoyed doing. Then again, I was going to London to make a new life for myself. It was rather unusual because normally Europeans came to America to seek fortune! And I realized, what was wrong with America? Did I find America to not suit me because Father had died and I needed to find new ground, literally? Oh, well. I needed to forget about what had happened at home. But then, what was I to do in London? I had but enough money to get to the place, not to get a house! Should I become a seamstress? A waitress? A stewardess? I needed money, and quickly, too. I did not have any intentions of living in the streets.
The very next day I took Agatha and Phillip up to the top deck, first. We looked for interesting sites. It would have been more enjoyable, as Agatha commented, if the sky were not dark as though the morning wanted to stay night with all of these clouds.
The boat deck, as it was called, had all the lifeboats numbered to fifteen. Not many people aboard, I assumed. There was the wireless room and the officers' rooms, and little else. No staterooms. I took them down the stairs. At the bottom, there was a sign that said "A-Deck." We found first class rooms and some space for strolling. We went to the next deck, B-Deck. This was the well deck. There were more first class rooms and the first class dining room, which we crept through as it was empty and we did not want staff to see three third class passengers. We found our way out of the dining room. Then a steward told me, "Please go to your room and wait for instruction. We will have a lifeboat drill." He left.
"All right, children", I said as the steward went to tell other passengers the news, "We must go to your parents now."
"No!" Agatha cried. "I don't want to leave. I want to watch."
"Your parents will worry. And we must have the drill." I had heard of such things before.
"But we never finished," Phillip protested lightly.
"Tomorrow. We have thirteen or fourteen days."
We made our way to our room. The stairwells were crowded. I guessed that the other passengers were told the same as I had been. In our room, I told the children's parents what I had been instructed to do. A different steward sent us back upstairs to the boat deck. There, as I stayed next to one boat, numbered "ten." Somehow, I lost the family I was with. They were gone. But still I stood by the boat.
About a few minutes later, the same officer who had yelled at me showed up and other men began opening the boat. When it was ready to be filled, the officer shouted, "Come forth and step in, please."
I stepped in and took a seat next to the rear. After the boat was full, that officer got in. He shouted, "Lower away!" Right after he held his hands out, I felt the boat jerking underneath me. It just so happened that then I noticed how gray the sky appeared. It did not look so suitable for boating on the Atlantic. But it was cold, too, as it was only February. As the boat touched the water things only felt colder. Then the ropes were cut, and the officer came and sat next to me. I glared at him, but he did not see. Someone began to complain that the ropes were not supposed to be cut during a drill. The officer told him that in a drill, one must pretend that the ship is on fire and all precautions must be taken. He began to steer the boat away from the ship, for not only did they want us to know how to be lowered in a lifeboat, but we, the crew in the lifeboat, also needed to know how to maneuver one. The directions were to obviously stay close to the ship.
I asked the officer, "Excuse me, but how long will we be here?"
He looked at me with curiosity first, then confidence. "Not long," he replied rather calmly. " Where are the two little ones you were with yesterday?"
"They are with their parents." I did not realize how odd it was that he just had tried to strike up a conversation with me until I had answered him.
"Officer!" a woman shrieked. "Sir! I felt a raindrop!"
"So did I," a man shouted. A round of "Yes" and "So did I" followed. I myself felt the rain, and so did the officer. The wind, as though it heard us, unfortunately decided to grow, and the waves bobbed the boat harder. I found myself clutching the gunwale in vain, trying to balance myself. The officer grabbed my hand at one point, and when he did, I turned right to him to find him staring right back at me. The rain fell in sheets. I had never seen a storm start so suddenly. I looked around to find that we had been blown further from the ship. The officer started to scream orders to row back, but we seemed to be overpowered by the wind and water. I felt cold, wet, my clothing was cold and wet, and I was tired, excited and worried at the same time. I was of no use to the crew, so I watched the other passengers scream and intervene with the work needed to be done. Being small, I shrank back and tried to stay out of the way of the increasingly angry and nervous officer. The Magic seemed to shrink back as well, as we edged farther and farther away. The rain did not cease to penetrate further into my bones, disabling my cape to keep me warm any longer. I had curled into a ball against the wall of the boat to wait the storm out, disabled, confused and frightened.
…………………………………………………
When it was over, I was not able to understand how much time had passed. The sun was positioned behind us, as it had been before the storm, but this time there was no ship to be seen at all. Had it happened all so fast, or had we been in that little boat for hours?
The officer was shaking my hand, trying to attract my attention. "And you. Are you all right, miss?"
"I- I suppose I am." I needed a handkerchief, and, now that I noticed it, new clothes. The sun was almost above us, but the winds were still faintly existent and my being entirely wet made matters worse. "Where are we?" I asked. I could not see the ship around us anywhere. "What time is it?"
He examined the sky and the sun, then his watch. "One o'clock." He was looking about him, trying to not appear panicked.
"Do you know where we are?" I pestered.
"No. No more questions, lady. I am in enough trouble."
A drop of water fell from my forehead to my nose. I huddled, or tried to, further into the wall of the boat and shivered, addressing the officer. "Are you not cold?"
"Not as cold as you look." And then he picked up a dry blanket from under another on a seat and wrapped it over my crouched, quivering self. I gazed around. There were many shivering people wrapped in blankets and coats. I looked at the bottom of the boat. There was water up to my mid-leg, seeping into my boots. I shook at the sight. Next I turned to the officer. He was shivering and mumbling to himself.
"What are we to do?" I asked.
"Wait." That was all he said. But wait for what? Wait until we saw the Magic? Wait for another ship? Another storm?
"Do we-"
"No, we have nothing. No compass, no food, no protection, no nothing! Now shut up!"
Abashed, I fell asleep.
…………………………………………………
The officer woke me up again. It was dark.
"What do you want from me, sir?"
"Do you have anything? A source of light?"
"No, now leave me to sleep." Whatever he wanted from me, I would not give. He was very rude to me. I leaned against the wall and slept. I woke again when I felt light and heat. I opened my eyes. The officer was now waving a burning blanket for attraction. I sat up and gaped. Then I noticed that light was pouring in from one side, supposing that that was the east. The officer continued waving the blanket, but I saw no other boat or ship. I wondered what else he had done while I had slept. He did not seem to know that the sun was almost there. It was hardly noticeable, but it was the one spot in the sky that was purple and not black. An hour later, the sun was completely up.
I was hungry. No one had eaten yesterday's dinner or supper. I had had only a roll for breakfast the previous day. I felt so empty. Just then, everyone else declared his or her hunger. The officer said nothing.
"Could we have stayed on the ship?" I asked.
He looked at me rather tiredly. He did not look like he wanted to talk. "Lifeboat drills are required by law now. We hadn't anticipated a storm or else the drill would have been held today." To himself, he said, "And maybe they should have listened to the Aquitian when she told us about a storm."
I thought of that, and then shivered. My stomach growled. I fell asleep again for the fourth time, but woke up the fourth time by the officer. We were right in front of another ship. Not the Magic, though. People were being lifted aboard. I looked at the officer.
"In front of me you go," he said, pointing ahead of himself. I stood, and balanced myself with his help. They lifted me aboard in a canvas bag suspended from the top deck. The officer stayed in the boat, alone, and attached the boat to ropes hanging from the ship's lifeboat cranes. The men up top helped me aboard. Then they pulled the lifeboat up after the officer got out. I waited for him. When he got up, he asked to go see the captain. My guess was that he wanted to talk to the captain about what had happened.
Everyone in our lifeboat was taken to two staterooms. They settled in, but I chose to find that officer. I found myself curious, and for some reason, I felt that I needed to talk to him.
I made my way to the front of the ship, but was stopped short. I was hearing one of the most familiar voices in the world: Michael's. I stayed behind the wall and heard from the bridge:
"… and see if the ship is all right?" That was the officer.
"Yes," that was Michael. "The wireless shack is on the port side, after the crew's quarters." Then I heard footsteps coming towards me.
Out of the bridge stepped out an another older but young man in uniform, and with his hat, I barely recognized him. But hat or no hat, it was Michael.
