1912
Jennifer runs through a cluster of people. She looks back and a furious Will is coming after her. She runs breathlessly up to two proper looking men.
"That man tried to take advantage of me in the crowd!"
Appalled, they turn to see Will running towards them. Jennifer runs after the two men grab Will, restraining him. She runs through the First Class entrance.
Will breaks free and runs after her. He reaches the entrance, but runs into a knot of people. He pushes rudely through them.
At the A-Deck foyer. Will runs in, and down to the landing, pushing past the gentlemen and ladies who are filling up the stairs. He scans the A-Deck foyet. Jennifer is gone.
The hull of Titanic looms over Boat 6 like a cliff. It's enormous mass is suddenly threatening to those in a tiny boat. Quartermaster Hitchins, at the tiller, wants nothing but to get away from the ship. Unfortuantely his two seamen can't row. They flail like a duck with a broken wing.
"Keep pulling…away from the ship. Pull."
"Ain't you boys ever rowed before? Here, gimme those oars. I'll show ya how its done."
Molly climbs over Erin to get at the oars, stepping on her feet.
Around them the evacuation is in full swing, with boats in the water, others being lowered.
In the Master at Arms office, Spencer pulls on the pipe with all his strength. It's not budging. He hears gurgling sounds. Water pours under the door, spreading rapidly across the floor.
"Shit!"
He tries to pull one hand out of the cuffs, working until the skin is raw…no good.
"Help! Somebody! Can anybody hear me?"
He yells.
"This could be bad."
He said to himself.
The corridor outside is deserted. Flooded a couple of inches deep, Spencer's voice comes faintly through the door, but there is no one to hear it.
In the First Class corridor Thomas Andrews is opening stateroom doors, checking that people are out.
"Anyone in here?"
Jennifer runs up to him, breathless.
"Mr. Andrews, thank God! Where would the Master at Arms take someone under arrest?"
"What? You have to get to a boat right away!"
"No! I'll do this with or without your help, sir. But without will take longer."
"Take the elevator to the very bottom, go left, down the crewman's passage, than make a right."
"Bottom, left, right. I have it."
"Hurry, Jennifer."
Jennifer runs up as the last evevator operator is closing up his lift to leave.
"Sorry, miss, lifts are closed…"
Without thinking she grabs him and shoves him back into the lift.
"I'm through with being polite, god damn it! I may never be polite the rest of my life! Now take me down!"
The operator fumbles to close the gate and starts the lift.
Molly and the two seamen are rowing, and they've made it a hundred feet or so. Enough to see that the ship is angled down into the water, with the bow rail less than ten feet above the surface.
"Come on girls, join in, it'll keep ya warm. Let's go Erin. Grab an oar!"
Erin just stares at the spectacle of the great liner, its row of lights blazing, slanting down into the sullen black mirror of the Atlantic.
Through the wrough iron door of the elevator car Jennifer can see the deck going past. The lift slows. Suddenly ice water is swirling around her legs. She screams in surprise and so does the operator.
The car has landed in a foot of freezing water, shocking the hell out of her. She claws the door open and splashes out, hiking up her floor-length skirt so she can move. The lift goes back up, behind her, as she looks around.
"Left, crew passage."
She spots it and slogs down the flooded corridor. The place is understandably deserted. She is on her own.
"Right, right…right."
She turns into a cross-corridor, splashing down the hall. A row of doors on each side.
"Spencer? SPENCER?"
Spencer is hopeleslly pulling on the pipe again, straining until he turns red. He collapses back on the bench, realizing he's screwed. Then he hears her through the door.
"JENNIFER! In here!"
Jennifer hears his voice behind her. She spins and runs back, locating the right door, then pushes it open, creating a small wave.
She splashes over Spencer and puts her arms around him.
"Spencer, Spencer, Spencer…I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry."
She kisses him.
"That guy Foyet put it in my pocket."
"I know, I know."
She hugs him and cries.
"See if you can find a key for these. Try those drawers. It's a little brass one."
She kisses his face and hugs him again, then starts to go through the desk.
"So…how did you find out I didn't do it?"
"I didn't."
She looks at him.
"I just realized I already knew."
They share a look, then she goes back to ransacking the room, searching drawers and cupboards. Spencer sees movenment out the porthole and looks out.
At Boat 1 while the seamen detach the falls. The boat rocks next to the hull. Lucille and Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon sits with ten others in a boat made for four times that many.
"I despise small boats. I just know I'm going to be seasick. I always get seasick in small boats. Good Heavens, there's a man down there."
In a lit porthole beneath the surface she sees Spencer looking up at her…a face in a bubble of light under the water.
Jennifer stops trashing the room, and stands there, breathing hard.
"There's no key in here."
They look around at the water, now almost two feet deep. Spencer has pulled his feet up onto the bench.
"You have to go for help."
Jennifer is nodding.
"I'll be right back."
She kisses him and turns to find help.
"I'll wait here."
She runs out, looking back at him once from the doorway, then splashes away. Spencer looks down at the swirling water.
Jennifer splashes down the hall to a stairwell going up to the next deck. She climbs the stairs and finds herself in part of the labyrinth of steerage hallways forward. She is alone here. A long groan of stressing metal echoes along the hall as the ship continues to settle. She runs down the hall, unimpeded now.
"Hello? Somebody?"
She turns a corner and runs along another corridor in a daze. The hall slopes down itno water which, shimmers, reflecting the light. The margin of the water creeps towards her. A young man appears, running through the water, sending up geysers of spray. He pelts past her without slowing, his eyes crazed.
"Help me! We need help!"
He doesn't look back. It is like a bad dream. The hull gongs with terrifying sounds.
The light flickers and go out, leaving utter darkness. Then they come back on. She finds herself hyperventilating. That one moment of blackness was the most terrifiying of her life.
A steward runs around the nearest corner, his arms full of lifebelts. He is upset to see someone still in his section. He grabs her forcefully by the arm, pulling her with him like a wayward child.
"Come on, then, let's get you topside, miss, that's right."
"Wait. Wait! I need your help! There's…"
"No need for panic, miss. Come along!"
He's not listening. And he won't let her go.
She shouts in his ear, and when he turns, she punches him squarely in the nose. Shocked, he lets her go and staggers back.
"To Hell with you!"
"See you there, buster!"
The steward runs off, holding his bloody nose.
She turns around and sees a glass case with a fire-axe in it. She breaks the glass with the firehose and seizes the axe, running back the way she came.
At the stairwell she looks down and gasps. The water was flooded the bottom five steps. She takes off her pink overcoat. She goes down and has to crouch to look along the corridor to the room where Spencer is trapped.
Jennifer plunges into the water, which is up to her waist and lets out a gasp and powers forward, holding the axe above her hear in two hands. She grimaces at the pain from the literally freezing water.
Spencer has climbed up on the bench, and is hugging the water pipe. Jennifer wades in, holding the axe above her head.
"Will this work?"
"We'll find out."
They are both terrified, but trying to keep panic at bay. He positions the chain connecting the two cuffs, stretching it taut across the steel pipe. The chain is of course very short, and his exposed wrists are on either side of it.
"Try a couple practice swings."
Jennifer hefts the axes and thunks it into a wooden cabinet.
"Now try to hit the same mark again."
She swings hard and the blade thunks in four inches from the mark.
"Okay, that's enough practice."
He winces, bracing himself as she raises the axe. She has to hit a target about an inch wide with all the force she can muster, with his hands on either side.
"You can do it, Jennifer. Hit it as hard as you can, I trust you."
They both close their eyes.
The axe comes down. K-WHANG! Jennifer gingerly open her eyes to see Spencer grinning with two separate cuffs.
Jennifer drops the axe, all the strength going out of her.
"Nice work, there, Paul Bunyan."
He climbs down into the water next to her. He can't breathe for a second.
"Shit! Excuse me French. Shit shit shit, that is cold! Come on, let's go."
They wade out into the hall. Jennifer starts toward the stairs going up, but Spencer stops her. There is only about a foot of the stairwell opening visible.
"Too deep. We gotta find another way out."