A dog barked from up above. It took Madeleine at least ten seconds to recognize that it was Kitty. She lurched to her feet, prompting Carrie to latch on to her sleeve.
Oh, God. She’d forgotten about her—in the dreamlike fright and calm of it all, she’d forgotten—
“Down, miss,” snapped the quartermaster. “You must sit down.”
She sank back to the plank of her bench, her hands over her heart. Kitty was barking from the boat deck, and if she craned her head—yes, Madeleine could see her, her familiar outline, so small and shadowed against the ship’s lights. The shape of a tall, spare man standing next to her at the railing, one hand on her head.
Something large hurtled down from the sky. She cringed back only as it barely missed them, landing with an enormous splash that salted her with spray. The thing vanished beneath the surface before popping up again: a huge rolling barrel, Münchner Bier stenciled in black on its side.
“Away and faster,” called out the quartermaster, and the lifeboat began to jerk more quickly along.
Jack and Kitty, her barks still echoing, slid from her view.
Madeleine moaned, thin and anguished. Carrie wrapped an arm around her shoulders to hug her close.
*
There were no gangway doors to be seen that were open. There was no one aft to pick up, only ghost lights glowing an eerie olive beneath the surface of the water. But as they came closer to Titanic ’s rising stern, a pair of men leapt from the poop deck high above, managing to entangle themselves in the dangling ropes from the davits and grab on. They began to slither rapidly down towards them.
“Oy! Mind yourselves,” thundered the quartermaster, as the men at the oars attempted to maneuver them beneath the ropes.
To the alarmed cries of several ladies, one of the men let go, managing to land heavily against the lifeboat’s prow, sending them rocking. The other man released his rope and missed the boat entirely, plunging like a stone into the ocean, hardly even a splash as he went down. The fellow came up again gasping, his hair plastered along his eyes, trying to paddle.
Rosalie was closest to him. She cried, “Here!” and stretched out her arm, hauling him near. The woman behind her joined her, and together they wrestled him aboard.
Both of the new men were dressed only in rough cotton shirts and trousers, covered in grime.
“Blimey, that was close,” gasped the drier man, and together they crumpled against the starboard gunwale. Someone tossed a blanket over them both.
“Get us away,” commanded the quartermaster, and the oarsmen, both of whom had been goggling open-mouthed up at the listing ship, bent their heads again and began to row.
A new man rose up from the waves without warning, his head just reaching over the top of the craft; a young girl screeched with fright.
“Give us a hand in!” the man in the water wheezed, and one of the oarsmen stood up, astonished.
“Is that you, Sam?”
“Yes!”
The oarsman reached down, the women around him reached down, and between all of them, the man was dragged to safety, shivering.
As the lifeboat turned again, floating away from the liner, Madeleine tried to find her husband once more. But they were too far aft. All she could see, all any of them could see as they slipped farther out, was Titanic’s stern slowly lifting free of the Atlantic, its three monstrous bronze propellers shedding rivers of water, platinum waterfalls against the glittering sky.
*
A flare shot up from the steamship, the first Madeleine had seen herself, even though in the back of her mind, it seemed she must have been hearing them all along, the hard cannon-crack of rockets or gunshots, or both. As the light streamed skyward, everyone in the lifeboat hung in its brief brilliance, black and white, sliding shadows; for a count of three, the canted top of Titanic shone almost as bright as day.
It was only seconds. But when she closed her eyes, the image of the upper deck remained, dark frozen people against a dark tilted ship.
Above the baritone groans of the liner and the cacophony of human cries, she thought she heard the orchestra still playing, sweet melancholy notes, a hymn she almost recognized.
Titanic’s lights flickered, came back. Along what must have been the promenade’s windows, a sinister red glow began to spread.
“Power’s fading,” muttered the quartermaster. “Surprised they’ve kept it going this long.”
The stern rose and rose, and the ship’s iron groans ticked louder. People were plummeting alongside her hull, cartwheeling down into the water. Those who didn’t fall clung to the boat deck in antlike clusters, pressing against the railings.