The Explorer's Apprentice

56:What the Captain Doesn't Say

Arabelle D’Ewes

A tinny alarm comes out of nowhere. Belle pushes Max away and looks over the rail, where children have already begun to play with the chunks of ice. “What’s happening?” The iceberg is gone, but Belle can still feel rumbling beneath her feet.

“That’s the watertight doors shutting,” Max says. He slips into the bridge’s cabin, and Arabelle follows. “I think it hit us underneath. We must be flooding.”

“Flooding?”

An older man, a ship guard with a gold badge on his hat, stops Max. He must be the first mate. “Note the time,” he orders, “and enter it in the log.”

As Max disappears into a back room, the man doesn’t even look at Belle, doesn’t even wonder why she’s there. The man at the wheel watches silently as she wanders, sweating buckets. Why’s he so nervous? Belle wonders.

She locates the source of the alarm—a small panel of flashing lights. Just as Max said, these are the controls for the watertight doors deep down in the belly of the boat. Wow, Belle thinks, and now even she starts the sweat. It hit us that deep down?

“What was that, Mr. Murdoch?” A second man emerges that can only be the captain. Belle recognizes him from his pictures.

“An iceberg, sir.” Mr. Murdoch, the man with the badge, takes a deep breath. He looks stricken. “I put her hard to starboard and ran the engines full to stern, but it was too close. I tried to port ‘round it but she hit and, ah—”

“Close the watertight doors,” Captain Smith rumbles, brushing past his first mate to stroll out onto the balcony. His collar is undone, as if he’d just been awakened from a nap.

“The doors are closed, sir.”

“All stop!” Captain Smith commands.

A ship guard heeds him, and Belle watches as he turns the lever to ‘Full Stop’ with a clang of bells. The ship groans beneath her, like a living beast, grinding slowly to a halt as the engines shut down. As Max joins her again, she tiptoes to the doorway, where she can hear better.

I’m a passenger on this ship, she tells herself, as justification. I deserve to know what’s going on.

Captain Smith leans over the edge of the boat, surveying the iceberg’s damage. “Find the carpenter,” he says. “Get him to this side of the boat.”

The alarm stops, but the man at the steering wheel continues to shiver. Belle wonders what all the dials mean, all the lights. She wonders just what the captain knows that she doesn’t.

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“It’s most unfortunate captain.” Mr. Andrews’s arms are full of blueprints. He bustles past Arabelle, not seeing her, and enters the captain’s quarters.

“We shouldn’t be doing this, Belle,” Max whispers in her ear, but she ignores him. What was more suspicious than a small room full of important-looking men and some blueprints?

The designer of the Titanic puts a little gold statue on the corner of the paper to keep it from curling.

Looking under his elbow, Isabelle can see now that these are schematics of the ship itself.

“The water…” Mr. Andrews’s breath comes heavy from running. “14 feet above the keel in 10 minutes.” He sweeps a hand across the white sketches. “In the spur. And all three holds. And boat room six.”

“That’s right, sir,” Mr. Murdoch says solemnly.

“When can we get underway, dammit?” This man is tall and gaunt, and all dressed in brown, giving him the appearance of a homeless skeleton.

“That’s five compartments!” Mr. Andrews snaps. He looks at the captain, his eyes pleading. “She can stay afloat with the first four compartments breached. But not five.”

Max gives a shocked little groan, and Belle shushes him. No, she thinks. No, what they’re saying isn’t what I think they’re saying. Titanic can’t go down. It’s—it’s Titanic!

“Not five.” He points back the diagrams, illustrating. He picks up speed, on the edge of hysterical.

“She goes down at the head. The water will spill over the tops of the bulkheads, at E deck, from one to the next, back and back. There’s no stopping it.”

The captain regards Mr. Andrews calmly. Unmoved, he gestures vaguely. “The pumps.” Yes! Belle cheers silently. The pumps! I knew it. I knew they had a way. "If we open the doors—”

“The pumps buy you time,” Mr. Andrews cuts in. “But minutes only. Look at this, no matter what I do—Titanic will founder.”

The skeleton man, pacing like a caged animal, looks up indignantly. “But this ship can’t sink!”

“She’s made of iron, sir. I assure you, she can. And she will.” He speaks as if speaking to a small child. “It is a mathematical certainty.”

It can’t be true. It can’t be…

Captain Smith doesn’t question him. He doesn’t put out false hopes, doesn’t offer pointless solutions. “How much time?” he asks.

“An hour,” Mr. Andrews murmurs. “Two, at most.”

The captain goes silent. He looks around at his men. He looks out of the window, out at the people playing in the cool night air. “And how many aboard, Mr. Murdoch?”

“2, 200 souls on board sir.”

Two thousand? Isabelle’s head spins. She doesn’t know exactly how many lifeboats there are, but she knows there aren’t enough. Look at your faces. You know it, too. You know there aren’t enough.

Captain Smith turns to the skeleton man. His eyes are stony, and his voice is heavy with sadness.

“Well, I believe you may get your headlines, Mr. Ismay.”