Bo’s chest sinks a little. There’s a grim set to his mouth, as if he looked into the future and saw something calamitous on the horizon. Catching me watching him, his expression softens. “If Drummer is gone, he chose a noble destiny. We will mourn the dead later. Come. We don’t have much time. They are gathering people by the lifeboats.”
“Did you see Jamie?”
“Yes. He and Tao went to fetch the men. Wink and Olly went to the Halfway There Party in the General Room, but they must have left, because I did not find them there. I thought they might return to the room. Stay here. I’ll check.”
I watch numbly as folks tread by, many still in their nightgowns and digging sleep from their eyes.
Bo returns a minute later. “Not there. Let’s try the other General Room.” He takes my hand, tugging me aft.
The woman with the clogs runs back toward us, wailing something in Dutch, heedless of the other people in the way. Bo catches me against him. The woman trips, dropping her suitcase, which springs open, littering the floor with clothes. Her sobs scratch my ears like forks over bone china. A man drags her away.
A thread of panic slips through me. “How do boiler rooms flood? They can’t all flood, right? Isn’t everything on the ship watertight? What’s going on, Bo?”
He places a reassuring hand on my back. “I am not sure yet.” His dark eyes force my attention to him. “You and I are partners tonight. We need to find the kumquats. If something bad happened, then we find a boat that will take Chinese.”
I grimace, already anticipating the resistance. There aren’t enough lifeboats to go around, only enough for half the passengers aboard. And people who get served bread heels are more apt to be kicked off them than put on. But perhaps our acrobatic performance has shifted the scales in our favor. Maybe it’s harder not to save someone after giving them a round of applause.
We reach the aft staircase, where the crowd has thickened. Their protests make my ears ring.
“Won’t let us up,” a voice calls down the stairs. “Says we should wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“It’s outrageous.”
“Probably just a drill. Let’s go back to our rooms and wait until the ruckus is over.”
“Wink! Olly!” Bo calls up the stairwell. No one answers.
“There’s another way up.” I pull him back down the hallway to one of the emergency doors and throw it open, ignoring its prohibitive “Third Class Not Allowed” sign. This is an emergency, after all. “You can get to the Boat Deck this way, folks,” I tell the closest passengers, gesturing in case they don’t speak English.
Several cast us guarded looks, or maybe they’re just scared. A dark-haired group in thick sweaters passes, and a woman with a tight bun stops. It’s the Syrian woman from the dining hall, clutching her little girl to her.
I gesture through the door and point up. “Lifeboats. Come.”
Bo and I take the first-class stairs two at a time, pulling ourselves up the ornate banisters. When we finally emerge from the deckhouse—five decks up—my legs begin to cramp, and I lean over my knees to catch my breath. The Syrians exit moments later, and we lose them in the crowd.
On the port-side corner where we’re standing, the Boat Deck crawls with people, most collecting around the quartet of lifeboats. We cross to starboard and find the situation the same.
Unlike my prior visits to the Boat Deck, all the lights have been turned on. At least the electricity is still running. But with no moonlight silvering the water, the ocean seems to have disappeared. If not for the liquid sounds of water sloshing against the hull, we might be performers on a stage in the middle of some play. A tragedy.
“What happened?” I say, mostly to myself, shivering as the cold bites at my exposed parts. I wish I hadn’t left April’s vanilla coat in Mrs. Sloane’s room. Worse, I put Mum’s Bible in the slipper bag. It’ll be lost in all this commotion.
I’m sorry to lose your wedding picture, honored parents. But in case you’re worried, don’t put on the kettle. You won’t see Jamie or me tonight, I swear.
Bo distractedly takes off his peacoat and pours the sweet warmth of it over my shoulders, then puts his cap over my head. Peering at something in the distance, he points. His shell ring gleams like a gibbous moon on a night that seems to lack one.
My eyes can barely make out anything in the darkness. But then a hint of white shows itself. I squint, trying to interpret the grey-and-black gradations of what’s before me. Finally, I suss out the edges of the thing—it’s a pale, jagged wall of ice.
“Ice mountain,” Bo says quietly, translating the Cantonese word for iceberg.
I gasp as the pieces fall into place. So we did hit an iceberg. It must have breached the hull, allowing seawater to flood Boiler Room 6.
Rivulets of water sprint toward the bow, angling starboard. The ship is definitely tilted toward the head. Are we still taking on water?
“They have ways to bail out, right?”
Bo fills his lungs, but then says simply, “There are pumps, yes.”
Did he stop himself from saying more? He’s intimately familiar with how boiler rooms work. Surely he has a good grasp of the situation.
I suddenly find it hard to draw air. He isn’t saying more because it doesn’t look good. What are a few pumps against a leak big enough to flood an entire boiler room? Plenty more souls will rise afore the night is done.
“We’re sinking, aren’t we?”
Bo squeezes my hand, his eyes grazing me with concern. “Maybe, Stowaway. But worry later.” He pulls me along like a farmer leading a stubborn mule.
Mourn later, worry later. How can I just set aside the enormity of what’s happening to us, like mail to open on another day? But I must, because people are depending on us. People I can’t lose.
I fling away catastrophic thoughts, glaring hard at my surroundings for Wink and Olly. Adrenaline floods my veins, honing my senses. The crank of the winches sounds like the screech of owls, and my nostrils fill with the iron scent of fear. Crewmen grunt, positioning davits so that the lifeboats overhang the sides of the ship, ready to be filled. From what I can see, not one craft has been lowered yet.
Bo steers me to the back rail, which gives us a view of the poop deck and the well deck. Dozens of people clutter these third-class decks, but none seem willing to bypass the waist-high gate to the superstructure.
Why the bloody hell don’t they crawl over the gate? Who cares about the rules now? The crew isn’t helping, so they better help themselves if they want to wake up tomorrow.
I strain to see Wink and Olly but don’t spot their narrow forms. “They could’ve gone into the Smoking Room or the General Room where it’s warmer.”