UNDERCOVER on the TITANIC (book 1)

Part 32 - Boilers

'This doesn't look like Silverwood School,' I admitted, 'but Denny must be around here somewhere.' 

'You think we should wait for him?' Miguel asked.

Licia said, 'If you think I'm going to stand around in this creepy place on the off chance he'll show, forget it.'

'Oy!' the boy said, 'Are yer wiv dat toff wiv'd moustache wot talk funny like you. Ah c'n 'ardly unnerstan' nuffing 'e sez. Sir Denny som'fing.'

Slowly my brain started working. He was speaking some sort of English. I exhaled very slowly. 'Yes. We're with Denny . . . I mean, Sir Denny.'

Pacman sniffed the air carefully, slipped nimbly under the rail and disappeared down a steep flight of steps. 

'It's a spiral staircase,' Licia exclaimed as she found a gap in railings. I ran after Pacman and the boy and Licia were close behind. Miguel came last. 

'What's your name? Licia asked.

'Mister Isambard Jenkins,' the boy replied pompously, 'apprentice greaser.   I wuz named after Isambard Kingdom Brunel, d'greatest engineer in England. You can call me Sam.'

'Hi Sam. I'm Licia and these are Miguel and Ziff.'

'Funny names yer 'av',' he marvelled. As we clattering down around the spiral staircase, I got dizzy. I gripped the railings as the stairs seemed to lurch and drop for no apparent reason. 'Where are we going?' Miguel asked.

'Sir Denny went aft, dahn t' d'engine room.' 

'Engine room?' Licia said with alarm. 'Where are we?'

'Dis is d' tank top,' Isambard replied enigmatically as the spiral staircase abruptly ended. I wondered why he was talking about a short tee-shirt as we stared into a long tunnel lit with bare light bulbs. 

It was divided with a hand rail down the centre and two signs painted on the walls read, "Way In This Side" on the left, and, "Way Out This Side" on the right. Another message read, "Men will break step while in tunnel". 

At end of the tunnel was a dim red glow. 'An' dis is d' firemen's passage. Dey change shift ev'ry four hours.'

'Alice in Wonderland,' Licia whispered in a tone of wonder. 'First a talking goose and now we're down the rabbit hole. Is this a dream?'

'If it is, I'm having the same dream,' I said. 

'It could still be Licia's dream,' Miguel pointed out. 'You could be in the dream telling her that you are having the same dream.'

I rolled my eyes. 'I guess that means it isn't a dream, unless I'm dreaming you just said that.'

Isambard looked puzzled.

'Will you two be serious,' Licia demanded. 'This place looks like a set for a horror movie. We appear to be locked in a steel box and I don't want to find out what happens next.'

'Okay, okay, chill,' I replied. I pointed down the passage which was about half the length of a hockey rink. 'There is a light at the end of the tunnel.'

'I'm going to call my parents first,' Licia announced as she fished a cell phone out of her pocket. 'It looks like we are not getting out of this place in a hurry.' 

She was staring at the cell phone. 'Now I'm really scared. There's no signal.'

'Not surprising,' I reassured her. 'We seem to be in some kind of steel box and that would shield us from the radio waves. How about we go find Denny?'

We tried to walk straight down the left hand side of the firemen's passage but we kept wandering into the wall or the hand rail. It seemed like the crazy ride at the fairground. The steel floor was vibrating under our feet and it gently rolled unpredictably so that we lurched from side to side, the length of the tunnel, except Isambard, who walked as if nothing were moving. The motion was accompanied by strange clangs, bangs and knocks and a continuous rumble like distant thunder. I began to feel queasy with motion sickness. I swallowed. Maybe Licia was right, this was a horror movie.

As we neared the end, the dull roar increased until we were almost shouting.  Abruptly, we were in a room littered with small shiny black rocks. A broom was propped against a doorway. 

'Coal bunkers,' Isambard shouted tersely. A few metres further, we came to another doorway with a heavy steel door hung overhead like a portcullis.

Isambard saw me staring up at it.  'Watertight doors.'

I was trying to figure out what a watertight door was for, as we stumbled into a high cross tunnel that looked like someone's idea of Hell. 

It was about three metres high and four metres wide at floor level but the steel walls were interrupted with small, cupboard-like doors and the wall leaned in over our heads. It was lit with dim light bulbs. The ceiling was festooned with rods, tubes and cables and, despite a strong breeze, the heat radiating from the walls was intense. And on both sides the tunnels were filled with men who stared at us in astonishment. The floor was littered with boxy wheel barrows and lumps of coal which one of the men was shovelling into one of the small openings in the wall.

 Everything was grey or black except the mens' shirts which were incongruously white. Their faces were uniformly black with white streaks where sweat had trickled from their hair.

'Is it ever hot in here,' Licia exclaimed as she pulled off her coat.

'Boiler Room Six,' Isambard yelled at us. 'Don't touch nuffink.   Everyfink is 'ot.' In confirmation, one of the men opened a small door, shoved in a long steel rod and raked out a pile of hot, white ash. The blast of heat from the open door made us recoil. 

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