Titanic: Voyage Of The Damned

Chapter 7: Escape and Sacrifice

A feeling of unreality washed over Rose as Cal dragged her ruthlessly toward the last remaining lifeboats. All around them, nightmare scenes of bedlam unfurled on the wildly slanting deck. Hysterical crowds pushed and slipped on the icy surface, sending shooting sparks as coins and jewels were ground underfoot.

Rose resisted Cal's vice-like grip on her wrist, craning her neck desperately to spot Jack again in the thrashing multitudes. But the animated masses all blended together, indistinguishable from one another. She and Cal might as well be all alone, sealed in their own private bubble of panicked urgency.

Somewhere out there, Jack searched just as frantically for her, no doubt fighting the paralyzed mobs to reach her side again. Rose clung fiercely to that certainty in her heart. After surviving this far, she refused to concede their fate to the whims of chance and cold Atlantic waters.

Ahead, a cluster of crewmen struggled to maintain control as they peeled female passengers off each other to clear space aboard. The davit lines strained and the lifeboat tilted dangerously, threatening to upend its shrieking occupants into the black sea yawning below.

Rose balked, struck by the absurdity of it all - elegant ladies clawing like animals over a tilting wooden craft, surrendering all last shreds of dignity in the scramble for salvation. She would sooner stay behind and perish alongside Jack than abandon him to such indignity.

Sensing her hesitation, Cal tightened his punishing grip, ignoring her gasp of pain. His eyes were wild, face contorted almost maniacally. "Stay with me, damn you!" he growled under his breath. "I'll not lose everything over your foolish whimsy!"

Rose wrenched against his hold. But Cal was bigger and adrenaline fueled his determination. He wrestled her inexorably forward like an indentured possession he was determined not to forfeit.

Rose screamed for Jack, screwing her eyes shut against the nightmare tableau unfolding around her. But the swelling din swallowed her cries entirely. When she forced her eyes open again, the boat was directly before them, a hair's breadth from plunging into the sea.

The ship listed further just as they reached the cluster of terrified souls still begging for reprieve. Rose's feet nearly skidded out from under her. Only Cal's bulldog persistence kept her upright. For one fleeting hopeful moment she thought they would lose their footing and go cascading across the deck, their places forfeited.

But Cal compensated for the violent shift of gravity, refusing to lose his prize. With a vicious shove, he propelled them both forward. Rose landed a rib-bruising blow across the lifeboat edge that expelled all air from her lungs. Pain ricocheted through her chest as Cal scrambled inelegantly behind, flush with ugly triumph.

"Lower away!" Came the shout beside her. Before Rose could cry out or scramble free, the ropes lowered them in lurches toward the black swells. The water loomed up menacingly to swallow them all. Rose searched the diminishing deck in desperation. Where was Jack?

Shouts and scuffling erupted nearby on their descent. A loose davit pulley snapped its constraints, sending their lifeboat careening wildly askew. Its human cargo clung screaming, certain they would be flung out. Somehow it stabilized, but a jagged notch now split the hull ominously at the waterline. Icy Atlantic spray needled Rose's cheeks where tears had instantly frozen. She clung numbly to the wooden seat, overwhelmed with despair. Was this to be the tragic outcome after everything? Separated and adrift with Cal beside her?

His labored breathing rasped loud in her ear over the whimpering and muted prayers around them. But if he gloated over his triumph, Rose did not register. She retreated deep inside herself, willing numbness to keep the horrific present at bay. The ropes gone slack meant only that the Titanic had fully surrendered them up to the pitiless sea. Jack's beloved face glowed bright in her mind, frozen in time just before the abyss opened up between them. She clung to that image fiercely as the lifeboat swayed atop the black and indifferent ocean.