Читать книгу The Classic Morpurgo Collection - Michael Morpurgo, Michael Morpurgo - Страница 40

“Good Luck and God Bless You”

It was our blessed good fortune that Mr Stanton and I were there on the Boat Deck at the time the last boat was being lowered. It was not one of the large wooden lifeboats – they were all gone by now – but one of the boats with canvas sides, some twenty or more feet long, with a rounded hull. This one was stored below a funnel and there were some men trying to manhandle it down on to the deck, a couple of crew among them. One of them was shouting at us: “This is the only boat left, this is our only chance. We need more hands here!” Wading though water that was waist-high by now, Mr Stanton and I and a dozen other men did all we could to help them heave the boat up and over the rail. All of us knew this was our last hope. How we strained and struggled to launch that lifeboat, but it was too heavy and too cumbersome for us. There weren’t enough of us, and we were very soon exhausted by our efforts. We couldn’t do it. The Titanic was groaning and gasping all about us. She was going down at the bow, fast.

I looked up to see a great wave come rolling along the decks towards us, a lucky wave as it turned out. It swept the lifeboat overboard and we went with it. The shock of the icy sea drove all the breath from my body and left me gasping for breath. I remember trying to swim frantically away from the ship, and then looking back and seeing one of the huge funnels breaking away and falling down on top of me, toppling like a giant tree. As it hit the water I felt myself sucked under and swirled away downwards into a whirlpool of such power I was sure it would take me to the bottom with the ship. All I could do was to keep my mouth pursed, tight shut, and my eyes open.

Suddenly I saw Mr Stanton above me, his feet caught in a rope.

He was kicking and struggling to break free. Then, miraculously, I was released from the whirlpool, and found I could swim up towards him. I managed to free him from the rope, and together we swam hard for the surface, for the light. How deep we were by now I had no idea. All I knew was that I had to swim with all my strength, and not to breathe, not to open my mouth. What I learned that night was what every drowning man learns before he dies, that in the end he has to open his mouth and try to breathe. That is how he drowns. When at last I had to take a breath the sea rushed in and choked me, but at that very moment I broke the surface, spluttering, coughing the water out of my lungs. Mr Stanton was in the water nearby, calling for me. We saw the upturned lifeboat nearby, and swam towards it. There were bodies floating in the water, hundreds of them. The cold was cramping my legs, sapping what little strength I still had. If I didn’t reach the boat, if I didn’t get out of the water and soon, I would be as lifeless as those bodies all around me. I swam for my life.

There were other survivors clambering on to it when we got there, and I couldn’t see how there’d be room for us as well. But helping hands hauled us both up out of the sea and we joined them there, half standing, half lying back against the upturned hull of the lifeboat, and clinging to one another for dear life. Only then did I really begin to take in the horrors of the tragedy I had been living through. The shrieks and cries of the drowning were all around me. I caught my last sight of the great Titanic, her stern almost vertical, slipping into the sea. When she was gone we were left only with the debris of this dreadful disaster strewn all around the ocean, and those terrible cries that went on and on. And there were swimmers in the sea all around us, every one of them, it seemed, heading our way. Very soon we were swamped with them and we were turning them away, yelling at any others who came near that there was no room. And that was true, horribly true. The buoyancy of our boat was already under threat. We were low in the water as it was, and all of us would be lost if we took on any more. What I have never forgotten is that even in their desperate plight many of those swimmers seemed to understand the situation perfectly, and accept it. One of them – and I recognised him as one of the stokers I’d worked alongside – said to us, his voice shaking with cold: “All right then, lads, good luck and God bless you.” And with that he swam off in among the bodies, and the chairs and the crates, and disappeared.

I never saw him again.

I will carry to the grave the guilt of what we did to that man and to so many others. Like so many survivors I have lived through that night out on the open ocean in my dreams, again and again. Mr Stanton and I did not talk much, each of us too busy with our own doubts and dreads, too busy just surviving. But side by side we endured together. I know that for me it was memories that kept me going. I think I relived most of my life that night: Harry the cockroach in his matchbox, the Countess Kandinsky sweeping into the Savoy in her ostrich feather hat, taking her bows at the opera that night, Kaspar curled up on her piano as she sang, Lizziebeth beaming up at me as she fed him his liver, Lizziebeth on the roof of the Savoy, Lizziebeth and her mother in the lifeboat with Kaspar hidden in his blanket.

Around us the ocean was silent and empty now. There were no more cries for help, no more last messages to mother, no more appeals to God. We looked, and we never stopped looking, for the lights of a ship on the horizon that might bring us some hope of rescue. Our lifeboat had floated away from all the others by now and from all the wreckage that had littered the ocean. We were quite alone and quite helpless. From time to time one of our number – there were about thirty of us, I think – said the Lord’s Prayer, but for the most part we were silent.

The growing fear for all of us as the night passed was the sea itself. At the time the ship went down the ocean was completely calm, just as it had been ever since we left Southampton. But now all of us could feel that a swell was building, and we all knew that if the waves worsened our fragile craft would be bound to sink beneath us. Sleep too was a danger. Already one of the older passengers had simply fallen asleep and slipped into the sea. He went down without a struggle. I saw him go, and I knew then that very soon I would be going the same way. I wasn’t afraid of dying, not any more. I just wanted to get it over with. Often I felt coming over me an irresistible wish to surrender myself to sleep, only for Mr Stanton to shake me back to my senses.

It was Mr Stanton too who first saw the lights of the Carpathia. His cracked voice shouted it out to the rest of us. Some did not believe it at first because the rise and fall of the swell intermittently hid the lights from us. But soon they were quite unmistakable. A great joy surged through every one of us, giving us new strength and new determination. Not that any of us cheered, but when we looked at each other now we could manage a smile. We knew we had a chance to survive. Those lights of hope, lights of life, for that’s what they were for us, drove away the darkness of our despair, and the agony of the cold too. Mr Stanton’s arm came round my shoulder. I knew he must be hoping what I was hoping for, that his wife, and his daughter, and Kaspar might be there on the Carpathia, and safe.

We did not know it at the time, but we were the last survivors to be picked up by the Carpathia. I went up the rope ladder ahead of Mr Stanton. My legs were so weak that I wondered often as I climbed whether I could make it or not. I could see that my hands were gripping the ladder, but I couldn’t feel them. It wasn’t strength that got me up that ladder, it was nothing but the will to live. Then with Mr Stanton and all the others from the lifeboat we were all taken below into the warm, given dry clothes and swathed in blankets. We sat there drinking warm, sweet tea. It has been my favourite drink ever since.

There was chaos on board. It was no one’s fault. The crew of the Carpathia were doing their best, but they were overwhelmed, they were busy just coping as best they could. Whoever we asked, no one seemed to have any definite news of anyone. Lists of survivors were being compiled, we were told.

Mr Stanton asked the sailors repeatedly for news of his family, but there was no one who recognised their description. Every one of us on that ship was looking for someone. Many sat silent, already knowing the worst, lost in grief. Joyous reunions were few and far between. Fearful and hopeful, we went looking for Lizziebeth and Mrs Stanton and Kaspar. We searched the ship from bow to stern. They were nowhere to be found. We found bodies lying on the deck, though, wrapped in blankets. We checked these too. I came across one little girl, about the same age as Lizziebeth, and was sure it was her at first, but it was not.

We looked everywhere we could think of, asked again and again the same question. The last lingering hope left to us was that they might still be out there at sea in their lifeboat. The two of us went to the ship’s rail. But all the lifeboats we saw floating around the ship were already empty. We scanned the sea all around, searched the horizon. There was nothing. At that moment of utter despair we heard a yowling from behind us. We turned. They were there, all three of them, shrouded in blankets, only their faces showing. It was a strange and wonderful reunion for all of us. We stood there on the deck for many long minutes, our arms around one another. It was during those moments I really felt for the first time that I had in some way become one of them, one of the family.

Crowded in a cabin below with other survivors, we slept and told our stories and slept again. Lizziebeth and her mother owed their survival, they told us, to a small Japanese man who spoke no English and a brave French lady who fortunately spoke both Japanese and English, so could translate. Through her, the Japanese man made it quite clear to everyone that they should do what he was doing and row. If they rowed they would keep warm, he said, and keeping warm could save their lives. So that’s what they did, taking it in turns all night long. Even Lizziebeth rowed. She sat on the French lady’s lap and rowed. Because of that wonderful man’s example, Mrs Stanton said, not one of them had died of the cold in that lifeboat. His example and his cheerfulness had kept their spirits up all through the longest, coldest night of their lives, and when they reached the Carpathia, he was the last out of the lifeboat.

I knew even as she was telling us that it had to be Little Mitch. I went searching for him at once, and found him after a while on his own, looking out over the railings at the empty sea. We greeted each other as old friends, which of course after all we had lived through, we most certainly were. I was up on deck with Little Mitch a few days later, as the Carpathia steamed slowly in to New York Harbour. That was when we first set eyes on the Statue of Liberty. He turned to me with a big grin on his face, and said just one word: “America!”