With the attention of the creatures diverted, Karl and John sloshed along the wall to get away, hoping that their legs would not, in their numbness, give way and cause them to fall.
“Get out; get out; hurry,” John said, pushing at the rest.
Karl reached for Helen, but she pulled away. She was staring out a porthole that was even with the waterline outside.
“What is it?” he asked, huffing and glancing behind to make sure the creatures were not coming.
“I do not quite know,” she said. In shock, she spoke dully, staring out the porthole. “And look how much lower we are in the water.” Tears ran down her cheeks as she puzzled over what had happened to Claire and Sam Cotton. Had those been frogs of some gigantic type?
Stead looked out the porthole next to Helen and cursed. He did not apologize for his language.
At first, he saw a gigantic fin breaking the surface, swimming back and forth as if it could smell the blood. The fish swerved, swimming away, and Stead was disappointed not to see it.
No, not disappointed, but rather nervous. He felt dread.
Then he screamed.
Everyone pushed backwards out of the room, but before the door was closed, they saw the leviathan swimming at a tremendous speed towards the porthole and then bash it with its nose. The porthole exploded, and the sea rushed in, but the thing was not satisfied and used its great teeth to bite and gnash at the opening as if it could get its enormous bulk inside.
Peter Cavendar slammed the door closed.
“What were those things?” Jenny asked. “What kind of monsters are they and where did they come from? The sea? Were they frogs?”
“Nothing like that lives in the sea,” Stead murmured.
“We’re doomed. We’re in a place of the damned,” Charles Whitmore mumbled.
Jenny ignored him, “They looked like frogs, but frogs do not do that to people. And that fish, he thought to come right inside with us.”
“Out on the deck, I saw far worse,” Howard said, “and you may not believe me, but I’ll tell you quickly.” He related his story fully now.
“I can’t imagine what that was like. I would have fainted,” Jenny said, “and the frogs, why they must be a part of this, in some way. Howard, how could they be here? What is allowing them to come into our world?”
“I can only think the worlds have somehow crossed one another. Perhaps it is this spot on the sea.”
“They killed those poor people,” Maggie Brown wiped her eyes. Everyone wanted to run away and hide, but each tried to stay strong. She wanted to hide under the covers of her bed.
“I can’t say I believe it, but after seeing those horrid things, I can’t disbelieve it either,” Peter Cavendar said, “but if you did indeed see those things, and we know you saw the shark because we saw it; it’s old. It’s older than we can imagine. I think we have somehow crossed another time.”
“Exactly,” Howard agreed.
Maggie asked what Howard and Stead thought it could be that they were seeing.
Stead shrugged, “Sea monsters are the easy answer, but those are vile things, things that are disgusting to the human race. They looked abnormal or unnatural. I admit the shark scared me nearly to fainting.”
“I think the ship somehow entered a rip in worlds. Our worlds have collided, and we can go into theirs, and they can… are coming into ours. And they are hungry,” Howard said.
“Impossible,” John said, “but doesn’t this entire event seem impossible? I have wet trousers and wet, cold feet, and I saw frogs consume two people.” He shook his head, and Jenny took his hand and said, “I believe every word of what Howard told us.”
“Of course, it is the truth,” Jenny said, “As we have seen it ourselves.”
The water grew deeper, and most stayed behind, watching. Those already wet: Peter and Lewis Darby went to check the mailroom. The plan was to look since they were already here, then to hurry up the stairs, and make the Captain listen to them. If he would not, then the officers must.
The squash court was like a swimming pool, and no one wanted to go inside the room for fear more frogs were there.
They were up to their chests when they reached the mailroom, fearful that something was swimming nearby. The others located fire axes and other things to use as weapons. “ ‘ Ello, mailroom. We’ve come to help you.” Lewis Darby hoped those from the mail cargo room already had gone up the stairs.
When they opened the door, they found a lake of soggy letters and mailbags that were lost to the seawater.
Daniels said eight were down there at work usually. There were body parts, pale bits of flesh and yellow fat, and a lot of blood. The surface of the water was very busy. Daniels could not say if the people he knew were there or if other, unfortunate souls were torn apart in this room.
Those who saw inside were horrified and shielded their eyes. Peter closed the door, but one of the creatures slipped through the water with lightning speed.
The fish swam right at Lewis, latched onto his leg, and began biting him. He howled as he slapped at it; his hand slid off the fish with the slime it excreted. John grabbed it, its mouth full of Lewis’ flesh, and slammed it on the ground far away where Stead wacked it with a fire axe.
The women of the group gasped and turned pale.
“Hit it again, Mr. Stead,” Maggie called out.
“It is dead,” he promised her, but he pounded it a few more times.
“Now, it is very dead,” Maggie said.
Stead looked over the dead fish carefully and curiously but refused to touch the monstrosity. “That is a piranha, one of the most deadly fish in South America. See the teeth?”
“South America, where the water is warm? That is mad,” Helen Monypenny said.
“Well, it looks like one and behaves like one. The teeth and the bodystructure… this is a piranha, but piranha are not colored purple, and they do not have lizard tails, see. So it is a piranha but an abomination of one,” Stead explained. He showed them that the fish’s body did not end in a fin but a slender tail.
“It is quite larger than piranha grow,” Howard said.
Maggie tore strips from her chemise, and after she looked at the bites, she felt Lewis would be fine after she bandaged him. She warned him to keep his wounds dry. “I need some whiskey to clean the wound. It always works for me.”
“For to drink or for to burn my wound?” Lewis asked, trying to remain chipper.
“Both,” Maggie Brown said, “I know it hurts, and it is bleeding a lot, but I think the damage is less than you imagine.”
Daniels paced as he thought and told them, “F has to be underwater at the bow or close to it. There is nothing else we can do. The firemen have locked themselves away, and we cannot help anyone down here, now.”
Shivering the entire way, Charles Whitmore talked to himself, shrugging off comforting words. “We’re quite doomed.”
“We are not. We are going up now, so try to be calm, Mr. Whitmore, please.”
They trudged back along the walkway until they found the activity of the third class. They heard the screams towards the bow but did not have the fortitude to investigate or to wade through the rising water again.
“There are injured people back there?” a steward asked.
John Morton used his hand to grasp the steward’s elbow, “Go down there, but know, there is ice-cold water, and it is rising quickly. Most are dead. What you are hearing are the screams of the crewmen, left fighting back there. If they win the battle, they will come here, but if they lose, you do not want to be anywhere near.”