“Mr. Perkis?” Smyth called down, “Are you all right, Sir?”
“We will be up in a second. Keep your eyes open for any problems or irregularities.” Perkis caught Freeze’s shoulder. “What I did… there was nothing to be done for him. I felt it was best to set him free of his agony and fear.”
“I understand, Mr. Perkis. It was an act of mercy.”
Perkis and Freeze ran to the ladder to ascend, and they slammed the hatch closed. If a monster frog could be in a jeweled box, another could be anywhere, just waiting to attack them. “He was attacked and killed,” Perkis told the other two men, “we must be careful, and we cannot stay aboard if there are dangers.”
“We are so tired, Sir. We’re exhausted,” Smyth said.
Perkis looked at him curiously. In the space of a few moments while they were below deck, Smyth’s skin thinned, age spots appeared, and heavy lines filled his face. He looked as if he had aged twenty-five years. Perkis asked the men to come over to his side of the vessel as he eyed the mist.
The wispy mist still floated upon that side around the chair where Compton sat and Smyth stood.
Smyth reached a hand over to awaken the other man, reaching for his shoulder, “Time to wake, old boy.”
Compton was slumped over and to one side, curled up in the chair. As Smyth pulled at him, Compton fell from the chair and onto the deck. He looked a hundred years old or older, his face a mask of wrinkles and dark spots, his athletic body petite and frail. It was if something had sucked his youth, vitality, and life force from his body. If he were alive, they could not tell.
“Get away from the mist, Smyth.”
Smyth was retching and moaning as he saw Compton. His bones ached, and he felt his knees popping as he walked. Freeze gave him a hand, “Come along now.”
“What has happened to him, Sir?” Smyth asked.
“I cannot even guess.”
“Is he alive?”
“If he is, he will not be in a minute more,” Perkis said.
As they made their way to the stern again, Perkis looked at the water below, illuminated by the golden mist. Far away, he heard thundering, clunking footsteps. What creature might make such a loud noise, he could not imagine.
“Mr. Perkis, please hurry,” Maddy Astor called.
“On our way, Ma’am.”
The behemoth must be unbelievably large to make such loud footsteps; it trumpeted a bellow that was so deep that they actually felt the sound deep within their bones. All three men fell to the deck as their legs gave way. Many more bellows and their bones would compress into dust.
Perkis crawled.
He climbed hand over hand down the rope, knowing that if the monster let loose with another call, he would fall, but he made it into the lifeboat. “Prepare to row, and row fast, ladies.”
Smyth began his descent. Body smaller, his clothing flapped on him, and he looked down to show sunken cheeks. Before their eyes, his hair turned grey, then faded to white, then fell out, blowing away on the breeze. His pate was covered in age spots.
“What is happening?” one of the women asked.
“I do not have any idea, Ma’am, but whatever it is on this ship, it is evil. This Mary or Marie whatever is filled with evil straight up from hell itself,” Perkis told them. “It took the people onboard and my men, and if we do not hurry, it will take us as well.”
Smyth was like an eighty-year-old man, trying to manage a rope. His gnarled hands could not manage the rope, and he lost his grip, falling into the water below. Everyone looked at the spot, ready to yank him to safety, but he did not surface; instead a blossom of deep red bubbled merrily to the surface, causing several of the women to scream and cry hysterically.
Perkis, although sick over the loss, could not imagine the reaction from the women had they seen the frog eat the face from Everett or had they seen what became of poor Compton.
Perkin untied the boat, yelling for Freeze to hurry down the rope. Freeze was half way down when something massive lunged between the boats and plucked Freeze from the rope as it swam on.
Perkis blinked as everyone on the boat screamed. What he saw was impossible. He had been a sailor a long time ago, and although he had seen whales, dolphins, and large sharks, what he saw now was unbelievable. It was the most muscular, heavy, old shark that he had ever seen.
It had eaten Freeze.
“Row,” Perkis yelled, “everyone, if you want to live, row for your life.”
He knew deep in his gut that if they did not hurry, they too would be part of the mist, and either live or die, but endlessly be a part of it. The mist was a universe with power, and it was exceptionally greedy and very, very hungry. The things that were part of it were terrible.
Her cheeks flushed with activity, Maddy Astor rowed and shouted in a loud, commanding voice that they had to row hard, “Row, ladies, row. We can do this.”
In a few minutes, they were at the edge of the mist, and while the shark circled them, he did not molest them. As soon as they were past the mist, they felt a weight lift from their chests, and they could breathe very easily. The trepidation and wretchedness that they felt lifted. Along the way, there were bodies, some clinging to pieces of wood or chairs, but all were frozen, dead, and frosted over. The people, hard like ice, bumped against the lifeboat.
A woman, sitting atop a floating table precariously, managed to moan. She was so far gone that she could not raise her hands or arms, but she slid her almost frozen eyes over the boat and pleaded silently for them to help her.
They pulled alongside her and carefully pulled her to the boat.
A few women fainted, and everyone aboard screamed when her frozen arm broke off above the elbow when they pulled her aboard. Staring at the place her arm had been, she felt no pain since she was numb. The women struggled to understand what had happened.
The others pulled her on board and covered her as best they could; Hemming fashioned a tourniquet for her arm in case she warmed up, but he did not think she would survive.
He shook his head, “I do not know what else I can do. It may be better if she never awakens to the pain she will feel when… if she warms.”
Perkis nodded and set the arm and hand on the bottom of the boat under a seat. As they rowed beyond the mist and ice field, they cried and mourned the woman’s predicament, but forgot all about Freeze, Smyth, Compton, and Everett as if they had never been rescued. Instead they focused on the ten others they had pulled from the water and who remained alive in the boat.
Six of them pulled from the sea would survive.
Although Maddy Astor had no memory of the shark and the men who had died, she kept the flush to her cheeks as she and Mr. Perkis commanded the lifeboat, and she had not only a purpose, but people depended upon her to think logically and act quickly and decisively. It might have been the pregnancy, but Mrs. Astor glowed, her voice was no longer meek and quiet, and she trusted her judgments.
Some died.
Some were reborn.
Chapter Twelve: Boat B
Collapsible Boat B was never launched since there was no time. The ship settled deeper into the water, and in turn the water washed over the deck, releasing the boat so that it landed right atop Harold Bride. He grasped the seats, terrified of being pulled down in the suction when the ship plunged to its watery grave.
When the funnel collapsed, crushing many swimmers, it sent out a wave that washed the capsized boat and Bride away from the danger and into the midst of hundreds of swimmers, trying to find a way out of the sea. Officers Lightoller and Wilde dove from the deck just before it went under. As the funnel fell and caused the large wave, they washed almost two hundred feet away from the wreckage.