Chapter Twenty-Nine

Penelope had never been good at keeping track of time.

Often, five minutes could seem like five hours, and a whole night could pass in the blink of an eye. But she knew that it didn’t take long for the screams to dwindle.

One by one, they turned into shouts, into moans, into silence. Until Penelope was almost certain that the quiet was even worse.

She knew that the cries would always stay with her.

She would forever close her eyes, should she survive, and she would hear them.

She knew, from talking to one of the men who had helped load the other lifeboats, that they weren’t all filled to capacity. Nearly all of the twenty lifeboats floating out there would each have been able to bring a good forty or so people aboard—he even said that one had left with only twelve people aboard when it could have held forty.

Now, with the silence, and still trapped on the upturned lifeboat with around fifty other people, Penelope knew that no one had thought to return and save the lives of those who hadn’t been lucky enough to enter a lifeboat.

Every person who had entered the water, who had started that haunting crescendo, was now dead. Floating in the water. And their loved ones sat close enough to help but were unwilling to do anything about it.

She thought of Ruby. Had she tried to convince people to come and search for Penelope and her family? Or had she resigned herself to the idea that no one would have survived the sinking?

She couldn’t make her gaze move away from her knees. She had brought them up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them not long after being brought aboard the lifeboat and realised she wouldn’t be moving any time soon.

She didn’t want to see the faces of dead strangers drifting nearby—of husbands and fathers who would never make it back to their families. She didn’t want to see the faces of those she knew—to see Mother and Father, Frank and Mr. Cole.

She didn’t want to see that kind gentleman in the smoking room who had helped her find her parents. Or Mr. Ismay, who had told her to get to a boat because her parents wouldn’t want her to die. She didn’t want to see Isidor and his wife. Or even the eccentric Duke who would never see his many animals again.

So she kept her gaze locked on her knees and concentrated on the thudding of her heart.

Those on the boat around her remained quiet.

She had no idea how long she sat there in utter silence, lost in her thoughts, memories cropping up just when she didn’t want them to. She remembered the look on Ruby’s face as she’d realised Penelope wasn’t getting into the boat.

She remembered her parents’ surprise at her still being aboard and promising them that she would live.

She remembered the days before, when her greatest worry had been sneaking into First Class and not getting caught.

It seemed so small. So utterly insignificant now.

It was even more ridiculous that she had thought that was fear.

The girl she had been before knew nothing of cold, knew nothing of fear.

“What was that?” someone asked, causing Penelope to blink herself back into the present.

The man in front, the one who had brought her aboard, said, “The lifeboat’s losing air underneath.” A beat passed before he added, “It’s sinking.”

Penelope cringed at that word, feeling utterly helpless as she finally raised her head to look at him. Her eyes automatically darted out to the sea, wincing as she saw the bodies lifelessly bobbing alongside them.

Panic gripped her throat as she realised that, should the lifeboat also sink, there’d be no way for them to survive. She’d end up dead, just like all those bodies out there. And she refused to let that happen.

“Is there…” It was so difficult to make her mouth work. She had screamed and then been quiet for so long. “…anything we can do, sir?”

A small, gentle smile appeared on his lips, highlighting the joy lines that surrounded his kind eyes. “Second Officer Charles Lightoller, at your service, miss.”

“Penelope Fletcher.” It was so strange to be making such formal introductions. She shook her head. “You…didn’t answer my question.”

“The ocean will get up soon.” He paused for a moment, swallowing with difficulty. “The tide will cause the air underneath to be lost.”

“So what do we do?” another man questioned.

“We need to…keep her even,” Lightoller announced as the lifeboat moved a little in the swell that was starting to build around them. “She’s losing air… If we keep her steady…” His sentences were incomplete, but Penelope was just glad that an actual sailor was with them, helping them through this.

“How?” one of the men asked.

“We need…stand…two lines…keep her stable.”

Penelope nodded and shuffled as Lightoller started to organise the men with short, curt orders, showing them where and when to stand.

As the men around her started to rise, however, she realised that he wasn’t addressing her. He was actively choosing to ignore her. “Lightoller,” she called out, her voice soft due to the pain in her lungs. He didn’t hear, so she drew a deep breath in and tried again, this time with a sharp, “Charles!”

He stopped and turned to Penelope.

“Where…want me?”

He shook his head. His own legs trembled, Penelope could see that much from where she sat, but from the way he held himself, no one would have been able to tell. “Young woman, such as yourself…” He shook his head again and started to return to give further orders to the other men, but Penelope gritted her teeth.

Slowly, surely, she pushed herself to her feet, thankful that her frozen limbs didn’t lock up and send her over the edge into the water. She pushed her shoulders back as far as they would go and fixed her stare on Charles Lightoller again. “Where. D’you. Want me?”

Lightoller sighed and pointed to a spot to the right. Penelope hesitantly stepped over to it and turned back to him, watching as he demonstrated how to bend their knees and shift their weight, following the waves so that they remained stable.

She gritted her teeth, determined to concentrate and copy his movements perfectly.

She had made it this far. She wasn’t going to stop fighting now.