17

AUGUSTA

Friday, June 15, 1838

Very early

The yawl nearly disintegrated under the seawater’s flood, and all of them found themselves tossed again into the fathomless waters. Augusta screamed even as part of her had known the boat wasn’t seaworthy, that she would sink just as the others; her death delayed over and over with slim chance of salvation.

With all her strength she held on to Thomas with a grip of iron, took a deep breath and with it a mouthful of seawater before she sank beneath the surface, and then was buoyed upward toward the pinnacle of a wave. She scissored her legs, her nightgown tangling like seaweed, and with all her strength she pushed to the surface, to light and air. Bursting forth and lifting the child, she gasped for a breath soaked with seawater and reached for anything nearby with her free hand; she found only a handful of a blue vest. She screamed and choked as she realized she had grabbed a drowned body floating facedown, the arm missing and the face bloodied. Kicking back against the sea, she clung to Thomas above the water, terror stealing her breath, her chest squeezing with need for air. Waves rolling over her with a power that she’d never known, primal. Salt water burned her eyes and the inside of her nose.

She couldn’t scream; the thick weight of dark water pressed down and took all the strength she had to stay afloat. She surfaced, going dizzy, frantic, she felt her left leg hitch against a large piece of wood—a section of floorboard? A remnant of the mast? Part of her very own stateroom? She had no idea but she could only be grateful for it.

Lifting Thomas on top of the plank, his nightshirt grasped in her fist, she clung to the splintered timber with her other hand and took in gulps of air. Her lungs burned; she coughed, retched and spit until her breath evened out. Smoke rose from the ship, thick and clouding the night sky. Where was westward? Where was land?

Hanging on to the flank of wood, she saw nothing but waves crowding onto other waves, water flowing over and down. Everyone who had been in the yawl with her had disappeared. She screamed against the flinty blackness; cried out for Melody and Eliza, for William, Rebecca, Caroline and Charles. Thomas sat quiet and still, but she heard him breathing. She flailed, held on to the plank and kicked nearer to the sinking ship, fearing the sea had swallowed everyone else.

She and Thomas might be all that remained of the explosion. Could this be true?

The swell and sink of huge waves breathed as the lungs of a monstrous creature whose face she could never see. Wave caps full of froth turning silver and then dark. Then her foot hit something soft and she twisted to see a woman, face up, her nightdress floating around her as a nimbus of white, her dark hair as wild as a sea creature’s. Melody. Her beloved sister-in-law gone.

A strangled cry caught in her throat; she could not let Thomas see his mother, who at that moment became swallowed by the next wave and sank, feet first, face lifted to the sky. Images and sounds blurred together; time stretched and collapsed.

Augusta turned away as panic and fear coursing through her body provided a renewed strength. She kicked, her legs pumping and her heart with it. The waves didn’t roll as they did on a shore, one after the other, but instead arriving from every direction. Thomas’s eyes were wide and glistening; he was breathing. In and out. In and out. “I will hold you, Thomas. I will not let go of you.”

She glanced around as she rose and fell with the swell and trough of the waves. The water colder than the air, but not as it would have been in winter, she tried to quell her panic, focus on saving Thomas when a voice she knew—Eliza’s—called for help, the sound reaching Augusta’s ears as surely as if they were in the Broughton Street house and her niece was crying out from a nightmare. Augusta lifted her head from the plank and saw the flash of blond hair, a cloud of white nightdress, and the hand of her niece just above a wave ten feet or less away. Augusta reached out as far as she could, kicked toward Eliza with a bear’s roar escaping her throat. If she let go the plank and reached for Eliza, Thomas would sink, and most likely Augusta, too. If she let Eliza drown, she might as well take her own life; she couldn’t live with herself. She reached and reached, screaming without words. With the last thrust forward, a kick and an extended hand toward Eliza’s disappearing body, Thomas tipped and fell into the waves.

Augusta threw her body over the splintered wood and used both hands to retrieve him. She set him back on the plank as his cries mixed with coughs made of seafoam and fear. “Auntie!” he called and clung to her neck, his lips on her skin.

“Your sister,” she said and twisted to see that the form—if it had ever been there at all—was gone. Eliza had disappeared. Melody. All of them.

Unwittingly, she’d made a choice. She’d chosen Thomas without thought, without planning, and with that realization she collapsed over the remnant of the shattered ship next to him. Around her, she spied one or two thrashing passengers, those floating on small pieces of debris and those disappearing with the next wave. Each fought for his own life; none of them could help the other until they found relative safety on something that floated.

Finally, Augusta summoned up the strength to kick until the plank banged against a large piece of the ship, maybe twenty feet by thirty feet, and she gained purchase on an iron stanchion. Others were huddled on its surface and clung to its edges, reaching over to help those who had made their way there.

Dragging Thomas by his arm, she pulled herself halfway onto the wreckage; he screamed in pain as she set him on solid wood. Then her strength failed and she slid slowly back into the sea. She held her breath in preparation for another submersion as she stretched her free hand and found the flesh of another; a muffled voice reached her ears. “Sister, grab my hand.”

It was too late. She had saved Thomas so now she could let go, release her life to the sea. No fight in her remained.

A wave swelled and Augusta ascended with it; Lamar grabbed her hair and lifted her high. The ripping pain sent a surge of outrage through her and she grappled with the sharp edges of the wreckage as she was hauled onto it and flopped down next to her brother. Her body shuddered and with great heaves Augusta vomited seawater.

She looked up at Lamar and wailed, “Melody and the children. Oh, Lamar, the children. Lilly. Where are Lilly and Madeline?” She choked on grief that tasted like seawater and vomit.

He clung to his youngest child with both arms and dropped to his knees beside her. There were others around them, but Augusta saw no one except her brother and Thomas. “There’s hope, Augusta. Get up, there must be hope.”

“Yes.” Augusta reached inside herself, to the place where faith and hope had always resided as a surety that God watched over them, that she was loved and cared for. He cared for her, indeed, but he wasn’t going to save her. She found courage instead. She’d been granted this moment of life and she must find a way to keep it.

She and Lamar clasped each other, Thomas between them. At last the child found his voice and screamed as loudly as he ever had. This alone brought hope. After many minutes Augusta struggled to her feet and assessed the situation.

Other swimmers were scrambling in the moonlight, pulling themselves up onto the wreckage, and slipping again, reaching out for help. Lamar handed his son to Augusta and instructed her slowly. “This is what remains of the promenade deck. It can stay afloat if it breaks free. Move to its center and hold tight to Thomas.”

And with that, Charles appeared, his face rising and falling with a wave, his arms flailing above him as he cried out, “Father!” Lamar reached out his hands and brought his oldest son to the deck even as it shifted and began to rise to an ominous angle.

“My son.”

Together, Thomas, Charles, Lamar, and Augusta scrambled to take hold of a broken railing as the splintered promenade began to be lifted higher and higher as the midsection of the ship cracked in half with a sound like lightning and sank. Lamar held Thomas with one arm and the railing with the other. As they lifted, they looked down to see through the windows of a ladies’ cabin. A Negro woman was nursing a white baby as they both sank slowly into the sea, the woman’s expression serene. Oh, God, Augusta prayed, let that not be Priscilla and Madeline. She lowered her head in fear and defeat.

All around them, lit by starlight and moonglow, they saw floating debris, settees, luggage, drinking glasses, bottles and trunks that bobbed and then sank.

Augusta screamed as, suddenly, the deck cracked and tipped, tossing her again into the sea without Thomas, without Lamar or Charles; she sank alone. This time she would allow fate to have its way with her. And then, just as quickly as she surrendered, an empty trunk floated by and she pulled it closer, flopped across it, and caught her breath.

She could weep later, but for now she must take this one last opportunity and make her way to the deck again. She floated without a sense of time—maybe a few minutes, maybe thirty but not more—when she bumped against the deck she’d been thrown off twice already. Scrambling back onto the promenade deck, she found solid footing beneath six inches of water. She stood soaked and cold, her nightgown clinging to her shivering body.

She couldn’t find her family; they were nowhere to be seen. She let out a howling scream.