S.O.S. Titanic Read Online Free PDF

hand across his mouth and began walking quickly back the way they had come. With his free hand he waved urgently for Barry to follow him.
    What if I don't?
Barry thought. What could Scollins do, after all—complain to Grandpop? Not for a while, he couldn't.
    "I think I'll stay here and watch," Barry said.
    "No, no, no." Scollins clutched at one of the stanchions that held the lifeboats high above their heads. "I insist."
    I won't go,
Barry thought. Scollins wasn't about to carry him, or have him escorted to the cabin, or have him locked up in the purser's safe along with those precious jewels. But Scollins might insist on staying himself, indisposed or not.
    Barry remembered the red brocade curtains that could be pulled across the beds for privacy. Perfect. If he got undressed and into bed and pulled those curtains closed behind him, Scollins would be satisfied. In fact, if Barry were careful to act obedient he could be wherever he wanted to be every night of the trip and Scollins wouldn't know the difference. He'd go now, then come back here and watch. Better than lying sleepless, imagining Grandmother and Grandpop back at home without him.
    "I do think we'd better go to the cabin," he said, and faked a yawn. "It's getting cold."
    He'd change into the heavy white sweater Grandmother had knit for him. "It's a fisherman's sweater," she'd said. "See the cable pattern? That's the O'Neill mark from years back. If an O'Neill fisherman drowned, they could tell who he was by this cable. See here, these rows of stitches looped over the others?"
    Grandpop had winked. "So if the fish had eaten his face off, they'd still know him for an O'Neill."
    "Stop it," Grandmother protested, shivering. "Do you always have to be so plainspoken?"
    "It's my nature," Grandpop had said.
    I'll change into my O'Neill sweater,
Barry thought,
and the tweed cap, pulled down to hide my eyes, and Grandpop's gloves. And I'll come back up here and look down on them.
    "Looking down on us, as usual?" Jonnie Flynn would have said if he'd known.
    But Jonnie Flynn would never know.

Chapter 4
    Barry was ready, waiting. It hadn't been easy to get one set of clothes off behind the brocade bed curtains, and another on. He'd wriggled like an eel going up the River Bann. Now he lay quietly, pretending sleep.
    Scollins tossed and groaned. Once he got up and heaved into the washbasin. Barry decided there couldn't be much of that too-rich meal left, and surely soon he'd sleep.
    Scollins had left his curtains open, either for air or for a dash to the washbasin if he needed it again. Through a gap in the fold of his own drape Barry watched him. Scollins looked so small under the blanket, his face the color of its white fleece, his eyelids fluttering. The fringed brocade swayed back and forth with a gende, steady rhythm as the ship plowed through the ocean under its canopy of stars.
    An hour must have passed, but Barry had no thought of sleep himself. He was resdess and nervous, filled with a muddle of feelings. The sorrow of the leaving, the strangeness of being on the big ocean liner. The fighting Flynns, Mr. Scollins, little Jocelyn and her mother—they all paraded through his mind. Would his mother look like Mrs. Adair? Would she have fawn-colored hair? Of course not. In the photos and in his scattered memories her hair was black, with the same wild curl that his own hair had. And his father? He had a bald spot in back that could be covered by a penny. Sometimes his father had done that, Barry remembered, balancing the penny on his head, staggering around.
    He thought about the
Titan
and the
Titanic.
That was only a coincidence. There were coincidences in life. He and Grandpop had the same birthday ... One party for the two of them, and Mrs. Bowers baking her cream sponge cake with raspberry jam and presents all around.
    Through his thoughts came the soft sound of snoring.
    Scollins had kicked off the blanket. Barry crept out of bed and covered him again so he wouldn't