S.O.S. Titanic Read Online Free PDF Page B

get cold and wake up. Gently he closed both sets of bed curtains.
    Now it must be late. Would the party on the poop deck still be going? He put on his cap and Grandpop's gloves and tiptoed out of the cabin.
    The quiet voice almost startled him into letting the door bang.
    "Are you having trouble sleeping, Master O'Neill? Shall I bring you a glass of warm milk?"
    Watley stood there in his white steward's jacket with its brass buttons, every strand pf his boot black hair perfectly in place.
    "Oh, no, thanks. No milk," Barry said. Did White Star stewards stay on duty day and night? "I was awake, so I decided to go out and watch the party that's going on in steerage. I know some of the people." Why did he feel he had to explain? Was Watley his guardian, too?
    "Yes." Neither Watley's face nor his voice changed, but there was something hidden in both of them.
    The great ship gave a sudden shudder, so that they staggered.
    "What was that?" Barry asked.
    "Probably a rogue wave." Watley smoothed his jacket. "Waves are like people; they don't always do what's expected of them."
    Barry grinned. "But surely no wave would dare shake the
Titanic?
"
    "Don't be too certain," Watley said. "The ocean always has a surprise or two waiting."
    He sounded like one of those solemn mechanical fortune-tellers in the glass booths at summer fairs. Put in a penny and he'd tell you the future, standing there with his mouth not moving but the card popping out of the slot below:
Ton will have great good fortune. News will come from across the water.
Barry always knew it would be from his mother and father, across the water and across the world.
    Watley's eyes were like the fortune-teller's, too, seeing nothing, seeing everything. "Saying the ship is unsinkable is a proud statement," he went on. "And one the sea may not like." He squared his little, white-jacketed shoulders. "Excuse me, sir. I've been at sea too long. Never you worry about anything. Whatever may happen, Watley's here."
    "Thank you, Watley," Barry said. "Good-night, then."
What a strange little man,
he thought.
What does he think is going to happen?
    Barry went quickly along the corridor, up the wide staircase, and out onto A Deck. It was colder there than it had been two hours earlier, and he dug his chin into the rolled neck of his sweater and paced faster. Beneath his feet the smooth wooden deck trembled, the way a drum still shivers minutes after you've finished playing it. The sea stretched black and calm to the horizon.
    That was the edge of the world out there. He'd never seen the edge of the world so clearly. In Mullinmore there were always trees and soft hills between you and it. But over there was where the world ended. It seemed you could step over it and be someplace else. The stars were so big that if he jumped he could pull one down and put it in his pocket or carry it, glowing, in his hand.
    There was a small movement in the shadow of one of the bulkhead lights, and Barry saw a woman and a man. They'd been standing close together, but they moved apart when they saw him. Her coat was pale against the darkness of sea and sky; her hair, too.
    "Lovely night," the man said. "Looks like we're going to have a fine crossing."
    The woman turned her back and stared wordlessly across the ocean. "Good-night," the man said.
    "Good-night."
    The deck was damp. Did spray come up this far, Barry wondered, or was this the same kind of night dew that wet the grass at home? Now he could hear the music, fast and lively, rising from the deck below, and he walked even faster. "Molly's Jig." They were still there, then, singing and dancing. His own feet felt like dancing along with them.
    There was nobody leaning over the railing now looking down on the celebrations. The first-class passengers would be snug in the smoking room or in the Café Parisién, or down in their staterooms. A wind blew across the stern, whistling its own songs in the lines and stays. A shooting star with a ribbon for a tail