Titanic: True Love Forever

Chapter 3: Setting Sail

By the time all three of Titanic's chimneys were emitting thick black smoke and all those still left on the pier were waving and shouting to the deck, I was so tired that I was bracing my hands on my knees and had absolutely no stamina to do any more running, and the searing heat that was brought up by each breath was a wrecking ball for my lungs. I ran on and on for the last bell, my voice too muffled to make any sound. Some of the passengers or walkers I bumped into would occasionally let out a few unfriendly greetings, but I was so strapped that I didn't even have the breath to say sorry.

Never before had I seen so many Edwardian Englishmen crowded together like a hornet's nest. Hired carriages and aristocratic vintage cars were almost in a heap, and there were newspaper reporters carrying ancient camera equipment, dead set on the never-sinking ship of dreams. Maidens in long, wide-brimmed ribbon hats waved their hands from the ship, and the midday sun froze the bustling, dreamy scene.

I, like everyone else, had tilted my head back and looked at the white deck on the black hull, attempting to find my loved ones on it.

I suspected that Jack had already boarded the ship, and the loud siren sounded once more as the ship announced the final moments of its departure from the harbor. The temperature picks up again, and my thin clothes finally have a bit of warmth that belongs to spring, clinging to my thin body.

Well, it seems that this great voyage is starting to set sail with no room for maneuver, prompted by history. Let's just let damn Jack and Rose get on with their love affair, which is even greater than this voyage.

I don't care, God knows I haven't eaten anything since noon yesterday, let the poor painter who deserves to be thrown in the trash meet love. I want to curse the director, knowing that that's a great movie that holds the number one spot in the world at the box office and can remain unbeaten by anyone for twelve years.

I took a tired, deep breath, intending to regulate the rhythm of my disorganized breath one last time and then leave this noisy ocean terminal. Just as I finally managed to stand up straight, hand over my hollow and vaguely aching stomach, and take my first step, an excited cheer suddenly came from the noisy background of the pile behind me, "The time has come, now we're in the limelight."

God knows what my face looked like when I heard that, it was as if I could hear that Scottish dance tune from the movie lightly jumping out above the strings. I couldn't even turn my head back as Jack, who was carrying a sack, laughed and ran quickly past me as he yelled to his other companion, "Come on, man, we're home." His short, pale yellow hair, uncovered by a hat, spreads in the air, and his smile could literally light up the entire gray harbor.

Yeah, you're about to go home, if you plan on rowing a portmanteau to float back.

My hand didn't even make it in time to grab his long gray jacket of cheap goods, my fingers of little strength were hit hard by the sack behind him for a moment, and the protagonist, who was obviously in a hurry to get on the boat, didn't even notice that someone was calling out to him.

I called out a barely audible "Jack" in a muffled voice, and I'm sure I must have called his name more times than the heroine did.

Jack was carrying his sack of luggage, one arm raised high as if to meet the wind. His hair fluttered back in disarray, the young man so youthful and exhilarated as he rushed toward that place of hope, the massive Titanic awaiting his arrival ahead of him.

I hissed again and called out to him as hard as I could, "Jack Dawson ......"

I was sure that unless he was clairvoyant, he could not have heard my cry. He was already burrowing into the crowd, running so fast that he startled someone's wagon. I stood still and watched him run away at once, my hand dropping helplessly in mid-air, once again feeling the malice of the gods of fate. Standing alone in the midst of people coming and going, I looked up and saw that the seagull had left the ship and was leaping high in the direction of the ocean. Suddenly a lot of memories came to mind, of the first time I saw the movie, of Leonardo under the Pirates of the Caribbean poster in the room, of the popular golden song.

I looked up at the sky, sighed once hopelessly, and then told myself this was the last time, just spell it out this one last time, and consider that damn blanket especially valuable, that it had saved my life.

I continued to take deep, deep breaths, suppressing the trembling state of my overworked muscles, then jerked my foot up and reached down to grab open the shoe on my foot, a pair of hard shoes that didn't fit my size with a bit of a slope, and I could see that the toes of the shoe that I had taken off were rubbed with blood. These lousy shoes, I cursed. Without hesitation, I threw the shoes to the side of the road, my feet jumped out of habit as they touched the ground, and then I used the last of the strength in my body to rush out like a cannonball in a crazy dive position.

Screaming was out of the question, and before he boarded the ship, I remember he would be stopped by the crew to check his ticket. Thanks to that many movie-going experiences, I remember all such little details, and I remember how the stern-faced, crew-cap-wearing stewardess inquired, not too trustingly, with his hands behind his back, "Have you checked?"

Of course, of course, how could he have checked, but the damn crewman let him on board anyway.

Maybe I could have held him hard around the waist before he got on the boat and yelled to the inspector, "This guy has an infectious disease, don't let him on the boat."

Great, Jack Dawson would have absolutely killed me, pinning me down in the water for the Titanic to run over. That's a very creative way to die, don't you think?

I swear I've never run so fast in my life, and I kept running towards the Titanic. I didn't even have to think about the direction Jack was running in, all I had to do was run towards the sinking ship and I had no problem, the ticket entrance for third class was much easier to find than second class.

At the last minute, I squeezed my way through a huge pile of people to see Jack and his companions rushing up the iron stairs, waving their tickets in their hands and yelling, "Hey, hey, wait a minute."

As I struggled to squeeze past a few people, they had already jumped into the door, too late for me to get on board and pull him back, even if we were only a gangplank away.

Game over.

This game was a lost cause.

My mind went blank for a moment and I stood blankly, silent as I watched the huge cruise ship in front of me that would start up at any moment. All around me were people waving, taking off their hats and yelling. Perhaps it was destined that I could change nothing.

"Wait, I'm a passenger." A middle-aged man carrying a suitcase waved his ticket in his hand and hurriedly peeled away from my shoulder. He shouted at the top of his lungs in anxiety, desperately trying to squeeze through the crowd and run up that white ladder.

It was unfortunate that he was probably the last one to catch up at the rate he was going, he must not have realized that if he got on there was a ninety percent chance that he wouldn't be able to get off.

I finally withdrew my eyes and turned my head to see this passenger who spoke poor English, maybe Swedish, or Italian, and whose ticket was about to fall out of his hand from waving it around. Then I made one of the worst decisions of my life, I suddenly reached out and slapped my hand hard on this middle-aged man's shoulder, startling him into turning around. I raised my voice in the noisy background to say hello, "Hi, you'll thank me for this."

As soon as the words fell, my right fist was already outstretched, punching him hard, and in the midst of his miserable wail I snatched the boat ticket out of his hand with a nimble left hand. Then pulling out the expensive silver watch chain from my own pocket I threw it at him, turned my head and ran up the iron stairs.

The chain-adorned pocket watch had been accidentally entangled when I'd bumped into the man, and I'm pretty sure it was expensive enough to buy an upper-class Titanic ticket.

Bless me! I saved a passenger's life and took a pocket watch that didn't belong to me, and now I'm going to die, and it's the most unfortunate day of my life.

I jumped onto the gangway at the ticket gate, my feet could feel the cold pain, I grabbed my ticket in my hand and commanded menacingly to the longshoreman standing in front of the iron ladder who was about to slam the door shut, "Get out of the way."

And the ticket inspector standing in the boat, also reaching to pull the door shut after him, had bellowed, "Stop, ma'am, it's dangerous."

How dare he call me ma'am? That's a lot of manners for a ticket inspector when I'm draped in a hobo's tattered male jacket, a pair of summer plaid sevens, and running around barefoot and wild.

The ladder was almost a meter away from the hatch, and below it was freezing cold water.

I stepped to the front of the gangway at the very edge, paused without stopping to leap up the whole thing, and before the door could close I stumbled into the ship, the ticket inspector reaching out and grabbing my arm to help stabilize me.

I raised the third-class ticket in my hand and told him, "Thanks."

The ticket inspector rushed back to close the hatch behind him, fearing that some desperate passenger might fly over to his death as the ship left the harbor. There were crew members sitting next to the hatch answering some questions for the passengers who had just boarded the ship, and I tried to get over to them in bewilderment, only to have the serious steward who had just finished closing the door immediately turn around and inquire, "Miss, did you pass inspection?"

How I wanted to tell him that I was carrying a myriad of middle two infectious poisons so that he would immediately throw me back into Southampton harbor and leave me to fend for myself. Of course the next second I was squeezing passengers and running for the ship's aisle corridor, who cares about anyone else.

Having managed to get away from the dodgy ticket inspector, I didn't know where to go for a second, Jack had run off somewhere. I shoved my ticket into my pocket and walked with the seething passengers down the narrow ship's aisle to the wide teak deck. There were people everywhere, over a thousand passengers, most of them gathered on the deck. The third-class passengers were the most lively and frantic, waving their hats in their hands, gripping the white railings, and shouting down to the sea of people on the harbor, excitement and hope in their smiles at the same time.

I looked up and saw the passengers in first and second class overhead also waving excitedly to the people outside the ship. The sky cleared completely, the rain and fog lifted, and the workers on the dock quickly untied the thick cables and threw them overboard.

Titanic's propellers rumbled and churned the sediment on the bottom of the sea, and the murky water churned out as several tugboats held the departing Titanic forward. The siren sounded again, and the water force brought up by the traveling caused the rest of the cruise ships docked at the pier to keep swaying.

The wind ruffled my hair as I walked over to the rail and gripped it with both hands looking out over the harbor as everything moved away. The Stars and Stripes were hunting on the rail pole, and the Statue of Liberty waited in New York Harbor.

The Titanic, officially set sail.