Titanic: True Love Forever

Chapter 7: Suspicion

Of course this action, so dangerous that it took my life, lasted only a few seconds, and my body was already tilting backward, falling toward the deck of the Titanic. I retracted my hands out of habit to fall in a more protective position. In mid-air, a strong arm stops me at the waist, and Jack holds me from behind at the last minute as he strains to say, "You're not so light."

Gravity accelerates, and it's a coin that can smash.

I broke free of his embrace and jumped again as my feet touched the deck, and there was loud applause all around me as all the passengers who were resting on the deck gathered around me, clapping enthusiastically and hard.

I smiled and nodded my head very habitually, as naturally as an actor fresh from the stage. Then I bent with a skillful salute, and Jack picked up his sketch-book from the floor with his hat, and he had a look of amused helplessness on his face. I turned and drew the hat from his hand, and with an extremely smooth spin came to all the gathered spectators, smiling warmly, and said, "Here's the money, thank you, and it's five cents."

Selling is a good way to support yourself, and that's how I came all the way through the pit and the gambling plus the acrobatics.

Jack found my action so amusing that he followed me around and hyped the passengers with a serious, "One of the greatest performances of the century for five cents."

Actually, it's fine to give pounds; I don't discriminate at all against the nationality of the coin.

"Remember to get off the boat tomorrow." I hastened to remind him that it was hard to fool around and win.

"I haven't admitted defeat yet."' Jack spread his hands out, his charcoal dusted fingertips rubbing against the sketchbook in his hand.

My smirk swished cold, and with a tilt of my head I pointed to the white railing at the stern of the boat and said very grimly, "Go up there and do a handstand, then do a 360-degree spin, and I'll immediately jump overboard and swim ashore."

Jack c****d his eyebrow and squinted a bit as he looked at the deck railing, then at me, and finally admitted, "If I could sprout two wings in my next life, I'd do what you said. Well, I'm getting off the boat tomorrow, and it looks like the Fates are not on my side this time."

"Hey Jack you're kidding." A man among the passengers said angrily, shouting in heavily Italian accented English, "You're going ashore?"

"Come on, Brigio, willing to bet is as good as this ticket. I'll check on your mother and tell him you've gone to America to pan for gold." Jack went over to me and put his hand on the shoulder of a man in a brown coat with an indignant look on his face, who easily prevented the man from coming over and bothering me.

"Wait, come on Jack, it was just a joke." Bridgetteo said in an anxious shrill voice, looking more like he was getting off the boat than his friend.

"A joke about going upside down onto the railing, I wouldn't dare make that kind of joke?" Jack puts up his sketchbook and fingers the top sketch of me when I'm upside down, shaking his head and pretending to sigh loudly.

"She's a liar ...... no, crazy." Bridgetteo pulls at Jack and whispers a warning to him, itching to fly as fast as she can off the deck and away from my hateful witch. "Don't you be fooled Jack, realize this is the Titanic and we're going to America. There will be more people on board tomorrow, they will all be new immigrants to America, and we will be one of them. Think about it, what have you given up, we were going to change our destiny, and now you're giving it up, just because ...... because of one stupid, standing on the deck railing move?"

The great action of climbing the railing to test my balance, at the risk of falling into a four-man tall propeller and being strangled to a pulp at any moment, was rewarded with the comment of stupidity. I've decided that tomorrow I'll find an opportunity to knock this guy out with a chair and drag him off the ship in a sack.

This cannon fodder named Brigio will appreciate it, I'm sure of it.

As for the rest of the passengers, I looked at the extra few coins in my hat, God help you all, there was really nothing I could do about it, after all, it wasn't like anyone was as willing to gamble as Jack, I couldn't go around pulling people into gambling all night long.

If I could only get a cannonball, put it in the main engine room, and threaten the captain with a cannonball on board, I could guarantee that this maiden voyage of the Titanic would go wrong. But could I get a cannonball? Obviously not.

If only I'd traveled as the captain, I'd have driven the ship backwards all the way back to Southampton immediately. No, I'd sail her back to Belfast and rebuild her in a furnace so she wouldn't have to sail back out to wreak havoc on 1500 people.

With all sorts of fantasies spinning in my brain, the hat in my hand was just about to be withdrawn when an extra American dollar bill appeared inside.

Ten dollars.

A third of a ship's fare in lower class, a bounty of that amount was a joke.

I looked up and realized that the person handing me the money was a middle-aged man in a suit with a serious expression who looked like he had just returned from a dance in the upper class. Thinning hair was combed back in a regular manner, and when his face was expressionless, you could still see those wrinkles on his face like grooves due to prolonged tightness.

He didn't look as if he'd come down here to slip me some money because he appreciated my performance so much, and for a moment I didn't feel like I was wearing any clothes under the hawk-like gaze of the other man.

"Is there anything I can do for you? Sir." I couldn't believe that ten dollars had been brought in to buy my handstand act, the contempt in his eyes was so obvious.

What condescension, a first class dog coming to s**t on a third class deck.

I suddenly remembered the line from Titanic, which is a really classic line.

"This ......" He seemed to be considering what to call me, but his eyes coldly toured from my feet to my dirty long hair, and finally determined that a crude and shameless inferior like me didn't need to address such a noble thing. Then he finally got to the point and said, "We've lost a watch, and I suspect you know its whereabouts."

"Suspicion of such a thing is not evidence, and I don't know you." I said unconcernedly, what a watch, I'm so empty I could be a scarecrow guarding a wheat field right now.

"You know very well that suspicion is only a process and the result is ......" He gave a mocking smile and slightly sidestepped his body as a couple of the crewmen behind him drove the passengers away and then with grim faces came our way. One of the captain-like crew members nodded to the middle-aged man, "Is that him?"

Him? I looked down skeptically at my figure, well, there was hardly any curvature at all, hidden by the wide, ill-fitting jacket.

It took the crewman a moment to get a good look at my long hair, and he hesitated before changing his tone, "Well, ma'am, please come with us."

With an innocent look on my face, I wiped my dirty, unreadable face with my cuff and inquired, feigning ignorance, "Excuse me, what do you want?"

I have no doubt that if it weren't for my long hair, they wouldn't have bothered to ask a single question and would have already rushed over and bit me like a professional police dog.

"Please come with us for an investigation." The crewman's attitude didn't slow down at all, he simply didn't see me as a woman.

"Hey, what's going on?" Jack inquired suspiciously as he shook off his own companion's hand and walked over to me.

"Nothing, wrong guy." I said in a calm mood, reaching up to pin my long hair behind my ear as if nothing had happened. The sea breeze was getting chilly, the Titanic's engines were revving, and the massive smokestacks were floating in a haze of smoke overhead.

"They don't look like they're mistaken." Jack muttered in a small voice as he eyed the crew members warily.

The crew surrounded me as if they were afraid I was going to jump overboard. I looked at the other man's uniform, then squinted at the zombie-like, cold face of the first class poodle, and tried to search through my past memories, always thinking I should remember this guy. Although Titanic is a movie I'm particularly familiar with, the problem is that I have a selective memory, as long as it is Rose and Jack will appear in the scene I remember particularly familiar, the rest of the inconsequential scenes I can not possibly remember all the faces of the characters.

The crew started to come up and shove me forward, and I deftly stuffed the ten dollar bill into the pocket of my tattered jacket, tossed the rest of the change and my hat Jack's way, and said to him with a smile, "Willing to bet, Jack, get off the boat for me tomorrow."

"Oh, you're simply evil." Jack grabbed the hat as he slipped it on his head, several coins gurgled and fell out of his hair as he fumbled to catch them as he did so.

I'm almost as good as an angel, that's how Jack will praise me after the ship sinks.

"Wait." Jack saw that I was going to be taken away and put away his hangdog attitude as he tried to stop the group of traffickers from kidnapping me. He ends up being stopped by two crew members, one of whom coldly warns him, "Be honest or be punished for being an accomplice."

I haven't even confessed yet, and I'm going straight to jail?

Brigio anxiously ran over and dragged Jack back away very quickly, "We don't know her, no."

Really recognize the time, I helplessly followed those guys, in other people's ship even if you jumped ship, these seafarers who live by the sea have a way to retrieve me from the sea. And after the ship picked up those hundred or so upper class passengers in Cherbourg, it started up again, I wouldn't dare to make this kind of joke about jumping off a ship that was traveling at more than twenty knots.