Titanic: True Love Forever

Chapter 22: Loneliness

I walked from the engine room to the corridor where the third class cabin was located, and in the meantime turned around alertly countless times to see if the guy with the great footwork whose fiancée had still run off with someone had followed me. Then I realized that maybe the other guy was so weak-legged from a life-and-death robbery that he was still shaking in the engine room, so he didn't have time to play hide-and-seek with me anymore. Even my legs were a bit shaky, if I hadn't pulled him up just now, I would have died along with him.

I braced my hand against the wall of the corridor as my feet slowed down to a walk forward, it looked like it was getting very late so all the hatches were closed and everyone was wrapped up in their blankets dreaming of going to America. I certainly wasn't going to go back to my own room in third class, not to mention the fact that all the passengers in the cabin were men except me, and I couldn't go back there just for safety's sake. I always had the feeling that the old poodle must be prowling around or had hired a waiter to keep an eye on the outside of my cabin.

Just to catch a thief, they'd really put up a fight.

Seriously, all Calhokely had to do to clear his name of the charges against him was to move his lips. When I was with Andrew, I was basically not telling the truth about myself. All he had to do was ask the chief engineer, who had shared a table with me, to check the passenger list, and he should have known that my name hadn't come up, much less an uncle who was about to disembark tomorrow.

The only one Titanic is disembarking tomorrow that I can remember is an English priest, the man who took the pictures of Titanic before it finally sank.

As soon as Andrew testified to him, then my identity as a thief would be revealed. Not only will he have no scandal, but he'll win the sympathy of a large contingent of upper-class women.

I didn't give a damn about petty thievery, all I knew was that I had to get off the ship tomorrow. I couldn't save fifteen hundred people, but I couldn't even save myself. Walking around the corner of the corridor, a little girl stood in the doorway of her cabin holding a doll, with curly brown hair and a healthy red face. She seemed to have run out to play, but for a moment she couldn't find her way, and looked around a bit blankly.

I was silent for two seconds, but finally walked up to her and pulled an auntie-level kind smile, "Lost? Where's your mom?"

"Mommy's sleeping." The girl gave a smile so cute it looked like an angel's, she touched the red dress doll in her arms, not afraid of life at all.

"What's your name?" I squatted right down to her level.

The girl knocked her chin on top of the doll's head and whispered, "Corolla."

I looked at her, and the affectionate smile I managed to pull off slowly drooped into a bitter grin. Then reaching out and stroking her hair, "Well, Corolla, your mom should already be looking for you. You tell your mom that the ship is sinking and ask her to take you off the ship tomorrow, okay."

Corolla looked at me with round, dark eyes, then she shook her head very decisively and said in a childish voice, "It's a nice big ship, and Daddy says it'll never sink, it won't sink."

It won't sink was a decisive statement.

My hand that was touching her hair could only be brought back, and then I held my head with both hands and finally couldn't help but curse out the expletive that I had been holding in for a long time, "Damn it, if this damn broken ship won't sink, I'll eat the whole Titanic."

Even a child of a few years old knows that the Titanic never sinks, so tomorrow when it docks another large number of immigrants will rush to their deaths. Even if the women and children go first in the final shipwreck, nearly 60% of the children in third class are dead. I want to climb into the cockpit and strangle the captain again, you'd better damn quick stop the ship for me ah. By the way, the captain died in the end.

I struggled to get that pent up breath out before I stood up again, wanting to tell the kid to stay put and wait for someone to come looking for her, only to look up and see Lovejoy standing over the corridor looking at me. The look, to put it graphically, was that of a hound dog seeing carrion and hating it and hesitating to eat it.

I had only one feeling, it was simply the model archetype of a shadowy soul.

Without saying a word I turned and ran, and he immediately caught up with me. I sprinted to a hatch and kicked the door right up and triggered the handle to lock it, the old poodle was very vigorously gripping the handle on the outside to open it. I slowed down and left the door that kept swinging and headed for the stairs with nothing to worry about, I didn't really believe he'd be able to ram it open.

When I'd managed to get to the aft D deck, I was paralyzed with exhaustion and found a chair on the third-class walk deck, intending to take a couple of minutes to slow down before continuing up the stairs. Otherwise I would have died of overwork before the old poodle could find me.

The sea breeze blew over me, giving me goose bumps. I rubbed my hands together, and in the process ground my feet a few times to increase the temperature. The electric light hanging from the flagpole gives off a faint glow, and with no one in sight on the deck late at night, I lean back in my chair and look up at the stars in a very unimaginative way.

The stars were as bright as the daytime sun, and I silently counted them up, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven ......

Suddenly there was the sound of clothes chafing from a lounge bench behind me and I froze for a moment before slowly turning back to see first a head of blonde hair that looked a little darker in the dim light and then Jack's sleepy face. He grumbled as he got up from the bench, "Fell asleep, what time is it?"

I replied, "About two in the morning."

Jack was obviously startled by my voice, then he fixed his eyes on me and realized that I was sitting in front of him like a ghost under the sea.

"Oh yeah? Thanks." Jack smiled and thanked me, then he said curiously, "You should go back to your room at this late hour, it's cold in here."

"Later, good night." I purposely kept my voice down so he wouldn't hear that we had been spending time together.

"Good night." Jack scratched at his short, somewhat disheveled hair before walking forward, supposedly to return to his cabin. Halfway there, he turned his head to look at me as if remembering something, a strange look that seemed to be calculating something, and then he asked, not quite sure, "Em ...... Emily? You're Emily."

I habitually go to touch my face, strange, I face is not again painted black charcoal, how he can see that I am Emily.

"It must be you, you forgot I draw, I drew you." Jack walked up to me excitedly and lifted his finger farther up my body to measure it, "Yes, your body proportions are Emily's. No two people in this world are built exactly the same, even twins have subtle differences."

Painting or being a detective, such a horrible observation.

I held out my hand and reintroduced myself, "Hello, Emily."

"Jake Dawson." Jack shook my hand and smiled happily. "You're unbelievable, suddenly a big change."

I let go and looked at my skirt, which had a large split in the hem, which I hadn't broken. When I return the dress tomorrow, I hope the heroine, Rose, doesn't cringe when she sees it, it was torn by his fiancé.

"You're one shoe short of a late night barefoot deck princess?" Jack shook his head disapprovingly as he backhanded me and pulled off his own jacket and draped it over me, "I think you need this."

I laughed softly, finally feeling more relaxed. I jumped up from the bench and put my hands behind my back to Jack, "Any more? I need the full set."

A kind of confusion appears in Jack's eyes as he seems to be guessing who I am, but it's quickly masked by calmness as he humors me by asking nothing, "What's wrong with being a princess and getting tired of being a commoner?"

"Twelve o'clock has passed, didn't you hear the bells on the Titanic?" I make a listening gesture and then helplessly spread my hands in a crying expression, "The princess's clothes are going to be cold."

"Just give me a second, here." Jack, who had given me the jacket, rubbed his arms together and ran over to the cabin.

I continued to sit down, tilting my head back and counting the stars. A little while later, Jack came running over holding a woman's outfit, which he slipped to me and said, "It's the outfit of a woman I met in the sorority hall, and she was going to give it to her daughter's dress, but her daughter's a little ...... mellow."

After saying that, Jack fell back on stifled laughter.

As he laughed, he said, "If you want to change you can go into the communal bathrooms, there are two bathrooms in third class, usually a lot of people, but there shouldn't be anyone there now late at night."

"Thanks, Jack." I handed him back his jacket and stood up and reached out to give him a hug.

Jack raised his arms awkwardly without touching me, he raised his eyes and smiled, "You're welcome, aren't we friends?"

I let go of him and suddenly reminded him, "Remember our bet?"

Jack's smirk froze and he looked around a little sheepishly, putting his hands in the pockets of his pants. It took a moment before he surrendered in some frustration, "I know, willing to bet."

"Yeah, willing to bet." I hugged my clothes and watched him put on his jacket, which had the only ten dollar US bill I had on me in the pocket, and I gave him a tip from the old poodle for leading the way. Then I turned and headed over to the cabin when Jack asked me in a loud voice behind me, "Emily, where are you going?"

"To wherever I'm supposed to be, bye Jack." I replied wearily, not really knowing where I was supposed to be going, everything that was familiar a hundred years later had gone up in smoke in this day and age.

It was a long time before I heard Jack's voice, and he too said, "Goodbye, Emily."

I turn around and see him standing in the dim light, alone.

The clothes didn't fit, a long skirt of poor fabric that went past his ankles, a blouse so conservative that it didn't show the slightest bit of skin, and a very long bandana.

I stepped out of the communal bathroom and folded Rose's skirt into a ball and held it behind me, then retraced my steps back to the D deck and wrapped the long, obtrusive headscarf around my neck and tied it in a knot. Then picking a dark corner, I began to grab the deck railing and climb up, and when I reached B deck, I unfastened the dress with one hand, and threw the ball of skirt down onto B deck with all my might, it was a walk deck for the upper class, and I figured there would be a lot of scavengers. A long skirt, no one would want it.

Having thrown the dress, I laboriously continued my climb upwards. Climbing to the lifeboat open deck at the top of the hull, I saw that the lifeboats on the davit posts were wrapped in dense white cloth.

I hid in the gloom and walked over to the lifeboats, undoing those ropes bit by bit, and when an almost gap was revealed, I deftly got into the lifeboat. It was pitch black, and nothing belonging to the light could be seen. I arranged the cover cloth again, leaving only a gap for air, and from the outside it was almost impossible to see that the lifeboat had been moved.

No one would think that the thief was hiding in here, so I could finally get a good night's sleep. I lay down in the lifeboat and sighed softly before finally complaining, "This bed board is really hard."