Free No Greater Love by Danielle Steel

on the ship. A sob broke from her as she stared, and little Fannie started to cry as Edwina clutched her to her.
    And at that very moment, Alexis was sitting quietly in her stateroom. She had slipped away when her mother let go of her hand and ran after Oona, and she had gone back as she’d wanted to from the first. She had left her beautiful doll in her bed, and she didn’t want to leave the ship without her. And once she had gone back to her room, the doll was there, and it seemed so much quieter here, and so much less scary than on deck. She wouldn’t have to get in a lifeboat now, or fall in that ugly, dark water. She could just wait here until it was all over and everyone came back. She would just sit here, with her doll, Mrs. Thomas. She could hear the band playing upstairs and the sounds of ragtime came drifting in the open windows, and voices and cries and murmurs. There was no running in the corridor now.
    Everyone was on deck, saying good-bye to loved ones and hurrying into lifeboats, as the rockets continued to explode overhead, and the radio operator tried frantically to bring nearby ships to their aid. The
Frankfurt
was the first to reply, at 12:18, then the
Mount Temple
, the
Virginian
, and the
Birma
, but there had been no word at all from the
Californian
since eleven o’clock when she had warned them of the iceberg and Phillips had snapped at her radio operator not to interrupt him. Ever since then, her radio had been silent. In truth, her radio was shut off. But she was the only ship close enough to help them, and there seemed no way to raise her at all. Even the rockets were to no avail. All those who saw them, on the
Californian
, only assumed that they were part of the festivities on the much celebrated maiden voyage. And it never dawned on anyone for a moment that they were sinking. Who would ever have thought it?
    At 12:25, the
Carpathia
, only fifty-eight miles away, contacted them and promised to come as quickly as she could. By then, the
Olympic
, the
Titanic’
s sister ship, hadchimed in, too, but she was five hundred miles away and too far to help at the moment.
    Captain Smith was stepping in and out of the radio shack by then, and after watching Wireless Operator Phillips send the standard distress signal, CQD, he urged them to try the new call signal SOS as well, in the hope that even amateurs might hear it. Any assistance at all would have been welcome and was direly needed now. It was 12:45 A.M. when the first SOS was sent, and at that moment, Alexis was alone in the silent stateroom, playing with her doll and humming softly as she sat quietly, continuing to play. She knew she would be scolded later when they all came back, but maybe they wouldn’t be too angry at her for running away, because after all today was her birthday. She was six years old now, and her dolly was much older. She liked to say that Mrs. Thomas was twenty-four. She was a grown-up.
    On deck, Lightoller was filling another lifeboat, and on the starboard side, several men were climbing into the lifeboats now too. But on the port side, Lightoller was still strictly adhering to women and children only. The second-class lifeboats were being filled as well, and in third class, some of the passengers were breaking through barriers and locked doors, in the hope of boarding in second class or even first, but they had no idea where to go, or how to get there. Members of the crew were threatening to shoot them if they attempted to make their way through the ship, because they were afraid of looting and property damage aboard. The crewmen were telling them to go back the way they had come, as people shrieked and cried and begged to come past the crew members keeping them from the first-class lifeboats. One Irish girl, with another girl her own age, and a little girl, was insisting that she had come from first class in the first place, but the deckhand stolidlykept them from leaving third, he knew better than to believe her.
    Kate