Free Titanic by Tom Bradman Page A

must have been a big one, for he was at least a hundred yards from the ship. Its lights still glowed, but it was tilted steeply downwards, its gigantic stern now a couple of hundred feet above the water.
    Suddenly a great crack appeared round the base of the leading funnel. It tipped over, smashed into the superstructure, then hit the sea with a colossal splash.
    There were screams from the ship and the sea, and more when the second funnel followed the first. Billy floated, horrified and fascinated by what he was seeing. It was like being in the front row of a theatre watching the most amazing spectacle in the world, the last moments ofa great ship. It was tilted so steeply now he thought the end must be soon. But there were more surprises to come.
    The grinding noise grew louder as the ship’s stern rose further from the water. The lights went out at last with a great fizzing, and there were other sounds as well, crashes and bangs and booms, and Billy had a sudden vision of what must be happening inside that enormous, hollow structure. Everything that wasn’t bolted down or riveted in was falling towards the bow – furniture and trunks and chests and crockery and tools and people. Judging by the volume of sound even things that were bolted down were falling as well now.
    Then huge cracks appeared in the side of the hull about a third of the way back from the bow. The cracks grew wider until the hull finally split in two, the whole forward section of the ship shearing off and going under the frothing sea in a cloud of steam and smoke.
    The rest of the ship fell back onto its bottom, the last two funnels falling off, one on either side, and Billy could see the tiny figures of peopledropping from the handrail or clinging on for dear life.
    They didn’t have long to wait. The ship’s stern began to tip up once more and within seconds it was almost standing in the water.
    Billy heard terrified screaming and watched as the tiny, ant-like figures scrambled upwards, away from the relentless water. Many of them jumped or fell as the last part of the Titanic sank down and vanished entirely in a final, terrible maelstrom.
    Billy could still hear people calling out and thrashing in the water around him, but the noises soon faded. The sea was draining the warmth from him, and he felt as if his blood was turning into ice, sharp crystals crackling through his veins. He couldn’t feel his feet or his legs any more, and he shivered, his whole body juddering. Then the ice reached his chest and the shivering stopped. It was strange, but the cold had penetrated so deeply that he almost felt warm again.
    Billy was filled with a strange calmness. He leaned back, spread his arms in the water andlooked up. There were so many stars, a host of lights sprinkled across the blackness. He thought of everything he’d seen, images from the last few crazy hours spinning through his mind. He thought of Ma and his sisters. He thought of Da, and wondered if he might be seeing him again soon, and whether Da had been watching when he had saved Anya. Billy hoped so.
    He closed his eyes and let the water cover his mouth.
    He didn’t hear the lifeboat approaching, or feel the hands that roughly hauled him from the sea.

Chapter Thirteen

The Lucky Ones
    Billy didn’t remember much of what happened over the next few hours. He woke up to find himself being carried onto another ship, and wondered briefly how somebody had managed to re-float the Titanic so quickly. But it wasn’t the Titanic, it was the ship Harold had spoken of, the RMS Carpathia.
    Three days later Billy was at the Carpathia’s handrail as it steamed past the Statue of Liberty and into New York harbour. By then he had discovered just how lucky he had been. Most of the lifeboats had got as far away from the Titanic as possible, their occupants afraid of being sucked down by the sinking ship or swampedby the people in the water. Billy had been saved because he