The Classic Morpurgo Collection. Michael Morpurgo
growing fear for all of us as the night passed was the sea itself. At the time the ship went down the ocean was completely calm, just as it had been ever since we left Southampton. But now all of us could feel that a swell was building, and we all knew that if the waves worsened our fragile craft would be bound to sink beneath us. Sleep too was a danger. Already one of the older passengers had simply fallen asleep and slipped into the sea. He went down without a struggle. I saw him go, and I knew then that very soon I would be going the same way. I wasn’t afraid of dying, not any more. I just wanted to get it over with. Often I felt coming over me an irresistible wish to surrender myself to sleep, only for Mr Stanton to shake me back to my senses.
It was Mr Stanton too who first saw the lights of the Carpathia. His cracked voice shouted it out to the rest of us. Some did not believe it at first because the rise and fall of the swell intermittently hid the lights from us. But soon they were quite unmistakable. A great joy surged through every one of us, giving us new strength and new determination. Not that any of us cheered, but when we looked at each other now we could manage a smile. We knew we had a chance to survive. Those lights of hope, lights of life, for that’s what they were for us, drove away the darkness of our despair, and the agony of the cold too. Mr Stanton’s arm came round my shoulder. I knew he must be hoping what I was hoping for, that his wife, and his daughter, and Kaspar might be there on the Carpathia, and safe.
We did not know it at the time, but we were the last survivors to be picked up by the Carpathia. I went up the rope ladder ahead of Mr Stanton. My legs were so weak that I wondered often as I climbed whether I could make it or not. I could see that my hands were gripping the ladder, but I couldn’t feel them. It wasn’t strength that got me up that ladder, it was nothing but the will to live. Then with Mr Stanton and all the others from the lifeboat we were all taken below into the warm, given dry clothes and swathed in blankets. We sat there drinking warm, sweet tea. It has been my favourite drink ever since.
There was chaos on board. It was no one’s fault. The crew of the Carpathia were doing their best, but they were overwhelmed, they were busy just coping as best they could. Whoever we asked, no one seemed to have any definite news of anyone. Lists of survivors were being compiled, we were told.
Mr Stanton asked the sailors repeatedly for news of his family, but there was no one who recognised their description. Every one of us on that ship was looking for someone. Many sat silent, already knowing the worst, lost in grief. Joyous reunions were few and far between. Fearful and hopeful, we went looking for Lizziebeth and Mrs Stanton and Kaspar. We searched the ship from bow to stern. They were nowhere to be found. We found bodies lying on the deck, though, wrapped in blankets. We checked these too. I came across one little girl, about the same age as Lizziebeth, and was sure it was her at first, but it was not.
We looked everywhere we could think of, asked again and again the same question. The last lingering hope left to us was that they might still be out there at sea in their lifeboat. The two of us went to the ship’s rail. But all the lifeboats we saw floating around the ship were already empty. We scanned the sea all around, searched the horizon. There was nothing. At that moment of utter despair we heard a yowling from behind us. We turned. They were there, all three of them, shrouded in blankets, only their faces showing. It was a strange and wonderful reunion for all of us. We stood there on the deck for many long minutes, our arms around one another. It was during those moments I really felt for the first time that I had in some way become one of them, one of the family.
Crowded in a cabin below with other survivors, we slept and told our stories and slept again. Lizziebeth and her mother owed their survival, they told us, to a small Japanese man who spoke no English and a brave French lady who fortunately spoke both Japanese and English, so could translate. Through her, the Japanese man made it quite clear to everyone that they should do what he was doing and row. If they rowed they would keep warm, he said, and keeping warm could save their lives. So that’s what they did, taking it in turns all night long. Even Lizziebeth rowed. She sat on the French lady’s lap and rowed. Because of that wonderful man’s example, Mrs Stanton said, not one of them had died of the cold in that lifeboat. His example and his cheerfulness had kept their spirits up all through the longest, coldest night of their lives, and when they reached the Carpathia, he was the last out of the lifeboat.
I knew even as she was telling us that it had to be Little Mitch. I went searching for him at once, and found him after a while on his own, looking out over the railings at the empty sea. We greeted each other as old friends, which of course after all we had lived through, we most certainly were. I was up on deck with Little Mitch a few days later, as the Carpathia steamed slowly in to New York Harbour. That was when we first set eyes on the Statue of Liberty. He turned to me with a big grin on his face, and said just one word: “America!”
That was how Kaspar and I came to America, as stowaways, as survivors from the Titanic. When we docked in New York we came down the gangplank of the Carpathia together, the Stanton family and Kaspar and me. Mr Stanton had “a discussion”, as he called it, with the immigration authorities, and as a consequence of this I was allowed to go and stay with them in their house in Greenwich Village. From the very start I was treated as if I was one of them. I was told I should never again call them Mr and Mrs Stanton, no more “Sir” or “Madam”. It would be Robert and Ann from now on. I found this very difficult at first – old habits die hard – but it became ever more natural as the weeks passed.
But then Lizziebeth fell sick, very sick. The terrible cold of that night on the ocean had reached her lungs, and she’d caught pneumonia. The doctor came often to begin with, a taciturn man who did little to relieve our anxiety. Kaspar stayed with her all through her illness, scarcely ever leaving her bed. All the rest of us would take it in turns to sit with her. Then one morning I came in and she was sitting up in bed, with Kaspar on her lap, and smiling at me. She was her sunny self again. But for some time afterwards she still had to stay in her room and rest, which she didn’t care for at all, not one bit.
Lizziebeth claimed that it had to be Kaspar who had brought luck to all of us. Because of Kaspar, she said, they had survived the night in the boat, and because of Kaspar she had recovered from her pneumonia.
I had a big argument with her about that. Much as I loved Kaspar, I never much believed in superstitions. You might as well say, I told her, that it was Kaspar who had brought us bad luck in the first place, the worst luck, that maybe it was because Kaspar was on board that the Titanic had sunk in the first place. “Nonsense,” Lizziebeth retorted. “It was an iceberg, not Kaspar, that sank the Titanic!” I think I discovered then, if I hadn’t before, that I could never have an argument with Lizziebeth and expect to win, that one way or another she would always have the last word.
During Lizziebeth’s convalescence, when she still wasn’t allowed out of the house, I got to know Robert and Ann a great deal better. It took a while for me to feel completely at ease with them when we were alone, and I think they sensed it. They took it upon themselves to give me a good time, to show me New York. We went to Penn Station, visited the Statue of Liberty, and the zoo – all of which made Lizziebeth very jealous – and once we went collecting horseshoe crab shells on a beach on Long Island. Best of all, I learned to ride with Ann in Central Park. She took me riding almost every day. I hadn’t been on a horse before, so I had a lot to learn, but Ann was full of encouragement. “You ride so well, Johnny,” she told me once, “as if you’d been born in the saddle. I’m very proud of you.” The truth is that I loved being with them whatever we were