For a moment or so longer I stood alone out here, glancing up at the aerial strung between our two masts; it would be the first ever to signal an SOS. Through the web of black guy wires bracing the enormous stacks, the wind of our passage moaned steadily, mournful and lonely, as though it knew and was telling me what was going to happen, and I walked back to my stairs.
Down here on B deck, the sides sheltered from the sea in places by long glass windows, it was warmer, and I walked along on the sun side toward the stern. A boy spinning a top on the steady deck had a little audience, and I joined them long enough to snap this. Will this boy survive? I was sick of the question, unable to prevent it, and walked on toward the stern. At every entrance passengers were turning in to the warmth of the interior, but I kept on toward the stern and the entrance to the Verandah and Palm Court. Near the stern, second-class passengers stood up on their limited deck space watching the privileged first class, and me with my red leather camera as I stood taking them. As I saw this in my tiny little viewfinder, my mind said, Most of you are going to drown Sunday night. I left to walk back along the port side, then wished I hadn’t. Very little sun, no one out, and the rows of empty deck chairs made it seem like a deserted ship. My own solitary steps sounded along the deck as though I were the only passenger, and up there ahead I rounded the turn near the prow. I wound my film, and saw the last of it appear in the little red window. Over the rail I used it for this bleak sight: the Titanic, racing now, on toward the night over this strange deathly calm sea.
I’d had enough, and spent the rest of the day in my cabin; had the steward bring dinner in. I didn’t want to see any more people who might be living their last day or so; or to encounter Archie prematurely, to stutter and stumble and say it all wrong. If there was a way to convince Arch of the unbelievable, I had to find it, and I tried to work it out in my mind, lying on my bed feeling the easy motion, hearing the quiet, regular, almost reassuring creakings of a ship moving through a quiet sea.
I could have learned from the purser in the morning which was Archie’s cabin, but instead I simply wandered in and out of the great public rooms till I found him in the lounge in a big leather chair: gray suit, plain blue tie; smoking a morning cigar.
Suspicious, he sat watching me approach, making my way around and between tables and big lounge chairs. And didn’t smile: whoever I was or whatever I might be up to, he knew from my very presence aboard that I must be more than the casual New York acquaintance he’d supposed. I thought he wasn’t even going to stand, and possibly he thought so too. But at the last moment instinct brought him to his feet, and when I said, “Hello, Archie,” and put out a hand, he took it and replied politely, watching me with sharp, inquisitive eyes.
He said, “Sit down,” nodding at a chair facing him.
I sat down, leaned toward him, and said it the way I’d worked it out. “Archie, I know about your mission. I’m not your enemy: I want it to succeed. But let me tell you something you can’t possibly believe. Just hear me out. And then, Arch . . . wait. And when you actually see the proof . . . you will know then that I’ve spoken the truth.” I saw the flick of impatience and got down to it.
“I know something that is impossible to know, and yet I know it. This is Friday. On Sunday night, around eleven-thirty, this ship will strike an iceberg. Two hours later it will sink.” He sat watching me, waiting. “A good many people will be saved in lifeboats in those two hours. But many of the boats will be lowered only partly filled. And fifteen hundred people will drown. Do I really know this? Sunday night will tell, won’t it. It will happen, and when it does, I want to take you to boat number five, which will be lowered with only a few people. Some women in first, then with no others around, the men standing by will be allowed in. You and I can be there—”
“Si. I’ve seen a few inexplicable things; I know they happen. And possibly somehow you know what you say you do. Maybe so. Maybe somehow you really know. But you don’t seem to know me. If you did, you could not possibly think that with women and children left behind to drown, Archibald Butt would be standing beside a lifeboat scheming to climb into it!” He sat there looking at me, then smiled a little. “I would be where every other gentleman aboard would be: waiting quietly somewhere out of the way for whatever fate intends. Very likely here in this lounge, accepting God’s will. Along with a glass of brandy. Not cowering beside a lifeboat while women drown. I believe it’s where you’d be too, Si. When you’d thought about it. I’m sure you would.”
“But what about your papers, Arch? Shouldn’t they be saved at least?”
He looked contemptuously at the crackpot. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Leaning forward in his chair, he looked past me at a quietly ticking grandfather clock across the room. “And now if you’ll excuse me.” And he stood, smiled but only just barely, walked out, and I understood as though he had said it that I was not to trouble him again.
And so, finally, I’d failed. Archie would drown, the Great War would happen. But I’d never quite been able to make myself believe that something I could do, anything I could do, would actually prevent that enormous war. Yet watching Archie walk away and out of the lounge, my eyes stung.
Willy, what about Willy! Well . . . decades lay between him and the December 2, 1917, date followed by KIA that Rube Prien had shown me. Someday I’d have to tell son Willy who I was, and where I’d come from. Well, I’d simply warn him about that date too. Forewarned is forearmed, and he could protect himself: report sick that morning, turn left instead of right, do something, anything, that would slightly alter the events of the next few hours. I could give Willy the means of saving himself.
Strange, sitting here in this quiet, nearly empty lounge, thinking my thoughts, knowing what I knew—that this was the Titanic’s maiden voyage and her last. That Sunday night she would sink into an ocean so astonishingly calm survivors would remember forever the light of the stars shining on the face of the nearly motionless sea. And strange that this great disaster would be a matter of almost inches: if she’d passed the huge berg only slightly more to one side, I sat remembering, she’d have sailed right on by the deadly spur of underwater ice that opened her plates to the sea. And steamed triumphantly into New York harbor, pennants flying, tugs spouting.
But now? I took myself to my cabin, and—meals brought in by the steward—spent the day there, confused, baffled. I knew what was coming, knew; but what to do? Just wait till time to step into a lifeboat I already knew would be lowered nearly empty, leaving half the ship to drown?
In the morning, sick of the question and of my cabin and view—through a curtained window, not a porthole—of the endless flat monotonous gray sea and unbroken horizon, I showered, dressed, and began roaming. Heard the ship’s bugler blow breakfast call, hesitated, then skipped it, too agitated to eat. Walking the boat deck, enclosed but unheated, I’d get chilled, then inside again through the revolving doors. A pair of electric heaters glowing orange stood just inside, and I liked that. The days’ runs were posted on the smoking room bulletin board, and I went in and read yesterday’s: Thursday noon to Friday, the Titanic had steamed 386 miles. Another passenger there turned to ask a passing steward if we’d do better today, and he replied that he thought we’d post over 500 miles. I said, “Excuse me, steward, but—how can I speak to Captain Smith? It’s quite important.”