“Gawd but that’ll leave a terrible headache,” Declan had shouted over the noise of the one-sided fight.
The sudden power displayed by Ransom left his young friends both in awe and fear as they winced in pain for the men that Ransom had put down in a matter of seconds
Ransom dragged the second man from the lift to lay across the other while shouting, “It’s in it we are now, lads!” He then leapt aboard the lift, wildly panting as a result of the fight.
Aboard the lift, Thomas slammed the cage door closed and sent the tiny gilded cage upwards. “Sorry, fellas, you had to see that; but those two weren’t listening to reason anymore than their captain.”
Then below them, the threesome heard the cursing and banging from one of the crewmen who’d come to.
“I imagine, lads, that you’re hearing the worse cursing you’ve ever heard—albeit muffled.”
“Where’d you get that black powder?” Thomas asked, laughing now.
“Ground African roast—coffee, boys! Sacks of it just outside my cell bars! Stuffed my pockets with it, you see… in the event it was needed.”
“And it was!” Thomas laughed.
“And so here we are,” said Declan, taking a deep breath and smelling the coffee that had dusted them, “three refugees, escaped prisoners, aboard Titanic with a dire message no one wants to hear much less believe.”
As the lift took them up and up, Thomas knocked at his clothes to brush off the coffee powder. “We’re in quite the predicament. How do we avoid another arrest?”
Ransom next stopped the lift at Deck C, second class berths and deck. “You two can go on up,” he told the interns. “Give yourselves up, lads, and get on that lifeboat and off this… this plague ship.”
“What about you, Alastair?” asked Declan.
“We’re all in it together, Detective.” Thomas stepped off the lift.
Declan joined Thomas on Deck C.
“Please, lads, be reasonable; there’s no hope of getting off the ship after Queenstown when it’ll be open sea.”
“True, we’ll be in the North Atlantic by time we convince that stubborn captain up there,” said Thomas, pointing in the general direction of the overhead decks.
“We came on board as a team, we remain to fight as a team, sir,” Declan insisted.
“Thomas, is Declan speaking for you, too?”
Thomas grimaced. “He is and he’s bloody right.”
“Ah!” gasped a lady passenger stepping by. “There are children aboard, sir!”
Thomas started to apologize but the lady had rushed on.
Alastair placed both hands on Thomas’ shoulders. “Are you bloody sure?”
“I am committed, sir, completely.”
Ransom shook his head over the two and smiled, surprised at the level of dedication these two young men had shown. Declan then sent the lift straight back down the way they had come. “So lads,” Ransom then said, “how do we proceed from here?”
“First things first,” replied Declan. “Smell that?”
Thomas took in a deep breath of sea air; they’d been in what amounted to a huge coffin below the waterline where no amount of pumped in air from above could compete with the smoke and haze, and where the smell of it clung like a fetid animal.
Ransom realized what the lads most wanted at the moment, so he followed them to the rail to look out at the sea from portholes, and then he followed them out onto the aft deck amid the second-class crowds here. After finding seats about a stationary table in what amounted to a café on deck, they planned their strategy which all hinged on discovering either Burney’s or Davenport’s body, for surely the men were dead at this point. “Two bodies aboard might well be the clear and present evidence of danger required to move Captain Smith to action,” Declan firmly said.
“Yes,” agreed Thomas, his eyes going to the Queenstown docks off the port side where he and the others saw a lifeboat with what appeared to be Charles Lightoller and two other officers escorting that unhappy passenger off Titanic. They could not make out her words, but the woman in the boat, alongside a silent husband, was ranting about something. “Yes, well, this would be the time and place to stop Titanic—at safe harbor—and one by one, under careful scrutiny and quarantine conditions—get as many of the over two thousand passengers and crew off the ship until only the final carrier remained.”
“At which time a bullet to the head might be in order,” added Ransom. “Short of that, if Smith continues on from here… I have no clue what we will do or be forced to do. Have you, lads?”
Only shakes of the head responded to Ransom regarding this future possible circumstance.
“Perhaps Titanic must be scuttled and sent to the bottom,” muttered Ransom, hardly above a whisper.
“What?” asked Thomas.
“What did you say?” Declan echoed.
The young interns stared at Alastair as if he were mad.
Ransom shrugged. “What else can we do? We are on the high seas on a ship riddled with this disease organism. Do you prefer this plague to reach New York?”
“There has to be another way,” replied Thomas through clenched teeth, “Some other recourse!”
“Perhaps if we could get the bloody creature off and onto an iceberg, maybe?” Declan timidly suggested.
Ransom shook his head. “Suppose this thing’s already spread from stem to stern, lads, from top to bottom of the ship by time we hit the ice floes in the North Atlantic. What then, lads? What then?”
Declan pictured the fearful circumstances if they got too far from any port. “What’re you suggesting? That we become anarchists and bomb the boilers?”
“Shhh… keep such talk down,” Ransom cautioned, looking around them.
“We already sound like anarchists, for Christ’s sake.” Declan leapt to his feet and went to the port side, staring after the lifeboat that had promised to set them ashore. Thomas joined him there, Ransom holding back.
“We’re fools to have not gotten away to dry land, Declan, you know this, don’t you?”
“I do. I do… but there are lives at stake, Thomas, and I can’t just walk away from this. You go! You turn yourself in. I am sure Mr. Ransom and I can do what we must to keep this thing from reaching New York without… without blowing up the ship.”
Ransom joined them at the railing. “We’re exposed here, lads. If you want to be discovered and put ashore, this is the way to do it. I won’t hold it against you. We’ve come a long way together; perhaps it’s time we called it quits as a team. Hell you could get below, find a porthole large enough and swim ashore but I wouldn’t recommend diving from this height. You’ll knock yourselves out.”
“Shut up! Mr. Ransom, Constable, Inspector… whatever you are,” said Declan, losing his temper. “Look here, we must—you and I—locate those bodies; we must provide Smith with evidence that no man can ignore. And as for you, Thomas, you should truly get off this bloody ship now!”
Thomas slapped Declan on the arm. “With three of us seeking evidence, we have a far greater chance of success, and successful early enough, soon enough, Smith will turn back and hold anchor in Queenstown harbor. We find Davenport or Burns and splay ’em the hell open, and Smith and his surgeon will pay heed.”
“Else boys, it’s sending Titanic to the deep by hook or by crook.” Ransom looked his sternest when saying this.
“The idea of it alone makes me weak,” admitted Declan. “I’m not-tat-all sure I could go through with such an action. I’d likely lose my legs.”
“Hell, I almost did when Ransom proposed it,” said Thomas, the breeze lifting his blonde hair.