Read Online The Midnight Watch by David Dyer - Free Book Online Page B

through binoculars to the south. He was gesturing to an iceberg in the middle distance, perhaps three or four miles away. It glowed white and rose to grand and sparkling pinnacles, but Groves was pointing downwards, towards dark shapes on a lower shelf of the berg, close to the sea. The shapes could not be clearly made out; they were indistinct dark patches. They might be dirt, Stone thought, or rock. But then, as he watched, the shapes moved.
    ‘Hard a-starboard!’ the captain called to the quartermaster. The ship’s bow swung round to the south. The captain rang the telegraph twice forward to its stops, and the smoke at the funnel thickened and billowed as the Californian thrashed through the water. But as three miles became two, and then one, and the ship came to a stop near the iceberg, her bow drifting gently around to lie broadside to it, the chief officer said aloud what Stone could plainly see.
    ‘Seals,’ Stewart said. ‘They’re seals.’
    The large black creatures lay on the ice, their skin glistening in the sun, their grotesque bodies slippery and fat. They clapped their fins as if applauding, and lifted their heads to emit strange chattering snorts. It seemed to Stone that they were laughing at him. Then, as if responding to an invisible cue, they slid one by one from the ice shelf into the sea.
    Perhaps the captain felt the sting of their laughter too, because he rang the telegraph for full ahead and ordered the quartermaster to steer due west for Boston. Their search for bodies was over.
    *   *   *
    In the wireless room, Cyril Evans chewed hard on the knuckle of his forefinger. He had no messages to send. Other operators had messages to send from their captains, but not him. And his ship was right there, on the scene.
    He heard the Carpathia ’s captain talking to the Baltic : ‘To Commander, Baltic . The Titanic has gone down with all hands, as far as we know, with the exception of 20 boatloads, which we have picked up. Number not accurately fixed yet. We cannot see any more boats about at all. Rostron.’ Then, a little later: ‘To Commander, Baltic . Am proceeding for Halifax or New York full speed. You had better proceed to Liverpool. Have about 800 passengers aboard. Rostron.’ The Baltic ’s captain made his replies, other ships called the Carpathia and were answered, the ether crackled. Evans listened but sent nothing. No one was talking to him.
    He began to hear Cape Race working a new ship amid the clatter – distant, distorted, barely audible, but slowly growing in strength. It was the Olympic , the Titanic ’s giant twin sister, steaming at full speed from the southwest. She would soon be in range, but for now all he could hear was Cape Race talking to her. ‘To Wireless Operator, Olympic : We will pay you liberally for story of rescue of Titanic ’s passengers, any length possible for you to send, earliest possible moment. Mention prominent persons. The World. ’ He could not hear a reply but he did hear, beneath the crisscrossing and interfering signals of closer stations, another intriguing message from Cape Race, this time to a passenger of the Titanic : ‘To Mr W. T. Stead, Titanic . We will pay you one dollar per word for your story of this deplorable catastrophe. Please respond at earliest opportunity. The New York Times .’ Evans was not sure he had heard right but then the message came through again, and there it was, most definitely – one dollar per word. He scratched out some quick calculations. Mr Marconi paid him four pounds per month. That was about twenty dollars. He could easily send ten words per minute. So he could earn one month’s pay in two minutes. ‘Cyril Evans was the only Marconi man on his ship,’ he scratched in his notepad, ‘and he was the first to hear of the disaster.’ There. Twenty words. One month’s wages.
    He tried to call up the Olympic and Cape Race but could get no reply; instead he called up the operator on the Birma , who during