CHAPTER FIFTEEN
John Seward checked his watch. It was 11:56 pm, and something was wrong.
He had been nodding in his chair, a novel by Dickens tented impotently in his lap, and something had awaken him, something out of the ordinary, something unpleasant. He snapped his head up and looked around with a grunt and a start, expecting Dracula or the man in black to be upon him, and found the hall eerily dim and deserted, nothing seemingly amiss.
Seeming that there was no imminent threat, Seward's first instinct had been to reconcile his chin with his chest, but even as his eyes closed, his mind began to clear; the cogs were turning, rustily at first, but then with greater speed.
What was that? There was something. A jolt, perhaps, or a shudder.
Seward stretched and yawned. A jolt, or perhaps a shudder, was never something to be taken lightly at sea. He knew this from firsthand experience. Once he'd been on a steamer that went down off Nunhead after it struck a hidden sandbar and the captain and crew ignored the upset, firmly maintaining that they'd just glanced a whale, or some other such nonsense. None were lost, thank God, but it could have been a disaster. Though he wanted to return to sleep (or, now that he was awake, his book), he instead stood.
Down the hall, a door opened and Seward turned. A man in nightclothes stuck his head out. "Did you feel something just now?" he asked.
"Indeed I did," Seward replied, "rather like a shipwide vibration."
The man considered that. "Yes. Well, hopefully it doesn't spell a delay."
"Certainly not," Seward said, and the man popped back into his stateroom and shut the door. So, something was afoot, lovely. He should really wake the others, but then again why bother? The Titanic wasn't unsinkable, but it was nearly so, and if there were any danger it would be hours in the future. The best course of action would be to go up top and have a look about before going off willy nilly and crying wolf.
Seward rested indecisively for a long moment, wondering what he should do. Finally, he started toward the deck. He met only a few people along the way, several men in their evening attire and a steward hurrying past, an innocuous sight any other time, but one that worried Seward now.
In the smoking room, the fire still high in its grate, there was a card game going on at one of the tables. Men sat around drinking and smoking, laughing and chatting.
Seward paused before the door to the boat deck, unsure of what exactly his investigation should consist of. He turned and approached the card players. "Excuse me, gentlemen, but did you happen to feel anything out of the way...say ten minutes ago?"
"Yes," one of the men replied, "there's talk of ice on the deck. I think we struck a berg."
That certainly wasn't what Seward wanted to hear. "Is it serious?"
"Not at all," one of the men assured nonchalantly with a wave of the hand, "if it had been we surely would know it."
"And Titanic might as well be unsinkable," someone else added.
"Sinking is never out of the question, of course," a gentleman mused, "but highly unlikely. And the ship is so large and sound it would take days for the job to be done. Before that time we'd be in New York and Titanic would be docked."
Another man opened his mouth, but before he could speak the door to the deck burst open and a man strode in. "What an interesting turn of events. We've struck ice." He was wearing a light brown coat, powder blue pajama bottoms, and a pair of brown shoes.
"The deck is absolutely strewn with the stuff."
"Are we damaged?" Seward asked.
"I don't know," the man replied, "the berg must have been gigantic, though. I doubt we escaped wholly unscathed."