RESCUE

 

 

Annette was crying and threshing.

"Quiet!" Angus shouted.  "Can you swim?" to Maurie.

"A little."

"The boats will be full. Stick close to me."

There was no getting through the crazed throng.

"Get rid of your skirts and your shoes."

His fine leather boots slipped easily off.  Pound notes fell to the deck.  Angus squatted and grabbed, stuffing the money into his sock.  Maurie's skirts soon lay in a heap but she was struggling with button-boots.

"Leave them."

Annette's face, wet with tears and snot, now pressed into his shoulder.

"It's all right, lassie.  I'll get you off."

Her skinny legs gripped his waist, her arms convulsed around his neck.  Maurie looked confidently up at him, her bonnet gone, her hair falling loose.  Angus stared fore and aft.  How could he possibly save them?  "We'll go over the side.  See, there are hand-holds.  You have to do it yourself, Maurie.  But stay close.  Hang on, Annette!"

Somehow they were over the side.  Clinging.  He looked down.  Too far to jump.  He let go the rail with one hand, searched for a hold.  Found it.  Felt for a toe-grip.  He glanced at Maurie.  She was managing, though her hands didn't look strong enough and her pointed boots slipped a lot.

"Take your time.  Be sure of your holds."

"The fire?" Maurie gasped.

"We've time."

They made it halfway down the side of the Montreal before Maurie faltered.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," she yelled.  "I can't find a hold!"

Angus let go with his left hand, reached for her, caught a warm thigh, tried to prop it.  She'd lost her grip.  She was toppling backwards.  He tried to hold her and Annette.  He lost Maurie.  As he fell, he prayed he wouldn't land on top of her.

He knifed up through the murky grey water.  Around him shadowy forms struggled, clawed at him, bumped him.  He'd popped to the surface inches from Maurie's face.  Annette coughed and gasped in his ear.

"Grab my coat-tails!" he yelled to Maurie.

One boat, almost swamped.  Nothing else.  Pandemonium.  Screams.  Prayers.  Children calling for their mothers.  Angus shut his ears and swam for the boat.  Others did the same thing, but he was young and strong and he made its stern and clutched a round iron ring.  He knew what would happen.  Others would come, hang desperately to him, to Maurie.  He prised the child's icy hands from his neck.

"You have to hold her," he shouted to Maurie.   "Just for a second."

He wriggled out of his coat, reached down, fumbled with his suspender buttons.  He couldn't get them undone and swim at the same time.  He pulled them off his shoulders, ripped open his shirt, struggled out of it somehow and using his teeth, tied one sleeve into the ring and around his left wrist.  He wrestled Maurie  and the child between his body and the longboat's stern.  He and Maurie between them transferred the child to his neck.  She was still alive but very cold.

He told Maurie, "Fish up the other sleeve of my shirt and tie yourself to the ring."  She obeyed.

"The Napoleon will come," he said to her, as the first of the drowning began to scrabble at his back and legs.

 

****************

 

John Carmichael was having difficulty controlling his friend.

"Annette's dead.  I know it.  "What will my wife say?"

They had been taken off the paddle-wheel by the crew of the Alliance down from Montreal , and had spent a disastrous day in Quebec searching for Annette, Angus, and Maurie.

They'd been fitted with clothes of a sort from kind strangers and had forced their way onto a steamer leaving for Montreal .   Word was that most of the saved had been taken there on the Napoleon.  Upon docking, they went straight to the immigrant sheds.  One was full of a host of cheerful Norwegians, the initial Napoleon passengers.  The second shed was subdued.  People lay on beds or sat in quiet groups.  Many women wept softly or clutched bewildered children to their bodies.  An old couple talked quietly in a corner.  Young people congregated in white-faced groups, telling their stories over and over again to each other.

Mr. Smith, the emigrant Agent, was nowhere to be found.  The living had been cared for as well as goodwill could.  He must now see to the dead.  They questioned everyone who would listen.  No one had seen a child of Annette's description nor, indeed, Angus's or Maurie's.

"Some people have been taken to St. Andrew's Home," said a calm blue-eyed lady.

"We'll find them there," John said.

But they didn't.

They found a little boy called Peter McCaul who looked up from the unbandaged part of his face and said, "I don't know, sir.  My father and mother are drowned, but I know I have an uncle in the Canadas .  Somewhere."

In the room's centre, a red-haired girl in an outlandish costume of lady's skirt and boy's jacket cradled an infant.  It was the girl from the water and the infant the one John had handed over to the Alliance 's crew.  She must have searched for and found the child.

"Please, sir," she called out.  "Are you looking for a baby called Jeanne?"

Sinclair ignored her but John went over.  "No, lass.  It's an older child we seek.  A seven-year-old girl with dark hair.  Her name is Annette.  Have you seen her?"

"Oh there's so many, Sir.  It's only by the grace of God I found Jeanne.  Ask the nuns."  She grabbed his sleeve as he turned away.  "Please, Sir.  I must go home.  I can't stay here nursing this baby any longer.  Her people are dead, for sure.  Please will you take her.  They won't pay any attention to me.  They'll listen to a gentleman."  Standing, she thrust the child into his arms.

"I can't," John sputtered.  "I ..."

"If you don't, I'll leave her right here in the middle of the floor.  I swear I will."  A Grey Nun, hearing the commotion, started toward them.  The red-haired girl turned and ran towards the door.  She called over her shoulder, "Her name's Jeanne!" and was gone.

John stood helpless as the nun reached him.  He started to explain but was interrupted by an hysterical Sinclair who grabbed the nun, swung her to face him.  "I've lost my daughter.  She's a little dark-haired girl.  Seven-years-old.  She might be alone or she might have two people with her ..."

The nun shushed him, her eyes compassionate.  "There is one child in the hospital.  She's alive, but very ill.  Her lungs were affected.  Pneumonia."

"Where's the hospital?" Sinclair cried.

She told him, and he rushed for the door with John Carmichael, who completely forgot that he held an orphaned baby in his arms, hard on his heels.