I lost my grip on the wheel. The heavy wood slipped through my freezing cold wet fingers, the boat was out of control. Not that I was ever in control. Just a clueless passenger trying to help when the Captain was swept overboard in the rain lashing gale.
Ear shattering sounds followed, groaning, creaking, feeling myself being thrown upside down as the ship started to sink. I could see people trying to hold onto someting, all in vain. Bodies floating past me. Terror.
I must have passed out. Found myself in a lifeboat with a small child and a woman,...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She shielded her eyes from the flashes of light that arced across the blackened sky, her face soaked with tears, her heart pounding in her chest as the cacophony of noise rattled her skull.
In London, a family huddled together in a corner of their living room, across from the window that had blown itself out from the force of the first impact. They held between them the grandmothers crucifix, praying to their God as if he could save them.
A man stood atop the Eifel...
The shipwreck was catastrophic -- the kind where the powder magazines fireballed into the sky. Wood and masts and sails and all that turned into a bunch of toothpicks even Dennis Hoffman couldn't count.
Only Dark James Jameson survived, catapulted as he was from the plank he'd been stumping down as he crossed himself and wished the darling world goodbye. He landed in the evian blue water with a sploosh, swam about in a silent camera shot and bobbed to the surface for a breath -- upside down. His leg was the only bouyant bit about him.
He hung upside...