The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan Page A

excited, but frustrated by the lack of visibility. We shouted out with all our might. We banged on the sides of the boat with the oars and the bailers, with anything that would make noise, but by noon, the sounds of the foghorn had ceased; and when the fog finally lifted and we saw that the second lifeboat was gone, it was as if some protective fog had lifted from our souls as well, leaving us clear-eyed and able to see the profound starkness of our situation. We had all heard the foghorn—there wasn’t a question about that as there had been about Mr. Preston’s lights. After much discussion, during which Hardie was silently measuring the angle of the sun, Mr. Preston decided that the occupants of the other lifeboat had been found and that our chances of a similar rescue were gone. This prompted Mr. Nilsson to say, “If we could see the other lifeboat, then surely they could see us. They’d never let a rescue ship leave the area without mounting a search.”
    “You don’t know Blake,” muttered Hardie. “There’s no telling what Blake would have done.”
    “Blake,” said Mr. Preston. “He was the one who came up from the radio room. He was the one who helped to launch our boat.”
    “He was the second officer on the Empress Alexandra, ” added Greta.
    “Aye,” said Mr. Hardie. “Meanest mongrel that ever passed for a man.”
    Mr. Preston turned to me and said, “You knew Mr. Blake, didn’t you?” I replied that I didn’t think I did. “Then your husband knew him, for I’m sure I saw you standing together on the deck.”
    I gave him a questioning look, and he stole a glance at Mary Ann before he said, “I must be mistaken,” but he seemed to be holding something back, and I wondered what he was thinking of or if Mary Ann had merely been telling him one of those stories that circulated on the boat and that seemed to change with each telling.
    “How do you know it was Blake’s boat that stayed with us and not the other one we saw?” the Colonel wanted to know. “Since the first days, we haven’t gotten close enough to see them clearly.”
    “It was Blake, all right,” said Hardie. “The other boat was full and the one we have been seeing wasn’t. Besides, you notice how they never approached us.”
    “But it was you who told us not to go near them!” exclaimed Hannah.
    “Blake is a rabid dog. Didn’t you hear that bearded fellow tell us how Blake pushed two people out of his boat? With the captain out of the way, he’d as soon kill me as look at me. It was better to stay away.”
    “Or safer,” said Hannah.
    “Safer is better. You haven’t spent your lives at sea as I have. The men who go to sea are often the ones with something to escape!”
    “Are you including yourself?” Hannah asked, but I was willing to believe Hardie had stayed away from Blake’s boat in order to protect us. It was Hannah who whispered it around that Hardie had done it to protect himself.
    “We don’t really know why Blake pushed people out of his boat—maybe they caused some sort of trouble. What if there had been extra places in it after all?” demanded Mrs. Grant, finally voicing something that had occurred to me days before and had probably occurred to the others as well. “Even if the boat was damaged, it seems to me we might have helped fix it and then moved some of our people over. We should have at least tried. We might not be in such danger if we had.” As with many of the things Mrs. Grant said, the suggestion of repairing the other boat was vague and without any specifics about how it might have been accomplished without materials or tools, but the idea that Hardie was acting out of pure self-interest had begun to creep into our consciousnesses. He had been so precise with other details; why had he neglected to tell us about his history with Blake back at the beginning? Perhaps he was making it up to cover for his mistakes. Perhaps Mr. Hardie was the one with a past he wanted to hide.
    The