and         his

Suddenly the door flies open, the boatswain leaning into the darkened cabin, a lantern swinging crazily in his hand.

"Captain", he says, "there's been an explosion in the engine room. We're shipping water!"

The Captain, sitting up in bed, looking through the open door.

"Shit" she says.

"What is it?"

"We're going down" she says.

Although groggy at first, when he realizes that they are actually being summoned to the lifeboats, he is suddenly awake, a dying man offered one last chance.

He slips the valise out from under the bed, snaps it open, begins to gather his things. Passport and visa, a packet of letters, a school tie with its gold tie tack, an envelope fat with currency. He starts to close it, pauses, and throws in a pair of heavy silver candlesticks from the dresser.

Snatching up a shoe, he beats at the heavy glass of the portal until it cracks, then breaks, and before he has time to think twice, the valise is through the window and into the open ocean.

The splash is inaudible in the noise of the chaos above.

As he turns to the door, he wonders if they will try to arrest him on the lifeboat, or wait until they are ashore.

I hope that she likes it.

term applied to people who escape political oppression by going to sea in makeshift boats.

Most recently, it has described

"What do you do in there all day anyhow?"

If what the engineer had said is true, the explosion has caused damage so great that even in these still seas there is a chance that they are shipping water too quickly to repair the hull.

      the iceberg, whose massive form had seemed so impassive at a dist

    in First Class, women weeping, men in tuxedos nervously remembering that tradition requires them to wa

Meanwhile, in steerage, young Tenacity Brown, the long-lost son of a wealthy Industrialist, who had unbeknownst to the orphanage slipped away to the docks only days before, begins to

                  the crew battling the rushing water, redoubling their heroic s

The pall of death has fallen over passengers and crew alike, the only sounds to be heard are the creak of ropes as the enormous wooden life rafts are released and lowered into the water below.

The dull thudding splash and the slackening of their restraining ropes are the only indication of their deployment in the black black night.

"shouldn't the people reading it be able to figure out what's going on?"

In the distance, the sound of helicopters is s

All around, crew members are helping passengers into life boats.

"Does the lover have to go down with the ship as well?" he wonders.

"Oh, just a friend."

As she surveys the sky, she gradually realizes that the helicopters which now only dot the horizon have not been dispatched by the Coast Guard.

Everyday, she picks a different spot to take her photographs.

Under the equatorial sun's punishing glare, the passengers clamber down the ladders and into the bright orange boats.

The Captain surveying a scene of preternatural quiet.

Water swiftly rising into the engine room as the men, their movements m

The sun rises on an empty sea.

I wonder where she is tonight.