Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

Declan stepped around the bar and grabbed a bottle of 90 proof Vodka and started for the bowels of the ship, heading for the freezer compartment, armed with the gun that he had secretly managed to lift from Ransom shortly before. Using the liquor and the gun, he meant to burn the remains of the bodies in the freezer, igniting the egg-sacs unless his will and his resolve gave out. A powerful sense of urgency motivated him.

THIRTY EIGHT

Former Chicago Police Inspector Alastair Ransom glanced up to find Thomas going off with the dog and the journal; he watched next as Declan had stepped behind the unsupervised bar for a bottle, and he caught a glimpse of the shimmering clear liquid—Vodka—and when he suddenly stood from the table, knocking over a chair. He’d seen the dark, metal object in Declan’s hand—a gun.

Ransom, knowing it gone, felt for his weapon in the now empty holster he’d strapped on when Murdoch had offered him the firearm.

His sudden action had all the other card players on their feet, each man with a weapon trained on him.

“I am unarmed, gentlemen!” he shouted, a part of his brain chastising him for not following through and getting himself shot dead here and now, a quick escape from death’s plan for him. “Bleedin’ kid’s stole my gun, gentlemen. It’s a sad day when your own good friend pickpocket’s a man. You’ll have to forgive me now.” He made a move to pick up his winnings, a matter of habit, when all the guns trained on him cocked.

One going by the name Klondike Konrath pointed his gun at the shoes on Ransom’s feet. Walker used his gun to indicate the winnings and the whiskey. “You have to give us a chance to win back our lost merchandise.”

Ransom frowned, shook his head, lifted his cane, and said, “Gents, I agree; you should be given a chance to win back my earnings. I’ll just take the shoes and—”

The others protested his sudden departure. “We let you put up the liquor for shillings, and now you’re going to walk off with our cash?”

“And my shoes?” asked Konrath.

“Without giving us a chance to win it back!” asked another he’d come to know as John Fitch the Fifth.

“I see I am outnumbered, gents, but it has been forever ago since I’ve a good bar fight, so let’s have at it!” he sent out a nose-crushing right fist into the closest one, Walker, sending him hurtling to the floor. As they were all drunk and stunned, the others stood for a moment in surprised agitation. One threw up his hands and backed off, but two others came at Ransom, one on either side, as Walker shouted, “Hold him for me, boys!”

Ransom kicked out at a chair and caught it just right at the crook of his foot, sending this handy weapon flying into their leader’s forehead before he could fully recover from the first blow. The chair hit Walker hard enough to knock him back to the floor.

Watching it all transpire, Architect Andrews smiled at the brawl aboard his sinking ship. It made as much sense as the band slipping into a rousing fight song to accompany the brawl aboard at a time like this. It made perfect sense.

Ransom dispatched the other two men on either side of him by side-stepping one’s blow to bring home a whiskey bottle to the other one’s jaw, whiskey and glass flying. This left only one man left standing other than Ransom, Konrath, who went for a small, concealed derringer. Ransom brought his hand around to clutch the gun hand, squeezing it so tight as to make the firearm drop. Both men then noticed that the bone-handled derringer was swept away by the angle of the floor. From her listing to the port side bow, everyone who understood anything about sailing knew now that Titanic , while advertised as unsinkable was in fact at this moment sinking.

Ransom quickly dispatched the fourth and final drunk with a single blow to the cranium when he whipped up his wolf’s head cane and struck the man in the jaw with it, stunning him on the upswing, but then on the downswing, he caught him as he expected—square to the back of the skull. With this, the job was done.

Ransom then rapped the table so hard with his cane that it created the sound of a gunshot. Unlike Andrews before him, Alastair got their attention. “I was about to say, gentlemen, you can divvy up my winnings among you. Take it all to hell with you, but I keep the bloody shoes.”

“W-What about the Whiskey?” asked Savile.

“Are ya all deaf and dumb?” shouted old Mr. Farley who was at the bar now and drinking straight from a fat brandy bottle. “Damn fools, the ship’s going down. There’s all the most expensive champagne, brandy, and whiskey you can drink right here, if only you had the time! But they gotta win it in a poker game to make it worth their while.”

“Best get drinking, fellas,” added Ransom, grabbing one of the whiskey bottles on the table and leaving the other two tilted at a dangerous angle.

“Just wanted a chance to earn back what you won from us,” shouted Walker after struggling to his feet under the influence atop a slanted floor. But Ransom had exited the nearest side door for the promenade, looking in all directions for Declan.

He wondered what Declan was up to as the young man left carrying a bottle of Vodka of all things. The lad looked dejected enough to get besotted and use the gun on himself. Now Ransom raced to catch Declan, fearing it’d be too late if he did not intervene. Despite everything, his raucous lifestyle and all the railing he’d ever done at God, mankind, Mother Nature, and now this monster on Titanic , Alastair still felt that suicide, above all things, was the worst thing a man could do—on even footing with murder. He had himself killed other men both in the line of duty and off duty, but he felt he’d never killed a man who hadn’t had it coming—like that godless maniac Chicago reporters dubbed The Phantom of the World’s Fair.

He raced to the deck from which they’d come, thinking Declan on his way to the top where he would dramatically put a bullet through his head and keel over the side, plunging into the frigid ocean below, but he found no sign of young Declan, here topside where the panic was now palpable.

Try as he might amid the crowd, he could not find Declan. He did however, run into Lightoller who was arguing with the same woman who had been afraid to cross a gangplank at Cherbourg from the cargo steamer, the one that Ransom had helped along at the time.

On seeing Ransom, the lady shouted, “If I can take the arm of this gentleman, I will do my best to board, sir. Otherwise, I go back to my berth and wait there.”

Charles Lightoller turned to see who it might be and the two came face to face. “Ah, Constable, it’s you.”

“Yes… looking for Declan Irvin; have you seen him?”

“No… no! Rather busy, you see.”

“Please, sir?” came the lady, her arm extended to Alastair. He took it and guided her across the one and a half-foot gap between Titanic ’s rail, over which they must step from a ladder, to the rocking lifeboat which was currently less than one-third full. In the boat, a crewman was trying desperately to balance out the weight of passengers, telling everyone where to sit.

“Keep her steady there, man! Keep the boat steady!” ordered Lightoller of his men on board. “And keep in tight around the ship. Don’t venture too far! Do you understand?”

Ransom peered down into the boat from where he stood helping the young lady; he could feel her terror racing through him; she was trembling so hard. Helping her aboard and getting those in the boat to take hold of her, Ransom caught sight of Varmint and beside him, at the tiller with his arm draped around the dog, sat a glum Thomas Coogan who pretended not to see Alastair, or was he trying not to be seen? Ransom frowned but made no remarks to Thomas, instead turning to make his way back onto the deck and away from here when he stopped, turned, and made for the life boat in a rush instead. Lightoller placed a gun to his head, cocked it; ready to fire, he shouted, “Sorry but women and children first, Mr. Ransom, sir.”