Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15 Those first two days on the Carpathia were a blur. George mostly slept, on a bed of blankets and pillows on the floor of the first class lounge. But he sensed that Phoebe and Aunt Daisy never left his side. He sometimes heard Enzo singing softly to him in Italian, his breath hot on George's cheek. He heard Aunt Daisy and Phoebe talking—about Marco, whose feet were badly frozen, about the Carpathia's passengers, who couldn't do enough for them all. About the hundreds and hundreds of people who didn't make it out of the water.

Slowly George felt stronger, and on their last night at sea, he was able to go out onto the deck with Phoebe. They sat on a bench, wrapped in a blanket. A stewardess came over and gave them each a mug of warm milk. Phoebe looked up at the sky as she warmed her hands on her mug. "I finally saw a shooting star, when I was on the lifeboat," she said. "You can guess what I wished for." George reached for her hand. Yes, of course he knew. On the bench next to them sat two women. Both were crying. Probably they'd lost their husbands. Or brothers. Or fathers. There hadn't been enough wishing stars for everyone that night. Phoebe said that only about 700 of them made it out of the water. Phoebe leaned in close to George. Her coat smelled like rose water. A lady from the Carpathia had given it to her.

"Have you wondered?" she asked quietly, "if maybe there really was a curse?" At first George didn't understand that Phoebe was talking about the mummy. With all that had happened, George hadn't thought about it. But now it hit him: how strange it was that the ship had collided with the iceberg at the exact moment the scar-faced man had opened the lid of Mr. Burrows's crate. "I guess we'll never know," George said. But the next evening, as the Carpathia was closing in on New York Harbor, George and Phoebe overheard a skinny man with a beard speaking to an officer. "Before the Titanic, I was traveling in Egypt, a place called Thebes," the man said. "I explored a magnificent tomb of a royal family." Phoebe's eyes bugged out. And before George could stop her, she had marched over to the man. "Excuse me," she said. "Are you Mr. Burrows?" "Yes, I am," the man replied.

Phoebe took a big breath. "Mr. Burrows," she said. "This might sound like a very strange question. But did you bring a mummy on board the Titanic?" The man looked at Phoebe. "A mummy?" he said. "Yes," she said. "We heard it was a princess." Mr. Burrows's eyes were tired and sad. But he smiled a little. "My princess," he said. "Yes." "So there was a mummy?" Phoebe exclaimed. "No, child," he said. "One should never take a mummy from a tomb. That is very bad luck. Princess was my cat. She passed away on my trip to Egypt. And so I had her… wrapped, so I could bring her back with me." "So the princess was a cat?" "Yes," he said sadly. "The most beautiful cat that ever lived." Three hours later, just after nine o'clock, the Carpathia docked in New York City in a thunderstorm. There were thousands of people waiting on the pier.

But the first person George saw as they walked down the gangplank was Papa. He rushed up to George and Phoebe, grabbing them both and pulling them to him. All around them, people cried with happiness. Others just cried, their tears mixing with the pouring rain. They introduced Papa to Marco and Enzo, but there wasn't much time to talk. Their train to Millerstown was leaving soon, and an ambulance was waiting to take Marco to the hospital. Luckily, George didn't have to say a real good-bye to Marco and Enzo. Aunt Daisy was staying in New York City to take care of Enzo until Marco's feet were healed. And then they would come with her for a visit to Millerstown. Seeing the way Marco and Aunt Daisy were looking at each other, George wondered if maybe Marco and Enzo would stay forever. George sure hoped so. As they rode to the train station, newsboys screamed from every street corner. "Read all about it! Titanic survivors in New York! More than fifteen hundred people dead! Read all about it!"

George covered his ears. He wanted to forget everything about the Titanic. He wanted to put it out of his mind forever.