Falling into the Ship of Dreams (Jack Dawson love story)

"You jump, I jump... right?"

Jack looked behind Avery, squinting his eyes slightly as he noticed something ahead, through the crowd. It was Fabrizio, standing with Helga Dahl and her family by a stairwell.

"Fabrizio!" Jack shouted. He grabbed Avery's hand and began to lead her toward his friend. "Fabri!"

Fabrizio turned and grinned in relief upon seeing Jack and Avery pushing through the crowd. As soon as the couple reached him, he and Jack hugged like brothers.

"The boats are all going."

Jack nodded in acknowledgment. "We gotta get up there or we're gonna be gargling saltwater," he said. "Where's Tommy?"

Fabrizio pointed over the heads of the solidly packed crowd to the stairwell. Tommy had his hands on the bars of the steel gate which blocks the head of the stairwell. The crew opened the gate a foot or so and a few women were squeezing through.

"Women only. No men," said the steward at the gate. "No men!!"

But some terrified men, not understanding English, tried to rush through the gap, forcing the gate open. The crewmen and stewards pushed them back, shoving and punching them.

"Get back! Get back you lot!" The steward turned to the crewmen. "Lock it!!"

They struggled to get the gate closed again, while the steward who gave the order to do so brandished a small revolver. Another held a fire ax. They locked the gate, and a cry went up among the crowd, who surge forward, pounding against the steel and shouting in several languages.

"For the love of God, man, there are children down here!" Tommy exclaimed himself. "Let us up, so we can have a chance!"

But the crewmen were scared now. They had let the situation get out of hand, and now they had a mob. Tommy gave up and pushed his way back through the crowd, going down the stairs, where he rejoined Jack, Avery and Fabrizio.

"It's hopeless that way," he told them.

"Well, whatever we're goin' to do, we better do it fast," Jack said, pulling Avery closer to him.

"Everyone..." he began, making a lot of hand gestures. "All of you... come with me now. We go to the boats. We go to the boats. Capito? Come now!"

They couldn't understand what he's saying, and though they could see his urgency, Oluf Dahl, the patriarch of the family, shook his head. He will not panic, and will not let his family go with this boy.

Fabrizio turned to Helga. "Helga... per favore... please..." Avery felt bad as she watched his desperate attempts to communicate with his new foreign lover. "Come with me, I am lucky. Is my destiny to go to America."

And Helga stepped forward and kissed him, then stepped back to be with her family. Jack laid a hand on his shoulder, his eyes saying "Let's go".

"I will never forget you," was the last thing Fabrizio said to her before he turned to Jack, who led the way out of the crowd, only glancing back to see her face disappear into the crowd.

Jack led the way through the steerage aft his hand holding Avery's, while Fabrizio and Tommy were right at their heals. However being led, the four of them were lost, searching for a way out. They pushed past confused passengers... past a mother changing her baby's diaper on top of an upturned steamer trunk... past a woman arguing heatedly with a man in Serbo-Croatian, a wailing child next to them... past a man kneeling to console a woman who was just sitting on the floor, sobbing... and past another man with an English/Arabic dictionary, trying to figure out what the signs meant, while his wife and children waited patiently.