From the backcover:

The deck was tilting. Even the passengers who hadn't believed the Titanic could sink were frantic with fear. Many of them refused to climb into the lifeboats. Now the lifeboats were gone. The doomed passengers rushed this way and that, looking for safety where there was none.

Barry rushed through them, looking for Pegeen and her brothers, the Flynn boys. They had threatened to throw him overboard when the trip began, but old hostilities had no meaning n ow. Pegeen and her brothers came from Barry's village in Ireland, and now they were trapped behind gates with the other steerage passengers. He wouldn't let them die - not if he could get to them in time.