Titanic Part 3

"We said lots of funny things to each other in the next few minutes,"

said Bride. Phillips went stolidly on, firmly hammering out his "S.O.S., S.O.S.," sometimes varying it with "C.Q.D." for the benefit of such operators as might not be on the alert for the new call. For several minutes there was no reply; then the whining voice at Phillips' ear began to answer. Some one had heard. They had picked up the steamer _Frankfurt_, and they gave her the position and told her that the _t.i.tanic_ had struck an iceberg and needed a.s.sistance. There was another pause and, in their minds' eye, the wireless men could see the _Frankfurt's_ operator miles and miles away across the dark night going along from his cabin and rousing the _Frankfurt's_ Captain and giving his message and coming back to the instrument, when again the whining voice began asking for more news.

They were learning facts up here in the Marconi room. They knew that the _t.i.tanic_ was taking in water, and they knew that she was sinking by the head; and what they knew they flashed out into the night for the benefit of all who had ears to hear. They knew that there were many s.h.i.+ps in their vicinity; but they knew also that hardly any of them carried more than one operator, and that even Marconi operators earning 4 a month must go to bed and sleep sometimes, and that it was a mere chance if their call was heard. But presently the Cunard liner _Carpathia_ answered and told them her position, from which it appeared that she was about seventy miles away. The _Carpathia_, which was heading towards the Mediterranean, told them she had altered her course and was heading full steam to their a.s.sistance. The _Carpathia's_ voice was much fainter than the _Frankfurt's_, from which Phillips a.s.sumed that the _Frankfurt_ was the nearer s.h.i.+p; but there was a certain lack of prompt.i.tude on board the _Frankfurt_ which made Phillips impatient. While he was still sending out the call for help, after the _Frankfurt_ had answered it, she interrupted him again, asking what was the matter. They told Captain Smith, who said, "That fellow is a fool," an opinion which Phillips and Bride not only shared, but which they even found time to communicate to the operator on the _Frankfurt_. By this time the _Olympic_ had also answered her twin sister's cry for help, but she was far away, more than three hundred miles; and although she too turned and began to race towards the spot where the _t.i.tanic_ was lying so quietly, it was felt that the honours of salving her pa.s.sengers would go to the _Carpathia_.

The foolish _Frankfurt_ operator still occasionally interrupted with a question, and he was finally told, with such brusqueness as the wireless is capable of, to keep away from his instrument and not interfere with the serious conversations of the _t.i.tanic_ and _Carpathia_.

Then Bride took Phillips's place at the instrument and succeeded in getting a whisper from the _Baltic_, and gradually, over hundreds of miles of ocean, the invisible ether told the s.h.i.+ps that their giant sister was in distress. The time pa.s.sed quickly with these urgent conversations on which so much might depend, and hour by hour and minute by minute the water was creeping up the steep sides of the s.h.i.+p. Once the Captain looked in and told them that the engine-rooms were taking in water and that the dynamos might not last much longer. That information was also sent to the _Carpathia_, who by this time could tell them that she had turned towards them with every furnace going at full blast, and was hurrying forward at the rate of eighteen knots instead of her usual fifteen. It now became a question how long the storage plant would continue to supply current. Phillips went out on deck and looked round.

"The water was pretty close up to the boat deck. There was a great scramble aft, and how poor Phillips worked through it I don't know. He was a brave man. I learnt to love him that night, and I suddenly felt for him a great reverence, to see him standing there sticking to his work while everybody else was raging about. While I live I shall never forget the work Phillips did for that last awful fifteen minutes."

Bride felt that it was time to look about and see if there was no chance of saving himself. He knew that by this time all the boats had gone. He could see, by looking over the side, that the water was far nearer than it had yet been, and that the fo'c's'le decks, which of course were much lower than the superstructure on which the Marconi cabin was situated, were already awash. He remembered that there was a lifebelt for every member of the crew and that his own was under his bunk; and he went and put it on. And then, thinking how cold the water would be, he went back and put his boots on, and an extra coat. Phillips was still standing at the key, talking to the _Olympic_ now and telling her the tragic and shameful news that her twin sister, the unsinkable, was sinking by the head and was pretty near her end. While Phillips was sending this message Bride strapped a lifebelt about him and put on his overcoat.

Then, at Phillips's suggestion, Bride went out to see if there was anything left in the shape of a boat by which they could get away. He saw some men struggling helplessly with a collapsible boat which they were trying to lower down on to the deck. Bride gave them a hand and then, although it was the last boat left, he resolutely turned his back on it and went back to Phillips. At that moment for the last time, the Captain looked in to give them their release.

"Men, you have done your full duty, you can do no more. Abandon your cabin now; it is every man for himself; you look out for yourselves. I release you. That's the way of it at this kind of time; every man for himself."

Then happened one of the strangest incidents of that strange hour. I can only give it in Bride's own words:

"Phillips clung on, sending, sending. He clung on for about ten minutes, or maybe fifteen minutes, after the Captain released him. The water was then coming into our cabin.

"While he worked something happened I hate to tell about. I was back in my room getting Phillips's money for him, and as I looked out of the door I saw a stoker, or somebody from below decks, leaning over Phillips from behind. Phillips was too busy to notice what the man was doing, but he was slipping the lifebelt off Phillips's back. He was a big man, too.

"As you can see, I'm very small. I don't know what it was I got hold of, but I remembered in a flash the way Phillips had clung on; how I had to fix that lifebelt in place, because he was too busy to do it.

"I knew that man from below decks had his own lifebelt, and should have known where to get it. I suddenly felt a pa.s.sion not to let that man die a decent sailor's death. I wished he might have stretched a rope or walked a plank. I did my duty. I hope I finished him, but I don't know.

"We left him on the cabin floor of the wireless room, and he wasn't moving."

Phillips left the cabin, running aft, and Bride never saw him alive again. He himself came out and found the water covering the bridge and coming aft over the boat deck.

XII

There is one other separate point of view from which we may look at the s.h.i.+p during this fateful hour before all points of view become merged in one common experience. Mr. Boxhall, the Fourth Officer, who had been on the bridge at the moment of the impact, had been busy sending up rockets and signals in the effort to attract the attention of a s.h.i.+p whose lights could be seen some ten miles away; a mysterious s.h.i.+p which cannot be traced, but whose lights appear to have been seen by many independent witnesses on the _t.i.tanic_. So sure was he of her position that Mr.

Boxhall spent almost all his time on the bridge signalling to her with rockets and flashes; but no answer was received. He had, however, also been on a rapid tour of inspection of the s.h.i.+p immediately after she had struck. He went down to the steerage quarters forward and aft, and he was also down in the deep forward compartment where the Post Office men were working with the mails, and he had at that time found nothing wrong, and his information contributed much to the sense of security that was spread amongst the pa.s.sengers.

Mr. Pitman, the Third Officer, was in his bunk at the time of the collision, having been on duty on the bridge from six to eight, when the Captain had also been on the bridge. There had been talk of ice among the officers on Sunday, and they had expected to meet with it just before midnight, at the very time, in fact, when they had met with it.

But very little ice had been seen, and the speed of the s.h.i.+p had not been reduced. Mr. Pitman says that when he awoke he heard a sound which seemed to him to be the sound of the s.h.i.+p coming to anchor. He was not actually awake then, but he had the sensation of the s.h.i.+p halting, and heard a sound like that of chains whirling round the windla.s.s and running through the hawseholes into the water. He lay in bed for three or four minutes wondering in a sleepy sort of way where they could have anch.o.r.ed. Then, becoming more awake, he got up, and without dressing went out on deck; he saw nothing remarkable, but he went back and dressed, suspecting that something was the matter. While he was dressing Mr. Boxhall looked in and said: "We have struck an iceberg, old man; hurry up!"

He also went down below to make an inspection and find out what damage had been done. He went to the forward well deck, where ice was lying, and into the fo'c's'le, but found nothing wrong there. The actual damage was farther aft, and at that time the water had not come into the bows of the s.h.i.+p. As he was going back he met a number of firemen coming up the gangway with their bags of clothing; they told him that water was coming into their place. They were firemen off duty, who afterwards were up on the boat deck helping to man the boats. Then Mr. Pitman went down lower into the s.h.i.+p and looked into No. 1 hatch, where he could plainly see water. All this took time; and when he came back he found that the men were beginning to get the boats ready, a task at which he helped under Mr. Murdoch's orders. Presently Mr. Murdoch ordered him to take command of a boat and hang about aft of the gangway. Pitman had very little relish for leaving the s.h.i.+p at that time, and in spite of the fact that she was taking in water, every one was convinced that the _t.i.tanic_ was a much safer place than the open sea. He had about forty pa.s.sengers and six of the crew in his boat, and as it was about to be lowered, Mr. Murdoch leant over to him and shook him heartily by the hand: "Good-bye, old man, and good luck," he said, in tones which rather surprised Pitman, for they seemed to imply that the good-bye might be for a long time. His boat was lowered down into the water, unhooked, and shoved off, and joined the gradually increasing fleet of other boats that were cruising about in the starlight.

There was one man walking about that upper deck whose point of view was quite different from that of anyone else. Mr. Bruce Ismay, like so many others, was awakened from sleep by the stopping of the engines; like so many others, also, he lay still for a few moments, and then got up and went into the pa.s.sage-way, where he met a steward and asked him what was the matter. The steward knew nothing, and Mr. Ismay went back to his state-room, put on a dressing-gown and slippers, and went up to the bridge, where he saw the Captain. "What has happened?" he asked. "We have struck ice," was the answer. "Is the injury serious?" "I think so,"

said the Captain. Then Mr. Ismay came down in search of the Chief Engineer, whom he met coming up to the bridge; he asked him the same question, and he also said he thought the injury serious. He understood from them that the s.h.i.+p was certainly in danger, but that there was hope that if the pumps could be kept going there would be no difficulty in keeping her afloat quite long enough for help to come and for the pa.s.sengers to be taken off. Whatever was to be the result, it was a terrible moment for Mr. Ismay, a terrible blow to the pride and record of the Company, that this, their greatest and most invulnerable s.h.i.+p, should be at least disabled, and possibly lost, on her maiden voyage.

But like a sensible man, he did not stand wringing his hands at the inevitable; he did what he could to rea.s.sure the pa.s.sengers, repeating, perhaps with a slight quaver of doubt in his voice, the old word-unsinkable. When the boats began to be launched he went and tried to help, apparently in his anxiety getting rather in the way. In this endeavour he encountered the wrath of Mr. Lowe, the Fifth Officer, who was superintending the launching of boat No. 5. Mr. Lowe did not know the ident.i.ty of the nervous, excited figure standing by the davits, nor recognize the voice which kept saying nervously, "Lower away! lower away!" and it was therefore with no misgivings that he ordered him away from the boat, saying brusquely, "If you will kindly get to h.e.l.l out of this perhaps I'll be able to do something!"-a trifling incident, but evidence that Mr. Ismay made no use of his position for his own personal ends. He said nothing, and went away to another boat, where he succeeded in being more useful, and it was not till afterwards that an awe-stricken steward told the Fifth Officer who it was that he had chased away with such language. But after that Mr. Ismay was among the foremost in helping to sort out the women and children and get them expeditiously packed into the boats, with a burden of misery and responsibility on his heart that we cannot measure.

One can imagine a great bustle and excitement while the boats were being sent away; but when they had all gone, and there was nothing more to be done, those who were left began to look about them and realize their position. There was no doubt about it, the _t.i.tanic_ was sinking, not with any plunging or violent movement, but steadily settling down, as a rock seems to settle into the water when the tide rises about it.

Down in the engine-room and stokeholds, in conditions which can hardly be imagined by the ordinary landsman, men were still working with a grim and stoic heroism. The forward stokeholds had been flooded probably an hour after the collision; but it is practically certain that the bulkheads forward of No. 5 held until the last. The doors in those aft of No. 4 had been opened by hand after they had been closed from the bridge, in order to facilitate the pa.s.sage of the engineering staff about their business; and they remained open, and the princ.i.p.al bulkhead protecting the main engine-room, held until the last. Water thus found its way into some compartments, and gradually rose; but long after those in charge had given up all hope of saving the s.h.i.+p, the stokehold watch were kept hard at work drawing the fires from under the boilers, so that when the water reached them there should be no steam. The duty of the engine-room staff was to keep the pumps going as long as possible and to run the dynamos that supplied the current for the light and the Marconi installation. This they did, as the black water rose stage by stage upon them. At least twenty minutes before the s.h.i.+p sank the machinery must have been flooded, and the current for the lights and the wireless supplied from the storage plant. No member of the engine-room staff was ever seen alive again, but, when the water finally flooded the stokeholds, the watch were released and told to get up and save themselves if they could.

And up on deck a chilly conviction of doom was slowly but certainly taking the place of that bland confidence in the unsinkable s.h.i.+p in which the previous hour had been lightly pa.s.sed. That confidence had been dreadfully overdone, so much so that the stewards had found the greatest difficulty in persuading the pa.s.sengers to dress themselves and come up on deck, and some who had done so had returned to their state-rooms and locked themselves in. The last twenty minutes, however, must have shown everyone on deck that there was not a chance left. On a s.h.i.+p as vast and solid as the _t.i.tanic_ there is no sensation of actual sinking or settling. She still seemed as immovable as ever, but the water was climbing higher and higher up her black sides. The sensation was not that of the s.h.i.+p sinking, but of the water rising about her. And the last picture we have of her, while still visible, still a firm refuge amid the waters, is of the band still playing and a throng of people looking out from the lamplit upper decks after the disappearing boats, bracing themselves as best they might for the terrible plunge and shock which they knew was coming. Here and there men who were determined still to make a fight for life climbed over the rail and jumped over; it was not a seventy foot drop now-perhaps under twenty, but it was a formidable jump. Some were stunned, and some were drowned at once before the eyes of those who waited; and the dull splashes they made were probably the first visible demonstration of the death that was coming.

Duties were still being performed; an old deck steward, who had charge of the chairs, was busily continuing to work, adapting his duties to the emergency that had arisen and las.h.i.+ng chairs together. In this he was helped by Mr. Andrews, who was last seen engaged on this strangely ironic task of throwing chairs overboard-frail rafts thrown upon the waters that might or might not avail some struggling soul when the moment should arrive, and the great s.h.i.+p of his designing float no longer. Throughout he had been untiring in his efforts to help and hearten people; but in this the last vision of him, there is something not far short of the sublime.

The last collapsible boat was being struggled with on the upper deck, but there were no seamen about who understood its stiff mechanism; unaccustomed hands fumbled desperately with it, and finally pushed it over the side in its collapsed condition for use as a raft. Many of the seamen and stewards had gathered in the bar-room, where the attendant was serving out gla.s.ses of whiskey to any and all who came for it; but most men had an instinct against being under cover, and preferred to stand out in the open.

And now those in the boats that had drawn off from the s.h.i.+p could see that the end was at hand. Her bows had gone under, although the stern was still fairly high out of the water. She had sunk down at the forward end of the great superstructure amids.h.i.+ps; her decks were just awash, and the black throng was moving aft. The s.h.i.+p was blazing with light, and the strains of the band were faintly heard still playing as they had been commanded to do. But they had ceased to play the jolly rag-time tunes with which the bustle and labour of getting off the boats had been accompanied; solemn strains, the strains of a hymn, could be heard coming over the waters. Many women in the boats, looking back towards that lighted and subsiding ma.s.s, knew that somewhere, invisible among the throng, was all that they held dearest in the world waiting for death; and they could do nothing. Some tried to get the crews to turn back, wringing their hands, beseeching, imploring; but no crew dared face the neighbourhood of the giant in her death agony. They could only wait, and s.h.i.+ver, and look.

XIII

The end, when it came, was as gradual as everything else had been since the first impact. Just as there was no one moment at which everyone in the s.h.i.+p realized that she had suffered damage; just as there was no one moment when the whole of her company realized that they must leave her; just as there was no one moment when all in the s.h.i.+p understood that their lives were in peril, and no moment when they all knew she must sink; so there was no one moment at which all those left on board could have said, "She is gone." At one moment the floor of the bridge, where the Captain stood, was awash; the next a wave came along and covered it with four feet of water, in which the Captain was for a moment washed away, although he struggled back and stood there again, up to his knees in water. "Boys, you can do no more," he shouted, "look out for yourselves!" Standing near him was a fireman and-strange juxtaposition-two unclaimed solitary little children, scarce more than babies. The fireman seized one in his arms, the Captain another; another wave came and they were afloat in deep water, striking out over the rail of the bridge away from the s.h.i.+p.

The slope of the deck increased, and the sea came was.h.i.+ng up against it as waves wash against a steep sh.o.r.e. And then that helpless ma.s.s of humanity was stricken at last with the fear of death, and began to scramble madly aft, away from the chasm of water that kept creeping up and up the decks. Then a strange thing happened. They who had been waiting to sink into the sea found themselves rising into the air as the slope of the decks grew steeper. Up and up, dizzily high out of reach of the dark waters into which they had dreaded to be plunged, higher and higher into the air, towards the stars, the stern of the s.h.i.+p rose slowly right out of the water, and hung there for a time that is estimated variously between two and five minutes; a terrible eternity to those who were still clinging. Many, thinking the end had come, jumped; the water resounded with splash after splash as the bodies, like mice shaken out of a trap into a bucket, dropped into the water. All who could do so laid hold of something; ropes, stanchions, deck-houses, mahogany doors, window frames, anything, and so clung on while the stern of the giant s.h.i.+p reared itself towards the sky. Many had no hold, or lost the hold they had, and these slid down the steep smooth decks, as people slide down a water chute into the sea.

We dare not linger here, even in imagination; dare not speculate; dare not look closely, even with the mind's eye, at this poor human agony, this last pitiful scramble for dear life that the serene stars shone down upon. We must either turn our faces away, or withdraw to that surrounding circle where the boats were hovering with their terror-stricken burdens, and see what they saw. They saw the after part of the s.h.i.+p, blazing with light, stand up, a suspended prodigy, between the stars and the waters; they saw the black atoms, each one of which they knew to be a living man or woman on fire with agony, sliding down like shot rubbish into the sea; they saw the giant decks bend and crack; they heard a hollow and tremendous rumbling as the great engines tore themselves from their steel beds and crashed through the s.h.i.+p; they saw sparks streaming in a golden rain from one of the funnels; heard the dull boom of an explosion while the spouting funnel fell over into the sea with a slap that killed every one beneath it and set the nearest boat rocking; heard two more dull bursting reports as the steel bulkheads gave way or decks blew up; saw the lights flicker out, flicker back again, and then go out for ever, and the s.h.i.+p, like some giant sea creature forsaking the strife of the upper elements for the peace of the submarine depths, launched herself with one slow plunge and dive beneath the waves.

There was no great maelstrom as they had feared, but the sea was swelling and sinking all about them; and they could see waves and eddies where rose the imprisoned air, the smoke and steam of vomited-up ashes, and a bobbing commotion of small dark things where the _t.i.tanic_, in her pride and her shame, with the clocks ticking and the fires burning in her luxurious rooms, had plunged down to the icy depths of death.

XIV

As the s.h.i.+p sank and the commotion and swirl of the waves subsided, the most terrible experience of all began. The seas were not voiceless; the horrified people in the surrounding boats heard an awful sound from the dark central area, a collective voice, compound of moans, shrieks, cries and despairing calls, from those who were struggling in the water. It was an area of death and of agony towards which those in the boats dared not venture, even although they knew their own friends were peris.h.i.+ng and crying for help there. They could only wait and listen, hoping that it might soon be over. But it was not soon over. There was a great deal of floating wreckage to which hundreds of people clung, some for a short time, some for a long time; and while they clung on they cried out to their friends to save them. One boat-that commanded by Mr. Lowe, the Fifth Officer-did, after transs.h.i.+pping some of its pa.s.sengers into other boats, and embarking a crew of oarsmen, venture back into the dark centre of things. The wreckage and dead bodies showed the sea so thickly that they could hardly row without touching a dead body; and once, when they were trying to reach a survivor who was clinging to a piece of broken staircase, praying and calling for help, it took them nearly half an hour to cover the fifty feet that separated them from him, so thick were the bodies. This reads like an exaggeration, but it is well attested. The water was icy cold, and benumbed many of them, who thus died quickly; a few held on to life, moaning, wailing, calling-but in vain.

A few strong men were still making a desperate fight for life. The collapsible boat, which Bride had seen a group of pa.s.sengers attempting to launch a few minutes before the s.h.i.+p sank, was washed off by a wave in its collapsed condition. Such boats contain air compartments in their bottom, and thus, even although they are not opened, they float like rafts, and can carry a considerable weight. Some of those who were swept off the s.h.i.+p by the same wave that took the boat found themselves near it and climbed on to it. Mr. Lightoller, the Second Officer, had dived as the s.h.i.+p dived, and been sucked down the steep submerged wall of the hull against the grating over the blower for the exhaust steam. Far down under the water he felt the force of an explosion which blew him up to the surface, where he breathed for a moment, and was then sucked back by the water was.h.i.+ng into the s.h.i.+p as it sank. This time he landed against the grating over the pipes that furnished the draught for the funnels, and stuck there. There was another explosion, and again he came to the surface not many feet from the s.h.i.+p, and found himself near the collapsible boat, to which he clung. It was quite near him that the huge funnel fell over into the water and killed many swimmers before his eyes. He drifted for a time on the collapsible boat, until he was taken off into one of the lifeboats.

Bride also found himself strangely involved with this boat, which he had last seen on the deck of the s.h.i.+p. When he was swept off, he found himself in the horrible position of being trapped under water beneath this boat. He struggled out and tried to climb on to it, but it took him a long time; at last, however, he managed to get up on it, and found five or six other people there. And now and then some other swimmer, stronger than most, would come up and be helped on board. Some thus helped died almost immediately; there were four found dead upon this boat when at last the survivors were rescued.

There was another boat also not far off, a lifeboat, capsized likewise.

Six men managed to scramble on to the keel of this craft; it was almost all she could carry. Mr. Caldwell, a second-cla.s.s pa.s.senger, who had been swimming about in the icy water for nearly an hour, with dead bodies floating all about him, was beginning to despair when he found himself near a crate to which another man was clinging. "Will it hold two?" he asked. And the other man, with a rare heroism, said: "Catch hold and try; we will live or die together." And these two, clinging precariously to the crate, reached the overturned lifeboat and were hauled up to its keel. Presently another man came swimming along and asked if they could take him on. But the boat was already dangerously loaded; the weight of another man would have meant death for all, and they told him so. "All right," he cried, "good-bye; G.o.d bless you all!"

And he sank before their eyes.

Captain Smith, who had last been seen washed from the bridge as the s.h.i.+p sank, with a child in his arms, was seen once more before he died. He was swimming, apparently only in the hope of saving the child that he held; for in his austere conception of his duty there was no place of salvation for him while others were drowning and struggling. He swam up to a boat with the child and gasped out: "Take the child!" A dozen willing hands were stretched out to take it, and then to help him into the boat; but he shook them off. Only for a moment he held on, asking: "What became of Murdoch?" and when they said that he was dead, he let go his hold, saying: "Let me go"; and the last that they saw of him was swimming back towards the s.h.i.+p. He had no lifebelt; he had evidently no wish that there should be any gruesome resurrection of his body from the sea, and undoubtedly he found his grave where he wished to find it, somewhere hard by the grave of his s.h.i.+p.

The irony of chance, the merciless and illogical selection which death makes in a great collective disaster, was exemplified over and over again in the deaths of people who had escaped safely to a boat, and the salvation of others who were involved in the very centre of destruction.

The strangest escape of all was probably that of Colonel Gracie of the United States army, who jumped from the topmost deck of the s.h.i.+p when she sank and was sucked down with her. He was drawn down for a long while, and whirled round and round, and would have been drawn down to a depth from which he could never have come up alive if it had not been for the explosion which took place after the s.h.i.+p sank. "After sinking with the s.h.i.+p," he says, "it appeared to me as if I was propelled by some great force through the water. This may have been caused by explosions under the waters, and I remembered fearful stories of people being boiled to death. Innumerable thoughts of a personal nature, having relation to mental telepathy, flashed through my brain. I thought of those at home, as if my spirit might go to them to say good-bye. Again and again I prayed for deliverance, although I felt sure that the end had come. I had the greatest difficulty in holding my breath until I came to the surface. I knew that once I inhaled, the water would suffocate me. I struck out with all my strength for the surface. I got to the air again after a time that seemed to me unending. There was nothing in sight save the ocean strewn with great ma.s.ses of wreckage, dying men and women all about me, groaning and crying piteously. I saw wreckage everywhere, and what came within reach I clung to. I moved from one piece to another until I reached the collapsible boat. She soon became so full that it seemed as if she would sink if more came on board her. We had to refuse to let any others climb on board. This was the most pathetic and horrible scene of all. The piteous cries of those around us ring in my ears, and I will remember them to my dying day.

'Hold on to what you have, old boy,' we shouted to each man who tried to get on board. 'One more of you would sink us all.' Many of those whom we refused answered, as they went to their death, 'Good luck; G.o.d bless you.' All the time we were buoyed up and sustained by the hope of rescue. We saw lights in all directions-particularly some green lights which, as we learned later, were rockets burned by one of the _t.i.tanic's_ boats. So we pa.s.sed the night with the waves was.h.i.+ng over and burying our raft deep in the water."

It was twenty minutes past two when the _t.i.tanic_ sank, two hours and forty minutes after she had struck the iceberg; and for two hours after that the boats drifted all round and about, some of them in bunches of three or four, others solitary. Almost every kind of suffering was endured in them, although, after the mental horrors of the preceding hour, physical sufferings were scarcely felt. Some of the boats had hardly anyone but women in them; in many the stokers and stewards were quite useless at the oars. But here and there, in that sorrowful, horror-stricken company, heroism lifted its head and human nature took heart again. Women took their turn at the oars in boats where the men were either too few or incapable of rowing; and one woman notably, the Countess of Rothes, practically took command of her boat and was at an oar all the time. Where they were rowing to most of them did not know.

They had seen lights at the time the s.h.i.+p went down, and some of them made for these; but they soon disappeared, and probably most of the boats were following each other aimlessly, led by one boat in which some green flares were found, which acted as a beacon for which the others made. One man had a pocket electric lamp, which he flashed now and then, a little ray of hope and guidance s.h.i.+ning across those dark and miserable waters. Not all of the boats had food and water on board. Many women were only in their night-clothes, some of the men in evening dress; everyone was bitterly cold, although, fortunately, there was no wind and no sea.

The stars paled in the sky; the darkness became a little lighter; the gray daylight began to come. Out of the surrounding gloom a wider and wider area of sea became visible, with here and there a boat discernible on it, and here and there some fragments of wreckage. By this time the boats had rowed away from the dreadful region, and but few floating bodies were visible. The waves rose and fell, smooth as oil, first gray in colour, and then, as the light increased, the pure dark blue of mid-ocean. The eastern sky began to grow red under the cloud bank, and from red to orange, and from orange to gold, the lovely pageantry of an Atlantic dawn began to unfold itself before the aching eyes that had been gazing on prodigies and horrors. From out that well of light in the sky came rays that painted the wave-backs first with rose, and then with saffron, and then with pure gold. And in the first flush of that blessed and comforting light the draggled and weary sufferers saw, first a speck far to the south, then a smudge of cloud, and then the red and black smoke-stack of a steamer that meant succour and safety for them.