Sunday came, with nothing to mark it except the morning service in the
saloon--a function that by reason of its novelty, attracts some people at
sea who do not associate it with the shore. One thing, however, fire or
boat muster, which usually marks Sunday at sea, and gives it a little
variety, did not for some reason take place. It is one of the few
variants of the monotony of shipboard life, where anything in the nature
of a spectacle is welcomed; and most travellers are familiar with the
stir caused by the sudden hoarse blast of the foghorn and the subsequent
patter of feet and appearance from below of all kinds of people whose
existence the passenger had hardly suspected. Stewards, sailors,
firemen, engineers, nurses, bakers, butchers, cooks, florists, barbers,
carpenters, and stewardesses, ranged in two immense lines along the boat
deck, answer to their names and are told off, according to their
numbers, to take charge of certain boats. This muster did not take place
on the _Titanic_; if it had it would have revealed to any observant
passenger the fact that the whole crew of nine hundred would have
occupied all the available accommodation in the boats hanging on the
davits and left no room for any passengers. For the men who designed and
built the _Titanic_, who knew the tremendous strength of the girders and
cantilevers and bulkheads which took the thrust and pull of every strain
that she might undergo, had thought of boats rather as a superfluity,
dating from the days when ships were vulnerable, when they sprang leaks
and might sink in the high seas. In their pride they had said "the
_Titanic_ cannot spring a leak." So there was no boat muster, and the
routine occupations of Sunday went on unvaried and undisturbed. Only in
the Marconi room was the monotony varied, for something had gone wrong
with the delicate electrical apparatus, and the wireless voice was
silent; and throughout the morning and afternoon, for seven hours,
Phillips and Bride were hard at work testing and searching for the
little fault that had cut them off from the world of voices. And at last
they found it, and the whining and buzzing began again. But it told them
nothing new; only the same story, whispered this time from the
_Californian_--the story of ice.
The day wore on, the dusk fell, lights one by one sprang up and shone
within the ship; the young moon rose in a cloudless sky spangled with
stars. People remarked on the loveliness of the night as they went to
dress for dinner, but they remarked also on its coldness. There was an
unusual chill in the air, and lightly clad people were glad to draw in
to the big fireplaces in smoke-room or drawing-room or library, and to
keep within the comfort of the warm and lamplit rooms. The cold was
easily accounted for; it was the ice season, and the airs that were
blowing down from the north-west carried with them a breath from the
ice-fields. It was so cold that the decks were pretty well deserted, and
the usual evening concert, instead of being held on the open deck, was
held in the warmth, under cover. And gradually people drifted away to
bed, leaving only a few late birds sitting up reading in the library, or
playing cards in the smoking-rooms, or following a restaurant
dinner-party by quiet conversation in the flower-decked lounge.
The ship had settled down for the night; half of her company were
peacefully asleep in bed, and many lying down waiting for sleep to come,
when something happened. What that something was depended upon what part
of the ship you were in. The first thing to attract the attention of
most of the first-class passengers was a negative thing--the cessation of
that trembling, continuous rhythm which had been the undercurrent of all
their waking sensations since the ship left Queenstown. The engines
stopped. Some wondered, and put their heads out of their state-room
doors, or even threw a wrap about them and went out into the corridors
to see what had happened, while others turned over in bed and composed
themselves to sleep, deciding to wait until the morning to hear what
was the cause of the delay.
Lower down in the ship they heard a little more. The sudden harsh clash
of the engine-room telegraph bells would startle those who were near
enough to hear it, especially as it was followed almost immediately
afterwards by the simultaneous ringing all through the lower part of the
ship of the gongs that gave warning of the closing of the water-tight
doors. After the engines stopped there was a moment of stillness; and
then the vibration began again, more insistently this time, with a
certain jumping movement which to the experienced ear meant that the
engines were being sent full speed astern; and then they stopped again,
and again there was stillness.
Here and there in the long corridors amidships a door opened and some
one thrust a head out, asking what was the matter; here and there a man
in pyjamas and a dressing-gown came out of his cabin and climbed up the
deserted staircase to have a look at what was going on; people sitting
in the lighted saloons and smoke-rooms looked at one another and said:
"What was that?" gave or received some explanation, and resumed their
occupations. A man in his dressing-gown came into one of the
smoking-rooms where a party was seated at cards, with a few yawning
bystanders looking on before they turned in. The newcomer wanted to know
what was the matter, whether they had noticed anything? They had felt a
slight jar, they said, and had seen an iceberg going by past the
windows; probably the ship had grazed it, but no damage had been done.
And they resumed their game of bridge. The man in the dressing-gown left
the smoke-room, and never saw any of the players again. So little
excitement was there in this part of the ship that the man in the
dressing-gown (his name was Mr. Beezley, an English schoolmaster, one of
the few who emerges from the crowd with an intact individuality) went
back to his cabin and lay down on his bed with a book, waiting for the
ship to start again. But the unnatural stillness, the uncanny peace even
of this great peaceful ship, must have got a little upon his nerves; and
when he heard people moving about in the corridors, he got up again, and
found that several people whom the stillness had wakened from their
sleep were wandering about inquiring what had happened.
But that was all. The half-hour which followed the stoppage of the ship
was a comparatively quiet half-hour, in which a few people came out of
their cabins indeed, and collected together in the corridors and
staircases gossiping, speculating and asking questions as to what could
have happened; but it was not a time of anxiety, or anything like it.
Nothing could be safer on this quiet Sunday night than the great ship,
warmed and lighted everywhere, with her thick carpets and padded
armchairs and cushioned recesses; and if anything could have added to
the sense of peace and stability, it was that her driving motion had
ceased, and that she lay solid and motionless-like a rock in the sea,
the still water scarcely lapping against her sides. And those of her
people who had thought it worth while to get out of bed stood about in
little knots, and asked foolish questions, and gave foolish answers in
the familiar manner of passengers on shipboard when the slightest
incident occurs to vary the regular and monotonous routine.