XIV

As the ship 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 perishing

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 transshipping some of its passengers 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 passengers attempting

to launch a few minutes before the ship 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 ship 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 ship 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 washing into the ship 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 ship, 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 ship. 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-class passenger, 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; God bless you all!"

And he sank before their eyes.

Captain Smith, who had last been seen washed from the bridge as the ship

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 ship. 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 ship.

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 ship 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 ship sank. "After sinking

with the ship," 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 masses 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; God 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

_Titanic's_ boats. So we passed the night with the waves washing over

and burying our raft deep in the water."

It was twenty minutes past two when the _Titanic_ 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 ship 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 shining 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.