Titanic - Filson Young (reading in the dark .TXT) 📗

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.

XV

From every quarter of the ocean, summoned by the miracle of the wireless voice, many ships had been racing since midnight to the help of the doomed liner. From midnight onwards captains were being called by messages from the wireless operators of their ships, telling them that the Titanic was asking for help; courses were being altered and chief engineers called upon to urge their stokehold crews to special efforts; for coal means steam, and steam means speed, and speed may mean life. Many ships that could receive the strong electric impulses sent out from the Titanic had not electric strength enough to answer; but they turned and came to that invisible spot represented by a few figures which the faithful wireless indicated. Even as far as five hundred miles away, the Parisian turned in her tracks in obedience to the call and came racing towards the north-west. But there were tragedies even with the wireless. The Leyland liner Californian, bound for Boston, was only seventeen miles away from the Titanic when she struck, and could have saved every soul on board; but her wireless apparatus was not working, and she was deaf to the agonized calls that were being sent out from only a few miles away. The Parisian, five hundred miles away, could hear and come, though it was useless; the Californian could not hear and so did not come though, if she had, she would probably have saved every life on board. The Cincinnati, the Amerika, the Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm, the Menominee, the La Provence, the Prinz Adalbert, the Virginian, the Olympic, and the Baltic all heard the news and all turned towards Lat. 41° 46′ N., Long. 50° 14′ W. The dread news was being whispered all over the sea, and even ashore, just as the dwellers on the North Atlantic seaboard were retiring to rest, the station at Cape Race intercepted the talk of the Titanic 270 miles away, and flashed the message out far and wide; so that Government tugs and ships with steam up in harbours, and everything afloat in the vicinity which heard the news might hurry to the rescue. Cape Race soon heard that the Virginian was on her way to the Titanic’s position, then that the Olympic and Carpathia had altered their courses and were making for the wounded ship, and so on. Throughout the night the rumours in the air were busy, while still the steady calls came out in firm electric waves from the Titanic—still calling, still flashing “C.Q.D.” At 1.20 she whispered to the Olympic, “Get your boats ready; going down fast by the head.” At 1.35 the Frankfurt (after an hour and a half’s delay) said, “We are starting for you.” Then at 1.41 came a message to the Olympic, “C.Q.D., boilers flooded.”

“Are there any boats round you already?” asked the Olympic, but there was no answer.

Other ships began to call, giving encouraging messages: “We are coming,” said the Birma, “only fifty miles away”; but still there was no answer.

All over the North Atlantic men in lighted instrument rooms sat listening with the telephones at their ears; they heard each other’s questions and waited in the silence, but it was never broken again by the voice from the Titanic. “All quiet now,” reported the Birma to the Olympic, and all quiet it was, except for the thrashing and pounding of a score of propellers, and the hiss of a dozen steel stems as they ripped the smooth waters on courses converging to the spot where the wireless voice had suddenly flickered out into silence.

But of all those who had been listening to the signals Captain Rostron of the Carpathia knew that his ship would most likely be among the first to reach the spot. It was about midnight on Sunday that the passengers of the Carpathia first became aware that something unusual was happening. The course had been changed and a certain hurrying about on the decks took the place of the usual midnight quiet. The trembling and vibration increased to a quick jumping movement as pressure of steam was gradually increased and the engines urged to the extreme of their driving capacity. The chief steward summoned his staff and set them to work making sandwiches and preparing hot drinks. All the hot water was cut off from the cabins and bath-rooms, so that every ounce of steam could be utilized for driving the machinery.

The Carpathia was nearly seventy miles from the position of the Titanic when she changed her course and turned northward; she had been steaming just over four hours when, in the light of that wonderful dawn, those on the look-out descried a small boat. As they drew nearer they saw other boats, and fragments of wreckage, and masses of ice drifting about the sea. Captain Rostron stopped while he was still a good distance from the boats, realizing that preparations must be made before he could take passengers on board. The accommodation gangway was rigged and also rope ladders