“What ship is coming to us? Why don’t we hear the wireless?”
In response a second officer showed himself at the door of the silent cabin. “The Corinthian is close to us!” he shouted. “Keep calm. She must soon come up!”
“When did you get her?” the shouts returned. “What’s the matter with the wireless? Can’t you call the Corinthian? Can’t you call any ship?”
“We’ve called the Corinthian; she’s coming now!” the officer lied loudly; but the people in panic sensed the lie.
“The wireless isn’t working! They haven’t called any ship! They can’t use it! It’s not working!”
The crazed crowds stumbling from the companionways heard and shouted it back over the ship. Denial of the danger below no longer was possible; the flames below were beginning to be felt; smoke seeped through the whole ship and hovered, a hot, steaming cloud, over the holds where the stores were blazing. Stewards and some of the men of the first cabin still moved about, attempting to quiet and reassure; but the seamen, in the details defined in the orders to abandon ship, were freeing the lifeboats, putting food and water in them; and officers directed with revolvers strapped over their uniforms and cartridges in the boxes on their belts.
The thud of pumps throwing sea water on the flames confused the vibrations of the screws; still, the shaking of the ship told that the engines were being forced their fastest.
Yet the sea about the Cumberland remained black and desolate. Rockets streaked into the sky from the Cumberland’s forecastle, signaling desperately that the ship was in dire danger, confessing that the wireless had failed.
“They can’t work the wireless!” Women screamed and swooned in the crush about the lifeboats. “They’ll put us in boats, and we’ll drift till we die. There’s no ship called to us!”
Andy, blocking the crush off from Roberta, was borne with her against the side of the cabins. He smelled fresh paint, and felt the greasiness of it on his hands. They were where the painters had been working. He lost Roberta from beside him; she had stooped, and was feeling for something at their feet. She straightened, and he saw in her hands two bits of board—the blocks with sandpaper tacked to them which the painter had used and left there.