But other people, those whose duty it was to keep awake, to have their fingers upon the pulse, as it were, of this leviathan, did not sleep. First Officer Murdoch and his watch were on the bridge; the captain was in his room. Murdoch, peering through the blue-blackness of night, had seen a haze before the ship, and, quick to realise what was before them, he issued sharp commands, which were obeyed instantly; but all too late. That haze resolved itself into ice—a massive, towering mountain of ice—into which the Titanic’s bows cut their way. The ice that the ether waves had been telling about all day had loomed out upon them like a spectre in the night; nay, like the impersonation of Death.
Captain Smith rushed to the bridge when he felt the ship stop.
“We have struck ice, sir,” was the first officer’s reply to his question.
“Close the water-tight doors!” was the captain’s order, only to be told that this had already been done. A movement of switches, and Murdoch had set bells a-tingling and great steel doors a-sliding in their grooves; bells to warn anyone that the doors were being closed, so that they might not be cut off.
But no closing of water-tight doors was to be sufficient to save this giant ship. The damage wrought by that white, translucent mass ran over a length of some three hundred feet, and it had all been done in—one trembles to write it—ten seconds. Twenty knots an hour had the vessel been travelling, and in ten seconds she had ripped her way along the ice for three hundred feet, tearing her plates apart as though they had been brown paper, and letting the water in in tons.
The carpenter sounded the ship; Phillips, the Marconi operator, was instructed to get ready to send out a call for assistance, in case it was wanted. The carpenter made his report; and, because of its character, Captain Smith went back to the Marconi room, and messages were sent out to all steamers within reach. Still later, but only by a few minutes, the C Q D and the S O S—international signals for help—were dispatched, to be followed by:
“We have struck a berg! Come at once!” Seventy-eight miles away that message was picked up by the Carpathia, which answered: “Coming at once!”
And, meanwhile, what of the population of the floating palace whose vitals were being swamped by hundreds of tons of water? She was listing heavily to starboard. In various parts of the ship a few people were still awake, asking what was afoot, for none had yet been told what had taken place. If there is one thing the master of a vessel dreads it is panic, and passengers must be kept in ignorance while there is a chance to obviate the danger. But rumours floated here and there. “We’ve struck an iceberg,” said one now and again; and, as if that were nothing to be alarmed about, folks shrugged their shoulders and turned into bed. So sure was everyone of the safety of this masterpiece of science and industry that the thought of danger never entered their heads.
It was a fine joke, apparently, to have struck an iceberg, and a berg was a rare sight to most of those people, who thought more of that than of the ship. The great spectral mass was a thing of wonder; its towering peak told them something of its gigantic size, since but one-eighth of it showed above the surface. “What a corker!” said someone, and then went to bed.
Meanwhile, firemen were coming up from below; and each set who came up reported that the water was pouring into their stokeholds.