Imagine the sight. A massive hulk, gleaming with a thousand lights, belching forth showers of sparks from a solitary funnel; a crowd of clinging figures; a crowd of figures, unable to cling, sliding down that steel road to death. Imagine the sounds. Hear the thud and the crash of the engines as, overbalanced, they tore themselves from their beds and hurled themselves across the ship, to pound against the steel sides and burst them with a deadening explosion; hear the horrific cracks as the decks bend; hear, from under water, a mighty explosion, followed quickly by another and another; hear the roar as the fire-spouting funnel tumbles into the sea; hear, above all, the cry torn from a thousand throats as the people on the stern of the boat felt the last tremors, the death-struggles of the leviathan! Imagine this sight and these sounds, and if you have the imagination of a Poe you will not have glimpsed a hundredth part of the terrors of that last two minutes of the life of the Titanic.
And the next minute there was no Titanic afloat; but the sea was dotted about with hundreds of black dots, each dot a soul struggling for life, each striving to reach something that might be floating near it—deck-chairs, gratings, wreckage of all sorts, and every little bit worth its weight in gold to him who might be so fortunate as to get it. To follow all these people in their efforts for life is, of course, impossible. And there is no need, for each was but a picture of the other.
Mr. Lightoller, the second officer, had a remarkable experience. As the ship took her final plunge he had dived, to be drawn down against the grating that covered the blower of the exhaust. An explosion hurled him up to the surface again, where, having barely filled his lungs, he was sucked down again, and drawn to the side of the sinking ship, near the funnel draught pipes. Yet once more was he blown upwards by the force of a terrific explosion, and when he came to the surface he found himself near a collapsible boat; Lightoller clung to this, to which Bride himself and half a dozen other people were also hanging. It was capsized; but it provided some sort of refuge.
The gallant captain, who had gone overboard with the baby in his arms, fought his way through the swimming crowd, making for one of the boats which were still in the vicinity, hoping to effect some rescues. He went, not to save himself, but the child. He reached the boat, cried “Take the child,” handed it up to the willing hands outstretched for it, and then, refusing to be taken into the boat, cried “Let me go!” and swam back to where the ship had disappeared.
There were many acts of heroism in that dreadful sea. A man swam up to the capsized lifeboat, now overladen. “Will it hold another?” he asked. Those men on the boat knew, positively, that if one more man were on her, she would pitch them all off, and they said so, not jealously, not selfishly. And as unselfishly, the man who wanted to live cried: “All right! Good-bye! God bless you all!” And turned away, only to sink almost immediately.
Another man, clinging to a crate, heard someone ask: “Will it hold another?” He did not know; all he knew was that here was a man who loved life as he himself loved it; and the crate might offer a chance. “Try it!” he cried; “we’ll live or die together!”
The story of the great disaster is told, and yet there are some things which cannot be recounted—horrors, endings and partings. Into the Great Unknown many hundreds had gone. Fewer hundreds were saved by those giant ships rushing to their aid, brought by the call out of the vast silences of the night.
The appalling horror of it all staggered the world; but the great fact stood out that Man the Ingenious is no match for Nature the Mighty!
MYSTERIES OF THE SEA
Strange Disappearances of Ships at Sea