“Then there was another great explosion and the great stern of the Titanic sank as though a great hand was pushing it gently down under the waves. As it went, the screaming of the poor souls left on board seemed to grow louder. It took the Titanic but a short time to sink after that last explosion. It went down slowly without a ripple.
“We had heard the danger of suction when one of these great liners sink. There was no such thing about the sinking of the Titanic. The amazing part of it all to me as I sat there in the boat, looking at this monster being, was that it all could be accomplished so gently.
“Then began the real agonies of the night. Up to that time no one in our boat, and I imagine no one in any of the other boats, had really thought that the Titanic was going to sink. For a moment a silence seemed to hang over everything, and then from the water about where the Titanic had been arose a bedlam of shrieks and cries. There were women and men clinging to the bits of wreckage in the icy water.
AN AWFUL CHORUS OF SHRIEKS.
“It was at least an hour before the last shrieks died out. I remember next the very last cry was that of a man who had been calling loudly: ‘My God! My God!’ He cried monotonously, in a dull, hopeless way. For an entire hour there had been an awful chorus of shrieks gradually dying into a hopeless moan until this last cry that I spoke of. Then all was silent. When the awful silence came we waited gloomily in the boats throughout the rest of the night.
“At last morning came. On one side of us was the ice floes and the big bergs, and on the other side we were horrified to see a school of tremendous whales. Then, as the mist lifted, we caught sight of the Carpathia looming up in the distance and headed straight for us.
“We were too numbed by the cold and horror of that awful night to cheer or even utter a sound. We just gazed at one another and remained speechless. Indeed, there seemed to be no one among us who cared much what happened.
“Those in the other boats seemed to have suffered more than we had. We, it seemed, had been miraculously lucky. In one of the boats was a woman whose clothing was frozen to her body.
“The men on the Carpathia had to chop it off before she could be taken to a warm room. Several of the stokers and sailors who had manned the boats had been frozen to death, and they lay stiff and lifeless in the bottom of the boats, while the women and children were lifted to the Carpathia.
“I did not see Captain Smith after I was put into the small boat, but others told me that when the Titanic went down Captain Smith was seen swimming in the icy water. He picked up a baby that was floating on a mass of wreckage and swam with it to one of the small boats. He lifted the baby into the boat, but the child was dead.