To the scenes of the next two hours on those decks and in the waters below, such adjectives as “dramatic” and “tragic” do but poor justice. With the knowledge of deadly peril gaining greater power each moment over those men and women, the nobility of the greater part, both among cabin passengers, officers, crew and steerage, asserted itself.
Isidor Straus, supporting his wife on her way to a lifeboat, was held back by an inexorable guard. Another officer strove to help her to a seat of safety, but she brushed away his arm and clung to her husband, crying, “I will not go without you.”
Another woman took her place, and her form, clinging to her husband’s, became part of a picture now drawn indelibly in many minds. Neither wife nor husband reached a place of safety.
Colonel Astor, holding his young wife’s arm, stood decorously aside as the officers spoke to him, and Mrs. Astor and her maid were ushered to seats. Mrs. Henry B. Harris, parted in like manner from her husband, saw him last at the rail, beside Colonel Astor. Walter M. Clark, of Los Angeles, nephew of the Montana Senator, joined the line of men as his young wife, sobbing, was placed in one of the boats.
AN AGONIZING SEPARATION.
“Let him come! There is room!” cried Mrs. Emil Taussig as the men of the White Star Line motioned to her husband to leave her. It was with difficulty that he released her hold to permit her to be led to her place.
George D. Widener, who had been in Captain Smith’s company a few moments after the crash, was another whose wife was parted from him and lowered a moment later to the surface of the calm sea.
Of Major Archie Butt, a favorite with his fellow tourists; of Charles M. Hayes, president of the Grand Trunk; of Benjamin Guggenheim and of William T. Stead, no one seems to know whether they tarried too long in their staterooms or whether they forebore to approach the fast filling boats, none of them was in the throng which, weary hours afterward, reached the Carpathia.
Simultaneously on all the upper decks of the ship the ropes creaked with the lowering of the boats. As they reached the water, those in the boats saw what those on the decks could not see—that the Titanic was listing rapidly to starboard, and that her stern was rising at a portentous angle. A rush of steerage men toward the boats was checked by officers with revolvers in hand.
Some of the boats, crowded too full to give rowers a chance, drifted for a time. None had provisions or water; there was lack of covering from the icy air, and the only lights were the still undimmed arcs and incandescents of the settling ship, save for one of the first boats. There a steward, who explained to the passengers that he had been shipwrecked twice before, appeared carrying three oranges and a green light.