Almost all of the rest, in his opinion, went down with the rush of waters that closed over the Titanic, driving them down in the hatchways and holding the dead imprisoned in the great wreck.
Survivors told of many pistol shots heard in those dark moments when the last lifeboats were putting off, and though the pier on the night the Carpathia landed was astir with rumors of men shot down as they fought to save their lives, not one of the bodies that were recovered yesterday had any pistol shots, according to Capt. Lardner and the members of his crew.
The mutilations which marked so many were broken arms and legs and crushed skulls, where the living on the Titanic were swept against the stanchions by the onrush of the sea.
The little repair shop on the Mackay-Bennett was a treasure house when she came to port. Fifteen thousand dollars in money was found on the recovered bodies and jewelry that will be worth a king’s ransom. One of the crew related his experience with one dead man whose pockets he turned inside out only to have seventeen diamonds roll out in every direction upon the littered deck.
It was a little after 9.30 that the Mackay-Bennett was sighted by those waiting for her since the break of day. For it was in the chill of 6 o’clock on a Canadian Spring morning that the people began to assemble on the pier in the dockyard.
They were undertakers for the most part, mingling with the newspaper men who hurried to and fro between the water’s edge and the little bell tent set up a few yards back to guard the wires that were to flash the news to the ends of the continent.
WATCH FOR MEN WITH CAMERAS.
The dockyard was patrolled by twenty members of the crew and four petty officers from H. M. C. S. Niobe and by a squad of men from the Dominion police, who were instructed to keep out all without passes countersigned by the commandant, and who were particularly vigilant in the watch for men with cameras.
Just as the death ship reached her pier, and in the midst of the eager movement forward to learn what news she brought from the scene of the Titanic’s wreck, a little tug was spotted near by, and Commander Martin, in charge of the dockyard, scented a moving picture man.
In a very few moments he was putting out for the tug in the little patrol launch. Again a few moments and he was standing on the pier with a complacent smile on his face.