The plain gold ring with the two little diamonds set deep, the gold buckle on the belt that Colonel Astor always wore, and a sum amounting to nearly $3000 in the pockets settled the uncertainty. Twenty minutes after he had boarded the ship Captain Roberts was hurrying through the crowd to reach the nearest telephone that he might speed the news to waiting Vincent Astor.
QUESTIONS OF IDENTITY.
Beyond these two cases the questions of identity were taken up at the Mayflower Curling Rink at the edge of the town, where the line of hearses had been trundling since the Mackay-Bennett landed. As they passed the crowds were hushed, men bowed their heads, and officers saluted.
At the rink the great main floor was given over to the coffins and shells containing the identified dead, and as soon as the embalmers had done their work the friends and relatives came forward and claimed their own.
Upstairs in the large, bare room the packets of clothing were distributed in rows upon the floor.
There the oak chests of the Provincial Cashier were opened for the sorting of the canvas bags that contained the valuables, the letters and the identifying trinkets of the dead. It was all very systematic. It was all very much businesslike, and while a lunch counter served refreshments to the weary workers, and while the Intercolonial set up a desk for railway tickets, the Medical Examiner was busy issuing death certificates, and the Registrar was issuing burial permits, all to the accompanying click, click of several typewriters.
A satisfactory arrangement was reached as to the disposition of the personal effects. A man would claim his dead, take the number, make his way to the representatives of the Provincial Secretary, and there claim the contents of the little canvas bag by making affidavit that he was the duly authorized representative of the executor or next of kin.
The little crimson tickets that are the death certificates were printed for the tragedies of every day in the year. Their formal points and dimensions seemed hopelessly inadequate for even the briefest statement of the tragedy of the Titanic.
CERTIFICATE FOR THE DEAD.
The first body claimed and removed from the rink was that of John Jacob Astor. The certificate, the first issued for one of the Titanic dead, reads: