Well, all was done now that could be done, and the time remaining was short. The Forecastle head was under water. All around, out on the sea, so calm under those wonderful stars, the boats were scattered, some near, some a mile away or more, the eyes of most in them turned back upon the doomed ship as one by one her port lights, that still burnt row above row in dreadful sloping lines, sank slowly into darkness. Soon the lines would tilt upright, then flash out and flash bright again; then, as the engines crashed down through the bulkheads, go out once more, and leave that awful form standing up against the sky, motionless, black, preparing for the final plunge.
But that time was not yet. Some fifteen minutes were left: and in those minutes we still have sight of Andrews.
One met him, bareheaded and carrying a lifebelt, on his way to the bridge perhaps to bid the Captain goodbye.
Later, an assistant steward saw him standing alone in the smoking-room, his arms folded over his breast and the belt lying on a table near him. The steward asked him, “Aren’t you going to have a try for it, Mr. Andrews?”
He never answered or moved, “just stood like one stunned.”
What did he see as he stood there, alone, rapt? We who know the man and his record can believe that before him was home and all the loved ones there, wife and child, father and mother, brothers and sister, relatives, friends—that picture and all it meant to him then and there; and besides, just for a moment maybe, and as background to all that, swift realisation of the awful tragedy ending his life, ending his ship.
But whatever he saw, in that quiet lonely minute, it did not hold or unman him. Work—work—he must work to the bitter end.
Some saw him for the last time, down in the Engine-room, with Chief engineer Bell and Archie Frost and the other heroes, all toiling like men to keep the lights going and the pumps at work.
Others saw him, a few minutes before the end, on the Boat deck, our final and grandest sight of him, throwing deck chairs overboard to the unfortunates struggling in the water below.
Then, with a slow long slanting dive, the Titanic went down, giving to the sea her short-spanned life and with it the life of Thomas Andrews.