The men in the boat were all gazing up at the chart-house door where the form of their commander stood.
"He's going to shoot, sir," said the stroke oarsman.
"He's afraid—he won't dare!" howled Smith.
Brownson seemed to hear now. The silence was coming again, and the sounds on the sinking ship were dying out.
Brownson gazed straight at his second officer. Smith saw him raise the pistol, saw a bit of blue smoke, saw his commander sink down to the deck and disappear. A cracking and banging of ice blocks blended with the report, and the ship raised her stern higher. Then she plunged straight downward, straight as a plummet for the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Smith knew his captain had gone to his end; that he was a dead man at last.
He stood watching the mighty swirl where the liner had gone under. The men in his boat were also looking. They had seen all.
"Look—look!" shrieked a passenger. "The captain has shot himself!"
"She's gone—gone for good!" cried another. "Oh, the pity of it all!"
Smith did not reply. He was still gazing at the apparition he had seen in that chart-house door; the figure of the man shooting himself through the head. It had chilled his anger, staggered him. The awful nerve of it all, the horror——
"Hadn't we better see if we can get one or two more in her, sir?" asked the stroke oarsman. "I see a woman swimming there."