We promised faithfully. And with one accord we went to the rail and looked out into the blackness ahead. The swish of the sea could be heard and the insistent moo of the fog-horn.
“And this is only Tuesday,” suggested one. His face showed a true concern. “We’ve got a week yet on the sea, the way they will run now. And we have to go through that region—maybe over the very spot—”
He took off his cap and scratched his hair in a foolish, thoughtful way. I think we all began to talk at once, but no one listened. The terror of the sea had come swiftly and directly home to all. I am satisfied that there was not a man of all the company who heard without feeling a strange sensation. To think of a ship as immense as the Titanic, new and bright, sinking in endless fathoms of water. And the two thousand passengers routed like rats from their berths only to float helplessly in miles of water, praying and crying!
I went to my berth thinking of the pains and terrors of those doomed two thousand, a great rage in my heart against the fortuity of life—the dullness or greed of man that prevents him from coping with it. For an hour or more I listened to the vibration of the ship that trembled at times like a spent animal as a great wave struck at it with smashing force.
It was a trying night.
I found by careful observation of those with me that I was not the only one subject to disquieting thoughts. Mr. W., a Chicago beef man, pleased me most, for he was so frank in admitting his inmost emotions. He was a vigorous young buck, frank and straightforward. He came down to breakfast the next morning looking a little dull. The sun was out and it was a fine day. “You know,” he confided genially, “I dreamed of them poor devils all night. Say—out in the cold there! And then those big waves kept hitting the ship and waking me up. Did you hear that smash in the night? I thought we had struck something. I got up once and looked out but that didn’t cheer me any. I could only see the top of a roller now and then going by.”
Another evening, sitting in the deepest recesses of the card room he explained that he believed in good and bad spirits and the good spirits could help you “if they wanted to.”
Monsieur G., a Belgian, doing business in New York, was nervous in a subdued, quiet way. He never ceased commenting on the wretchedness of the catastrophe, nor did he fail daily to consult the chart of miles made and course traveled. He predicted that we would turn south before we neared the Grand Banks because he did not believe the captain would “take a chance.” I am sure he told his wife and that she told every other woman, for the next day one of them confided to me that she knew, and that she had been “stiff with fear” all the night before.
An Englishman, who was with us making for Calgary gave no sign, one way or the other. The German who first brought us the news was like a man with a mania; he talked of it all the time. An American judge on board talked solemnly with all who would listen—a hard crab of a man, whose emotions found their vent in the business of extracting information. The women talked to each other but pretended not to know.
It took three days of more or less pleasant sailing to relax the tension which pervaded the whole vessel. The captain did not appear again at table for four days. On Wednesday, following the Monday of the wreck, there was a fire drill—that ominous clanging of the fire-bell on the forward deck which brought many troubled spectators out of their staterooms and developed the fact that every piece of hose employed was rotten; for every piece put under pressure burst—a cheering exhibition!