Part 3 (1/2)

”We said lots of funny things to each other in the next few minutes,”

said Bride. Phillips went stolidly on, firmly hammering out his ”S.O.S., S.O.S.,” sometimes varying it with ”C.Q.D.” for the benefit of such operators as might not be on the alert for the new call. For several minutes there was no reply; then the whining voice at Phillips' ear began to answer. Some one had heard. They had picked up the steamer _Frankfurt_, and they gave her the position and told her that the _t.i.tanic_ had struck an iceberg and needed a.s.sistance. There was another pause and, in their minds' eye, the wireless men could see the _Frankfurt's_ operator miles and miles away across the dark night going along from his cabin and rousing the _Frankfurt's_ Captain and giving his message and coming back to the instrument, when again the whining voice began asking for more news.

They were learning facts up here in the Marconi room. They knew that the _t.i.tanic_ was taking in water, and they knew that she was sinking by the head; and what they knew they flashed out into the night for the benefit of all who had ears to hear. They knew that there were many s.h.i.+ps in their vicinity; but they knew also that hardly any of them carried more than one operator, and that even Marconi operators earning 4 a month must go to bed and sleep sometimes, and that it was a mere chance if their call was heard. But presently the Cunard liner _Carpathia_ answered and told them her position, from which it appeared that she was about seventy miles away. The _Carpathia_, which was heading towards the Mediterranean, told them she had altered her course and was heading full steam to their a.s.sistance. The _Carpathia's_ voice was much fainter than the _Frankfurt's_, from which Phillips a.s.sumed that the _Frankfurt_ was the nearer s.h.i.+p; but there was a certain lack of prompt.i.tude on board the _Frankfurt_ which made Phillips impatient. While he was still sending out the call for help, after the _Frankfurt_ had answered it, she interrupted him again, asking what was the matter. They told Captain Smith, who said, ”That fellow is a fool,” an opinion which Phillips and Bride not only shared, but which they even found time to communicate to the operator on the _Frankfurt_. By this time the _Olympic_ had also answered her twin sister's cry for help, but she was far away, more than three hundred miles; and although she too turned and began to race towards the spot where the _t.i.tanic_ was lying so quietly, it was felt that the honours of salving her pa.s.sengers would go to the _Carpathia_.

The foolish _Frankfurt_ operator still occasionally interrupted with a question, and he was finally told, with such brusqueness as the wireless is capable of, to keep away from his instrument and not interfere with the serious conversations of the _t.i.tanic_ and _Carpathia_.

Then Bride took Phillips's place at the instrument and succeeded in getting a whisper from the _Baltic_, and gradually, over hundreds of miles of ocean, the invisible ether told the s.h.i.+ps that their giant sister was in distress. The time pa.s.sed quickly with these urgent conversations on which so much might depend, and hour by hour and minute by minute the water was creeping up the steep sides of the s.h.i.+p. Once the Captain looked in and told them that the engine-rooms were taking in water and that the dynamos might not last much longer. That information was also sent to the _Carpathia_, who by this time could tell them that she had turned towards them with every furnace going at full blast, and was hurrying forward at the rate of eighteen knots instead of her usual fifteen. It now became a question how long the storage plant would continue to supply current. Phillips went out on deck and looked round.

”The water was pretty close up to the boat deck. There was a great scramble aft, and how poor Phillips worked through it I don't know. He was a brave man. I learnt to love him that night, and I suddenly felt for him a great reverence, to see him standing there sticking to his work while everybody else was raging about. While I live I shall never forget the work Phillips did for that last awful fifteen minutes.”

Bride felt that it was time to look about and see if there was no chance of saving himself. He knew that by this time all the boats had gone. He could see, by looking over the side, that the water was far nearer than it had yet been, and that the fo'c's'le decks, which of course were much lower than the superstructure on which the Marconi cabin was situated, were already awash. He remembered that there was a lifebelt for every member of the crew and that his own was under his bunk; and he went and put it on. And then, thinking how cold the water would be, he went back and put his boots on, and an extra coat. Phillips was still standing at the key, talking to the _Olympic_ now and telling her the tragic and shameful news that her twin sister, the unsinkable, was sinking by the head and was pretty near her end. While Phillips was sending this message Bride strapped a lifebelt about him and put on his overcoat.

Then, at Phillips's suggestion, Bride went out to see if there was anything left in the shape of a boat by which they could get away. He saw some men struggling helplessly with a collapsible boat which they were trying to lower down on to the deck. Bride gave them a hand and then, although it was the last boat left, he resolutely turned his back on it and went back to Phillips. At that moment for the last time, the Captain looked in to give them their release.

”Men, you have done your full duty, you can do no more. Abandon your cabin now; it is every man for himself; you look out for yourselves. I release you. That's the way of it at this kind of time; every man for himself.”

Then happened one of the strangest incidents of that strange hour. I can only give it in Bride's own words:

”Phillips clung on, sending, sending. He clung on for about ten minutes, or maybe fifteen minutes, after the Captain released him. The water was then coming into our cabin.

”While he worked something happened I hate to tell about. I was back in my room getting Phillips's money for him, and as I looked out of the door I saw a stoker, or somebody from below decks, leaning over Phillips from behind. Phillips was too busy to notice what the man was doing, but he was slipping the lifebelt off Phillips's back. He was a big man, too.

”As you can see, I'm very small. I don't know what it was I got hold of, but I remembered in a flash the way Phillips had clung on; how I had to fix that lifebelt in place, because he was too busy to do it.

”I knew that man from below decks had his own lifebelt, and should have known where to get it. I suddenly felt a pa.s.sion not to let that man die a decent sailor's death. I wished he might have stretched a rope or walked a plank. I did my duty. I hope I finished him, but I don't know.

”We left him on the cabin floor of the wireless room, and he wasn't moving.”

Phillips left the cabin, running aft, and Bride never saw him alive again. He himself came out and found the water covering the bridge and coming aft over the boat deck.

XII

There is one other separate point of view from which we may look at the s.h.i.+p during this fateful hour before all points of view become merged in one common experience. Mr. Boxhall, the Fourth Officer, who had been on the bridge at the moment of the impact, had been busy sending up rockets and signals in the effort to attract the attention of a s.h.i.+p whose lights could be seen some ten miles away; a mysterious s.h.i.+p which cannot be traced, but whose lights appear to have been seen by many independent witnesses on the _t.i.tanic_. So sure was he of her position that Mr.

Boxhall spent almost all his time on the bridge signalling to her with rockets and flashes; but no answer was received. He had, however, also been on a rapid tour of inspection of the s.h.i.+p immediately after she had struck. He went down to the steerage quarters forward and aft, and he was also down in the deep forward compartment where the Post Office men were working with the mails, and he had at that time found nothing wrong, and his information contributed much to the sense of security that was spread amongst the pa.s.sengers.

Mr. Pitman, the Third Officer, was in his bunk at the time of the collision, having been on duty on the bridge from six to eight, when the Captain had also been on the bridge. There had been talk of ice among the officers on Sunday, and they had expected to meet with it just before midnight, at the very time, in fact, when they had met with it.

But very little ice had been seen, and the speed of the s.h.i.+p had not been reduced. Mr. Pitman says that when he awoke he heard a sound which seemed to him to be the sound of the s.h.i.+p coming to anchor. He was not actually awake then, but he had the sensation of the s.h.i.+p halting, and heard a sound like that of chains whirling round the windla.s.s and running through the hawseholes into the water. He lay in bed for three or four minutes wondering in a sleepy sort of way where they could have anch.o.r.ed. Then, becoming more awake, he got up, and without dressing went out on deck; he saw nothing remarkable, but he went back and dressed, suspecting that something was the matter. While he was dressing Mr. Boxhall looked in and said: ”We have struck an iceberg, old man; hurry up!”

He also went down below to make an inspection and find out what damage had been done. He went to the forward well deck, where ice was lying, and into the fo'c's'le, but found nothing wrong there. The actual damage was farther aft, and at that time the water had not come into the bows of the s.h.i.+p. As he was going back he met a number of firemen coming up the gangway with their bags of clothing; they told him that water was coming into their place. They were firemen off duty, who afterwards were up on the boat deck helping to man the boats. Then Mr. Pitman went down lower into the s.h.i.+p and looked into No. 1 hatch, where he could plainly see water. All this took time; and when he came back he found that the men were beginning to get the boats ready, a task at which he helped under Mr. Murdoch's orders. Presently Mr. Murdoch ordered him to take command of a boat and hang about aft of the gangway. Pitman had very little relish for leaving the s.h.i.+p at that time, and in spite of the fact that she was taking in water, every one was convinced that the _t.i.tanic_ was a much safer place than the open sea. He had about forty pa.s.sengers and six of the crew in his boat, and as it was about to be lowered, Mr. Murdoch leant over to him and shook him heartily by the hand: ”Good-bye, old man, and good luck,” he said, in tones which rather surprised Pitman, for they seemed to imply that the good-bye might be for a long time. His boat was lowered down into the water, unhooked, and shoved off, and joined the gradually increasing fleet of other boats that were cruising about in the starlight.

There was one man walking about that upper deck whose point of view was quite different from that of anyone else. Mr. Bruce Ismay, like so many others, was awakened from sleep by the stopping of the engines; like so many others, also, he lay still for a few moments, and then got up and went into the pa.s.sage-way, where he met a steward and asked him what was the matter. The steward knew nothing, and Mr. Ismay went back to his state-room, put on a dressing-gown and slippers, and went up to the bridge, where he saw the Captain. ”What has happened?” he asked. ”We have struck ice,” was the answer. ”Is the injury serious?” ”I think so,”

said the Captain. Then Mr. Ismay came down in search of the Chief Engineer, whom he met coming up to the bridge; he asked him the same question, and he also said he thought the injury serious. He understood from them that the s.h.i.+p was certainly in danger, but that there was hope that if the pumps could be kept going there would be no difficulty in keeping her afloat quite long enough for help to come and for the pa.s.sengers to be taken off. Whatever was to be the result, it was a terrible moment for Mr. Ismay, a terrible blow to the pride and record of the Company, that this, their greatest and most invulnerable s.h.i.+p, should be at least disabled, and possibly lost, on her maiden voyage.

But like a sensible man, he did not stand wringing his hands at the inevitable; he did what he could to rea.s.sure the pa.s.sengers, repeating, perhaps with a slight quaver of doubt in his voice, the old word-unsinkable. When the boats began to be launched he went and tried to help, apparently in his anxiety getting rather in the way. In this endeavour he encountered the wrath of Mr. Lowe, the Fifth Officer, who was superintending the launching of boat No. 5. Mr. Lowe did not know the ident.i.ty of the nervous, excited figure standing by the davits, nor recognize the voice which kept saying nervously, ”Lower away! lower away!” and it was therefore with no misgivings that he ordered him away from the boat, saying brusquely, ”If you will kindly get to h.e.l.l out of this perhaps I'll be able to do something!”-a trifling incident, but evidence that Mr. Ismay made no use of his position for his own personal ends. He said nothing, and went away to another boat, where he succeeded in being more useful, and it was not till afterwards that an awe-stricken steward told the Fifth Officer who it was that he had chased away with such language. But after that Mr. Ismay was among the foremost in helping to sort out the women and children and get them expeditiously packed into the boats, with a burden of misery and responsibility on his heart that we cannot measure.

One can imagine a great bustle and excitement while the boats were being sent away; but when they had all gone, and there was nothing more to be done, those who were left began to look about them and realize their position. There was no doubt about it, the _t.i.tanic_ was sinking, not with any plunging or violent movement, but steadily settling down, as a rock seems to settle into the water when the tide rises about it.