BY FRED S. MILLER
In the first stories of the Titanic disaster broadcast by the press of two continents, the obvious and spectacular features were of course most emphasized. Sensational columns-full lauded the heroism of the hundreds dead, and told the chiefest incidents of the wreck; then came shrieking denunciation of the shipowners, as their recklessness was revealed in the senatorial inquiry. And now that all the facts are known, the account bids fair to stand thus in men’s minds: for the heroes, praise to the skies; damnation for the guiltily responsible, whose laxity or greed brought about the tragedy.
One item is too little dwelt upon. Although we judge unsparingly all criminal carelessness, and while we fittingly remember those who gave their lives to rescue others, we owe a tender duty also to the rescued, who were hurried over the vessel’s side amid the midnight agony and uproar—goodbyes said in the sudden bewilderment of terror about which rang the fearful summons “Women and children first!”
At this it had taken much manly authority to induce these wives to be saved, also (glory of humanity!) a deal of lying.
“It’s best for you to get in the boat, dear, though of course there’s no real danger in my staying here! The Titanic’s unsinkable, you remember. Captain Smith wants all the women and children—why just think of ours!—away, so as to be on the safe side, that’s all. There’s another steamer coming, and when it picks you up in the morning you’ll find me right here!”—
And so forth. Those husbands, how they laid it on. “Men were deceivers ever!” Thus they stayed a panic; doing all that inexperienced brave men could do in that crisis of the wreck to turn a few scant boatsful from the yawning gulf into which the ship was every instant sinking, sinking.
So the women and their little ones were hurried to the rail and lowered to the blackness far beneath. Rowing away, they could turn their eyes to the steamer which yet showed no evidence of collapse, as it loomed across the water, its huge hulk outlined quite from end to end by rows of glowing lights—when on an instant these lights faded sicklily, then died! As though to shut from those who longingly looked back a last faint ray of hope, left as they were now quite cut off, adrift in the unutterable profound. Beneath, two-thousand fathoms-deep of heaving ocean, over which they poised buoyed only the boat’s inch planks; above, the deeper depth, black midnight far as the illimitable stars.
All sense of distance and direction speedily was lost for them; we may imagine the awed conjectures:
“Where is the vessel?”
“Over there, very dimly seen—so far we must have come!”
“But what is that other shape? How strange, a huge hill rising awful in the sea!”
“No! the iceberg on which the steamer struck.”
“I had thought the Titanic would have shivered anything of ice; yet there the berg uprears itself unmoved, as though it lingered patient to see the end!”
Also we may imagine that they comforted one another and soothed the wailing children, as is the wont of women; prayed to the good God and were heartened so—prayers for the safety of the stricken ship yet faithful to its trust of keeping safe their loved ones.
So they drifted, an hour in the chill northern night, suffering intensely, seeing nothing but their own dim huddled forms, hearing nothing but a faint, confused, deceiving murmur from the vessel, and the harsh grinding of the ice cakes littering the ocean all about. It had been the captain’s orders that they keep to the boats; they would do their duty—never mind the cold—blindly obey—theirs not to reason why! Joy cometh in the morning; and when the blessed light should prove the fear of wreck had only been a temporary vague alarm, they would row back to where—each felt assured—was one who longed for her as she was longing now. Saved from the sea, then; reunited! Never to be parted more!
Who may conceive their feelings when with a horror of amazement the explosion came, and sheets of fire sent soaring from the steamer’s funnels revealed to land and sea that all was lost. When the pierced monster, with a rending roar, reared its prodigious bulk full upright in the ocean, poised so for an instant and then plunged, quenching all hope, leaving the waste of waters blacker with despair and night. We may believe that none of the terror of the scene was felt by those to whom it brought an overwhelming desolation. They were not appalled—no more than were those other women when “there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour,” when the rocks were rent and the graves opened. Perhaps they were awed by the contemplation of a sacrifice, for the first time comprehending why the men gave up their places in the boats; perhaps they were stricken numb with a grief too great for tears.
And would that that were all! For thence the night brought forth a crueler infliction. What had been, was frightful; but what ensued was an exquisite torture for the pitiful unoffenders, forced to hear the agony of those drowning, who moaned amid the lacerating ice cakes, cried with a loud voice and yielded up the ghost, or called again beseeching help where help was none. Help? “The depth saith it is not in me, and the sea saith it is not with me!” Those in charge of the boats returned as pitiless a silence. Although the women begged, they dare not venture back among the gasping hundreds battling desperately with death amid the icy waves.
For an hour the dying cries kept on—a long, intolerable and agonizing hour, a blended hum of multifarious woe upwelling from the waters, a mystery of awful utterance in the blackness of the night. How it smote on those who could not save! Also there were other voices, right at hand, as here:
“Oh, Mamma, listen! That’s Papa! I hear him calling, calling! Why don’t the men row back? It’s so cold for him in the water!”
“We can’t go back after those stiffs!” is the answer of a boatswain, as sworn to in the Senate’s inquiry. A man can be more callous than the elements; not even the iceberg’s adamant can match that piece of netherstone, his heart.
How wives and mothers listened yet endured it all may never be described. Mercifully only one went mad. Also by mercy’s grace the rest, with gratitude unbelievable, could note the mounting quiet as the moans grew less and the deep claimed its sacrifice of saviors. Finally all were gone—not a gasp, not another choking sigh—the offering accepted, the immolation made complete; with the sea laid smooth again and swept with the proclaiming breeze and the minutest first faint light streaks of the dawn.
Then o’er the waves came humankind bringing rescue, bringing the love and outpoured pity of the world of men.
Doubtless, human sympathy is the divine consolation. That they could bring the story of that midnight to the universal heart, laying thereon the sacrifice of their heroic dead—this privilege soothed away, for the bereft in the boats and for their pitying friends world ’round, the dark and blighting aspects of a tragedy unhuman and terrific. For we are all fellow partakers of a reverence for unselfishness; we all hunger and thirst after the righteousness of saviors; and we are all allied against unpitying nature, sharing the yoke of domineering chance and change—bound in affection so.
Thus is preserved, from all the wreck of the Titanic, only the memory of an exalted offering. Quickened, also, the assurance that man is, somehow, kin to the Giver of every good and perfect gift.
This assurance persists, triumphant over man’s every overthrow by his adverse environment. Whence comes it, in despite of the despairing, harsh vicissitudes that torture and perplex their puppet here, affirming at each unmerited assault—there is no God! It springs from human kindness; it is born of our mutual helplessness and our reliance on each other; confirmed by deeds of devotion and the reverence that accepts them. By the hour-long sacrificing death in icy waters, by the anguish of the ones who hovered near but were too weak to save.
So is revealed humanity’s refuge and strength, called by them of old time “the fear of the Lord.” Our privilege is to recognize it in every helpful act, in every kindly thought. Yea, in manifold nature also it is our highest wisdom to perceive it, even when her mysterious climaxes seem to laugh all human effort, faith and trust to scorn; when the pitiless depth saith it is not in me, and the angry sea saith it is not with me!