Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters Part 11

THE HEROES WHO REMAINED

The women who left the s.h.i.+p; the men who remained--there is little to choose between them for heroism. Many of the women compelled to take to the boats would have stayed, had it been possible, to share the fate of their nearest and dearest, without whom their lives are crippled, broken and disconsolate.

The heroes who remained would have said, with Grenville. "We have only done our duty, as a man is bound to do." They sought no palms or crowns of martyrdom. "They also serve who only stand and wait," and their first action was merely to step aside and give places in the boats to women and children, some of whom were too young to comprehend or to remember.

There was no debate as to whether the life of a financier, a master of business, was rated higher in the scale of values than that of an ignorant peasant mother. A woman was a woman, whether she wore rags or pearls. A life was given for a life, with no a.s.sertion that one was priceless and the other comparatively valueless.

Many of those who elected to remain might have escaped. "Chivalry" is a mild appellation for their conduct. Some of the vaunted knights of old were desperate cowards by comparison. A fight in the open field, or jousting in the tournament, did not call out the manhood in a man as did the waiting till the great s.h.i.+p took the final plunge, in the knowledge that the seas round about were covered with loving and yearning witnesses whose own salvation was not a.s.sured.

When the roll is called hereafter of those who are "purged of pride because they died, who know the worth of their days," let the names of the men who went down with the t.i.tanic be found written there in the sight of G.o.d and men.

THE OBVIOUS LESSON

And, whatever view of the accident be taken, whether the moralist shall use it to point the text of a solemn or denunciatory warning, or whether the materialist, swinging to the other extreme, scouts any other theory than that of the "fortuitous concurrence of atoms," there is scarcely a thinking mortal who has heard of what happened who has not been deeply stirred, in the sense of a personal bereavement, to a profound humility and the conviction of his own insignificance in the greater universal scheme.

Many there are whom the influences of religion do not move, and upon whose hearts most generous sentiments knock in vain, who still are overawed and bowed by the magnitude of this catastrophe. No matter what they believe about it, the effect is the same. The effect is to reduce a man from the swaggering braggart--the vainglorious lord of what he sees--the self-made master of fate, of nature, of time, of s.p.a.ce, of everything--to his true microscopic stature in the cosmos. He goes in tears to put together again the fragments of the few, small, pitiful things that belonged to him.

"Though Love may pine, and Reason chafe, There came a Voice without reply."

The only comfort, all that can bring surcease of sorrow, is that men fas.h.i.+oned in the image of their Maker rose to the emergency like heroes, and went to their grave as bravely as any who have given their lives at any time in war. The hearts of those who waited on the land, and agonized, and were impotent to save, have been laid upon the same altars of sacrifice. The mourning of those who will not be comforted rises from alien lands together with our own in a common broken intercession. How little is the 882 feet of the "monster" that we launched compared with the arc of the rainbow we can see even in our grief spanning the frozen boreal mist!

"The best of what we do and are, Just G.o.d, forgive!"

THE ANCIENT SACRIFICE

And still our work must go on. It is the business of men and women neither to give way to unavailing grief nor to yield to the crus.h.i.+ng incubus of despair, but to find hope that is at the bottom of everything, even at the bottom of the sea where that glorious virgin of the ocean is dying. "And when she took unto herself a mate She must espouse the everlasting sea."

Even so, for any progress of the race, there must be the ancient sacrifice of man's own stubborn heart, and all his pride. He must forever "lay in dust life's glory dead." He cannot rise to the height it was intended he should reach till he has plumbed the depths, till he has devoured the bread of the bitterest affliction, till he has known the ache of hopes deferred, of anxious expectation disappointed, of dreams that are not to be fulfilled this side of the river that waters the meads of Paradise. There still must be a reason why it is not an unhappy thing to be taken from "the world we know to one a wonder still," and so that we go bravely, what does it matter, the mode of our going? It was not only those who stood back, who let the women and children go to the boats, that died. There died among us on the sh.o.r.e something of the fierce greed of bitterness, something of the sharp hatred of pa.s.sion, something of the mad l.u.s.t of revenge and of knife-edge compet.i.tion.

Though we are not aware of it, perhaps, we are not quite the people that we were before out of the mystery an awful hand was laid upon us all, and what we had thought the colossal power of wealth was in a twinkling shown to be no more than the strength of an infant's little finger, or the twining tendril of a plant.

"Lest we forget; lest we forget!"

{"ill.u.s.tration", really "music" Lyrics =

G.o.d of mercy and compa.s.sion, Look with pity on my pain; Hear a mournful, broken spirit Prostrate at Thy feet complain; Many are my foes and mighty; Strength to conquer I have none; Nothing can uphold my goings But they blessed Self alone. AMEN

{2nd Stanza} Saviour, look on Thy beloved, Triumph over all my foes, Turn to heavenly joy my mourning, Turn to gladness all my woes; Live or die, or work or suffer Let my weary soul abide, In all changes whatsoever, Sure and steadfast by Thy side:

{3rd Stanza} When temptations fierce a.s.sault me, When my enemies I find, Sin and guilt, and death and Satan, All against my soul combined, Hold me up in mighty waters, Keep my eyes on things above--Rightousness,{sic} divine atonement Peace and everlasting love,}

{ill.u.s.t. caption = LAt.i.tUDE 41.46 NORTH, LONGITUDE 50.14 WEST WHERE MANHOOD PERISHED NOT}

{ill.u.s.t. caption = LOWERING OF THE LIFE-BOATS FROM THE t.i.tANIC

It is easy to understand why...}

{ill.u.s.t. caption = Pa.s.sENGERS LEAVING THE t.i.tANIC IN THE LIFE-BOATS

The agony and despair which possessed the occupants of these boats as they were carried away from the doomed giant, leaving husbands and brothers behind, is almost beyond description. It is little wonder that the strain of these moments, with the physical and mental suffering which followed during the early morning hours, left many of the women still hysterical when they reached New York.}

WHERE MANHOOD PERISHED NOT

Where cross the lines of forty north And fifty-fourteen west There rolls a wild and greedy sea With death upon its crest.

No stone or wreath from human hands Will ever mark the spot Where fifteen hundred men went down, But Manhood perished not.

Old Ocean takes but little heed Of human tears or woe.

No shafts adorn the ocean graves, Nor weeping willows grow.

Nor is there need of marble slab To keep in mind the spot Where n.o.ble men went down to death, But manhood perished not!

Those men who looked on death and smiled, And trod the crumbling deck, Have saved much more than precious lives From out that awful wreck.

Though countless joys and hopes and fears Were shattered at a breath, 'Tis something that the name of Man Did not go down to death.

'Tis not an easy thing to die, E'en in the open air, Twelve hundred miles from home and friends, In a shroud of black despair.

A wreath to crown the brow of man, And hide a former blot Will ever blossom o'er the waves Where Manhood perished not.

HARVEY P. THEW {spelling uncertain due to poor printing}

CHAPTER VIII. THE CALL FOR HELP HEARD

THE VALUE OF THE WIRELESS--OTHER s.h.i.+PS ALTER THEIR COURSE--RESCUERS ON THE WAY

"WE have struck an iceberg. Badly damaged. Rush aid."

Seaward and landward, J. G. Phillips, the t.i.tanic's wireless man, had hurled the appeal for help. By fits and starts--for the wireless was working unevenly and blurringly--Phillips reached out to the world, crying the t.i.tanic's peril. A word or two, scattered phrases, now and then a connected sentence, made up the message that sent a thrill of apprehension for a thousand miles east, west and south of the doomed liner.

The early despatches from St. John's, Cape Race, and Montreal, told graphic tales of the race to reach the t.i.tanic, the wireless appeals for help, the interruption of the calls, then what appeared to be a successful conclusion of the race when the Virginian was reported as having reached the giant liner.

MANY LINES HEAR THE CALL

Other rus.h.i.+ng liners besides the Virginian heard the call and became on the instant something more than cargo carriers and pa.s.senger greyhounds.

The big Baltic, 200 miles to the eastward and westbound, turned again to save life, as she did when her sister of the White Star fleet, the Republic, was cut down in a fog in January, 1909. The t.i.tanic's mate, the Olympic, the mightiest of the seagoers save the t.i.tanic herself, turned in her tracks. All along the northern lane the miracle of the wireless worked for the distressed and sinking White Star s.h.i.+p. The Hamburg-American Cincinnati, the Parisian from Glasgow, the North German Lloyd Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm, the Hamburg-American liners Prinz Adelbert and Amerika, all heard the C. Q. D. and the rapid, condensed explanation of what had happened.

VIRGINIAN IN DESPERATE HASTE

But the Virginian was nearest, barely 170 miles away, and was the first to know of the t.i.tanic's danger. She went about and headed under forced draught for the spot indicated in one of the last of Phillips'

messages--lat.i.tude 41.46 N. and longitude 50.14 W. She is a fast s.h.i.+p, the Allan liner, and her wireless has told the story of how she stretched through the night to get up to the t.i.tanic in time. There was need for all the power of her engines and all the experience and skill of her captain. The final fluttering Marconigrams that were released from the t.i.tanic made it certain that the great s.h.i.+p with 2340 souls aboard was filling and in desperate peril.