t and were
hauled up to its keel. Presently another man came swimming along and
asked if they could take him on. But the boat was already dangerously
loaded; the weight of another man would have meant death for all, and
they told him so. "All right," he cried, "good-bye; God bless you all!"
And he sank before their eyes.

Captain Smith, who had last been seen washed from the bridge as the ship
sank, with a child in his arms, was seen once more before he died. He
was swimming, apparently only in the hope of saving the child that he
held; for in his austere conception of his duty there was no place of
salvation for him while others were drowning and struggling. He swam up
to a boat with the child and gasped out: "Take the child!" A dozen
willing hands were stretched out to take it, and then to help him into
the boat; but he shook them off. Only for a moment he held on, asking:
"What became of Murdoch?" and when they said that he was dead, he let go
his hold, saying: "Let me go"; and the last that they saw of him was
swimming back towards the ship. He had no lifebelt; he had evidently no
wish that there should be any gruesome resurrection of his body from the
sea, and undoubtedly he found his grave where he wished to find it,
somewhere hard by the grave of his ship.

The irony of chance, the merciless and illogical selection which death
makes in a great collective disaster, was exemplified over and over
again in the deaths of people who had escaped safely to a boat, and the
salvation of others who were involved in the very centre of destruction.
The strangest escape of all was probably that of Colonel Gracie of the
United States army, who jumped from the topmost deck of the ship when
she sank and was sucked down with her. He was drawn down for a long
while, and whirled round and round, and would have been drawn down to a
depth from which he could never have come up alive if it had not been
for the explosion which took place after the ship sank. "After sinking
with the ship," he says, "it appeared to me as if I was propelled by
some great force through the water. This may have been caused by
explosions under the waters, and I remembered fearful stories of people
being boiled to death. Innumerable thoughts of a personal nature, having
relation to mental telepathy, flashed through my brain. I thought of
those at home, as if my spirit might go to them to say good-bye. Again
and again I prayed for deliverance, although I felt