ally exposed, and through which they might reasonably expect to
come to just such an end. There was no theatrical heroism, no striking
of attitudes, or attempt to escape from the dread reality in any form of
spiritual hypnosis; they simply stood about the decks, smoking
cigarettes, talking to one another, and waiting for their hour to
strike. There is nothing so hard, nothing so entirely dignified, as to
be silent and quiet in the face of an approaching horror.

That was one form of heroism, which will make the influence of this
thing deathless long after the memory of it has faded as completely from
the minds of men as sight or sign of it has faded from that area of
ocean where, two miles above the sunken ship, the rolling blue furrows
have smoothed away all trace of the struggles and agonies that
embittered it. But there was another heroism which must be regarded as
the final crown and glory of this catastrophe--not because it is
exceptional, for happily it is not, but because it continued and
confirmed a tradition of English sea life that should be a tingling
inspiration to everyone who has knowledge of it. The men who did the
work of the ship were no composite, highly drilled body like the men in
the navy who, isolated for months at a time and austerely disciplined,
are educated into an _esprit de corps_ and sense of responsibility that
make them willing, in moments of emergency, to sacrifice individual
safety to the honour of the ship and of the Service to which they
belong. These stokers, stewards, and seamen were the ordinary scratch
crew, signed on at Southampton for one round trip to New York and back;
most of them had never seen each other or their officers before; they
had none of the training or the securities afforded by a great national
service; they were simply--especially in the case of the stokers--men so
low in the community that they were able to live no pleasanter life than
that afforded by the stokehold of a ship--an inferno of darkness and
noise and commotion and insufferable heat--men whose experience of the
good things of life was half an hour's breathing of the open sea air
between their spells of labour at the furnaces, or a drunken spree
ashore whence, after being poisoned by cheap drink and robbed by joyless
women of the fruits of their spell of labour, they are obliged to return
to it again to find the means for another debauch. Not the stuff out of
which one would expect an austere heroism t