rain
that she might undergo, had thought of boats rather as a superfluity,
dating from the days when ships were vulnerable, when they sprang leaks
and might sink in the high seas. In their pride they had said "the
_Titanic_ cannot spring a leak." So there was no boat muster, and the
routine occupations of Sunday went on unvaried and undisturbed. Only in
the Marconi room was the monotony varied, for something had gone wrong
with the delicate electrical apparatus, and the wireless voice was
silent; and throughout the morning and afternoon, for seven hours,
Phillips and Bride were hard at work testing and searching for the
little fault that had cut them off from the world of voices. And at last
they found it, and the whining and buzzing began again. But it told them
nothing new; only the same story, whispered this time from the
_Californian_--the story of ice.

The day wore on, the dusk fell, lights one by one sprang up and shone
within the ship; the young moon rose in a cloudless sky spangled with
stars. People remarked on the loveliness of the night as they went to
dress for dinner, but they remarked also on its coldness. There was an
unusual chill in the air, and lightly clad people were glad to draw in
to the big fireplaces in smoke-room or drawing-room or library, and to
keep within the comfort of the warm and lamplit rooms. The cold was
easily accounted for; it was the ice season, and the airs that were
blowing down from the north-west carried with them a breath from the
ice-fields. It was so cold that the decks were pretty well deserted, and
the usual evening concert, instead of being held on the open deck, was
held in the warmth, under cover. And gradually people drifted away to
bed, leaving only a few late birds sitting up reading in the library, or
playing cards in the smoking-rooms, or following a restaurant
dinner-party by quiet conversation in the flower-decked lounge.

The ship had settled down for the night; half of her company were
peacefully asleep in bed, and many lying down waiting for sleep to come,
when something happened. What that something was depended upon what part
of the ship you were in. The first thing to attract the attention of
most of the first-class passengers was a negative thing--the cessation of
that trembling, continuous rhythm which had been the undercurrent of all
their waking sensations since the ship left Queenstown. The engines
stopped. Some wondered, and put their heads out of th