Maria Peñasco screamed for her husband. The Countess handed the tiller to Gladys, then slipped down beside Maria and held her. Poor woman, she thought, her sobs are unspeakable in their sadness.
Then came other screams, the horrifying screams of more than a thousand women and men, struggling and adrift in the subfreezing water, frantically seeking to steady themselves on floating crates, tabletops, deck chairs, or someone else’s back. Their despairing cries carried across the still-calm water: “Save one soul!” … “Help, please, help!” … “Oh my God, oh my God…”
The Countess held Maria tighter as she tried in vain to keep her from hearing those agonized cries.
How long did the pleas and moaning and shouting last? Some said ten minutes, others said an hour. All agreed that they faded slowly, inexorably, as lives ebbed away, one after another. Most of the dead did not drown. They froze to death, their cork-filled life belts keeping them afloat as the sea became studded with corpses that looked like broken dolls. Finally, the last of the cries were replaced by a deathly accusatory silence.
The quiet is more terrible, thought Roberta, than the sounds that went before.
In its wake, the Countess was overwhelmed by a feeling she could identify only as “indescribable loneliness.”
“Let us row back!” Gladys Cherry implored the other passengers in Lifeboat No. 8, “and see if there is not some chance of rescuing anyone who has possibly survived.”
Mrs. Swift agreed. So did the Countess and Able Seaman Jones. But the others were adamant that no good could come from steering a boat that held sixty-five people into a disaster field where hundreds upon hundreds were dead or dying.
“You have no right to risk our lives,” one woman insisted, “on the bare chance of finding anyone alive.”
“The Captain’s own orders were to ‘row for those ship lights over there,’ ” said another. “You have no business interfering with his orders.”
Reluctantly, the four who wished to return to the site of the sinking yielded to the majority, against their will, their faith, and their better judgment. The ghastliness of our feelings, thought the Countess, never can be told.
“Ladies,” said Seaman Jones, “if any of us are saved, remember: I wanted to go back. I would rather drown with them than leave them.”
Then everyone fell silent. Mrs. White looked around at the flat, glassy sea, the star-laden sky. Somehow, it is more dreadful, she thought, for all this to have happened on so beautiful a night.