“I saw Murdock die by his own hand,” said Moody, “saw the flash from his gun, heard the crack that followed the flash and then saw him plunge over on his face.”
Others report hearing several pistol shots on the decks below the bridge, but amid the groans and shrieks and cries, shouted orders and all that vast orchestra of sounds that broke upon the air they must have been faint periods of punctuation
The band had broken out in the strains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” some minutes before Murdock lifted the revolver to his head, fired and toppled over on his face. Moody saw all this in a vision that filled his brain, while his ears drank in the tragic strain of the beautiful hymn that the band played as their own dirge, even to the moment when the waters sucked them down.
Wherever Murdock’s eye swept the water in that instant, before he drew his revolver, it looked upon veritable seas of drowning men and women. From the decks there came to him the shrieks and groans of the caged and drowning, for whom all hope of escape was utterly vanished. He evidently never gave a thought to the possibility of saving himself, his mind freezing with the horrors he beheld and having room for just one central idea—swift extinction.
The strains of the hymn and the frantic cries of the dying blended in a symphony of sorrow.
Led by the green light, under the light of stars, the boats drew away, and the bow, then the quarter, then the stacks and last the stern of the marvel ship of a few days before passed beneath the waters. The great force of the ship’s sinking was unaided by any violence of the elements, and the suction, not so great as had been feared, rocked but mildly the group of boats now a quarter of a mile distant from it.
Just before the Titanic disappeared from view men and women leaped from the stern. More than a hundred men, according to Colonel Gracie, jumped at the last. Gracie was among the number and he and the second officer were of the very few who were saved.
{illust. caption = DEPTH OF OCEAN WHERE THE TITANIC WENT DOWN
The above etching shows a diagram of the ocean depths between the shore of Newfoundland (shown at the top to the left, by the heavily shaded part) to 800 miles out, where the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank. Over the Great Bank of Newfoundland the greatest depth is about 35 fathoms, or 210 feet. Then there is a sudden drop to 105 fathoms, or 630 feet, and then there is a falling away to 1650 fathoms or 9900 feet, then 2000 fathoms or 12,000 feet, and about where the Titanic sank 2760 fathoms or 16,560 feet.}
As the vessel disappeared, the waves drowned the majestic hymn which the musicians played as they went to their watery grave. The most authentic accounts agree that this hymn was not “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” which it seems had been played shortly before, but “Autumn,” which is found in the Episcopal hymnal and which fits appropriately the situation on the Titanic in the last moments of pain and darkness there. One line, “Hold me up in mighty waters,” particularly may have suggested the hymn to some minister aboard the doomed vessel, who, it has been thought, thereupon asked the remaining passengers to join in singing the hymn, in a last service aboard the sinking ship, soon to be ended by death itself.
{illust. caption = CARPATHIA
The Cunard liner which brought the survivors of the Titanic to New York.}
{illust. caption = THE HERO WIRELESS OPERATOR OF THE TITANIC
Photograph of Harold…}
Following is the hymn:
It was a little lame schoolmaster, Tyrtaeus, who aroused the Spartans by his poetry and led them to victory against the foe.
It was the musicians of the band of the Titanic—poor men, paid a few dollars a week—who played the music to keep up the courage of the souls aboard the sinking ship.
“The way the band kept playing was a noble thing,” says the wireless operator. “I heard it first while we were working the wireless, when there was a rag-time tune for us, and the last I saw of the band, when I was floating, struggling in the icy water, it was still on deck, playing ‘Autumn.’ How those brave fellows ever did it I cannot imagine.”
Perhaps that music, made in the face of death, would not have satisfied the exacting critical sense. It may be that the chilled fingers faltered on the pistons of the cornet or at the valves of the French horn, that the time was irregular and that by an organ in a church, with a decorous congregation, the hymns they chose would have been better played and sung. But surely that music went up to God from the souls of drowning men, and was not less acceptable than the song of songs no mortal ear may hear, the harps of the seraphs and the choiring cherubim. Under the sea the music-makers lie, still in their fingers clutching the broken and battered means of melody; but over the strident voice of warring winds and the sound of many waters there rises their chant eternally; and though the musicians lie hushed and cold at the sea’s heart, their music is heard forevermore.
That great ship, which started out as proudly, went down to her death like some grime silent juggernaut, drunk with carnage and anxious to stop the throbbing of her own heart at the bottom of the sea. Charles H. Lightoller, second officer of the Titanic, tells the story this way:
“I stuck to the ship until the water came up to my ankles. There had been no lamentations, no demonstrations either from the men passengers as they saw the last life-boat go, and there was no wailing or crying, no outburst from the men who lined the ship’s rail as the Titanic disappeared from sight.
“The men stood quietly as if they were in church. They knew that they were in the sight of God; that in a moment judgment would be passed upon them. Finally, the ship took a dive, reeling for a moment, then plunging. I was sucked to the side of the ship against the grating over the blower for the exhaust. There was an explosion. It blew me to the surface again, only to be sucked back again by the water rushing into the ship
“This time I landed against the grating over the pipes, which furnish a draught for the funnels, and stuck there. There was another explosion, and I came to the surface. The ship seemed to be heaving tremendous sighs as she went down. I found myself not many feet from the ship, but on the other side of it. The ship had turned around while I was under the water.
“I came up near a collapsible life-boat and grabbed it. Many men were in the water near me. They had jumped at the last minute. A funnel fell within four inches of me and killed one of the swimmers. Thirty clung to the capsized boat, and a life-boat, with forty survivors in it already, finally took them off.