IT was a solemn moment when the Carpathia heaved in
sight. There she rested on the water, a blur of black—huge,
mysterious, awe-inspiring—and yet withal a thing
to send thrills of pity and then of admiration through the
beholder.
It was a few minutes after seven o'clock when she arrived
at the entrance to Ambrose Channel. She was coming fast
steaming at better than fifteen knots an hour, and she was
sighted long before she was expected. Except for the usual
side and masthead lights she was almost dark, only the upper
cabins showing a glimmer here and there.
Then began a period of waiting, the suspense of which
proved almost too much for the hundreds gathered there
to greet friends and relatives or to learn with certainty at
last that those for whom they watched would never come
ashore.
There was almost complete silence on the pier. Doctors
and nurses, members of the Women's Relief Committee, city
and government officials, as well as officials of the line, moved
nervously about.
Seated where they had been assigned beneath the big
customs letters corresponding to the initials of the names of
the survivors they came to meet, sat the mass of 2000 on the
pier.
Women wept, but they wept quietly, not hysterically, and
the sound of the sobs made many times less noise than the
hum and bustle which is usual on the pier among those
awaiting an incoming liner.
Slowly and majestically the ship slid through the water,
still bearing the details of that secret of what happened and
who perished when the Titanic met her fate.
Convoying the Carpathia was a fleet of tugs bearing men
and women anxious to learn the latest news. The Cunarder
had been as silent for days as though it, too, were a ship of
the dead. A list of survivors had been given out from its
wireless station and that was all. Even the approximate
time of its arrival had been kept a secret.
