fleet. The next six officers, in the order of their rank, were
Murdock, Lightollder,{sic} Pitman, Boxhall, Lowe and Moody.
Dan Phillips was chief wireless operator, with Harold Bride
as assistant.

From the forward bridge, fully ninety feet above the sea,
peered out the benign face of the ship's master, cool of aspect,
deliberate of action, impressive in that quality of confidence
that is bred only of long experience in command.

From far below the bridge sounded the strains of the ship's
orchestra, playing blithely a favorite air from "The Chocolate
Soldier." All went as merry as a wedding bell. Indeed,
among that gay ship's company were two score or more at
least for whom the wedding bells had sounded in truth not
many days before. Some were on their honeymoon tours,
others were returning to their motherland after having passed
the weeks of the honeymoon, like Colonel John Jacob Astor
and his young bride, amid the diversions of Egypt or other
Old World countries.

What daring flight of imagination would have ventured
the prediction that within the span of six days that stately
ship, humbled, shattered and torn asunder, would lie two
thousand fathoms deep at the bottom of the Atlantic, that
the benign face that peered from the bridge would be set in
the rigor of death and that the happy bevy of voyaging brides
would be sorrowing widows?