Chapter 12 - Sunday, April Fourteenth
Sunday began quietly.
There were religious services.
Passengers dressed neatly.
Voices seemed softer in the morning.
Even Titanic herself felt calmer.
I ate breakfast, walked, wrote, and spent part of the morning speaking with passengers about the voyage.
The weather was becoming colder.
That was the first thing everyone noticed.
Not danger.
Cold.
People who had spent previous days outdoors began staying inside longer.
Coats appeared.
Hands disappeared into pockets.
The sky remained clear.
The sea looked remarkably smooth.
At lunch, I heard the word ice for the first time.
Two gentlemen nearby were discussing a message received from another ship.
Apparently there had been ice reported farther along our route.
One man shrugged.
“Common enough this time of year.”
The other nodded.
That was the entire conversation.
I returned to my meal.
Years later, people would speak about iceberg warnings as though every passenger should have immediately understood what was coming.
We did not.
Ships crossed those waters constantly.
Captains received weather and ice information.
Navigation belonged to officers.
Passengers trusted them to do their jobs.
I did too.
In the afternoon, I went outside with Henry.
The sea was almost flat.
No whitecaps.
No rolling waves.
The surface looked like dark metal stretching to the horizon.
Henry leaned on the rail.
“Strange.”
“What?”
“The quiet.”
I listened.
He was right.
Without strong wind or waves striking the hull, the Atlantic had lost some of its usual voice.
Titanic’s own sounds became clearer.
The faint vibration.
Footsteps.
A door closing.
Conversation from behind us.
“It looks peaceful,” I said.
Henry nodded.
“Too peaceful.”
I laughed.
“You’re becoming dramatic.”
“I’ve spent four days with a journalist.”
We went inside.
That afternoon I visited Eleanor.
She was writing a letter.
“Another stolen sentence?” she asked without looking up.
“Not yet.”
“Give me time.”
We discussed New York.
What we would do first.
I intended to telegraph my editor and then find a proper American breakfast.
Eleanor intended to see her sister.
“After that?” I asked.
“Sleep in a bed that does not move.”
“This one hardly moves.”
“Principle, Mr. Cole.”
By late afternoon, sunlight became brilliant.
The sky cleared completely.
The horizon looked sharp.
I walked outside again near sunset.
Cold struck me immediately.
It had become severe.
I could see my breath.
The water below was dark blue turning black.
The sunset behind us briefly painted the smoke orange.
I stood there longer than I should have.
Something about that evening held me.
Perhaps because it was beautiful.
Perhaps because the sea looked so unnaturally smooth.
No moon was visible.
As darkness deepened, the stars became astonishing.
Thousands.
More than I had ever seen.
Without waves reflecting light, the ocean beneath them became an enormous black absence.
I wrote:
The sea tonight looks like black glass.
That sentence became one of the few entries in my notebook I would later remember word for word.
At dinner, everything remained normal.
That is essential to understand.
People ate.
People laughed.
Wine was poured.
Dishes came and went.
The orchestra played.
Mr. Whitney argued about business.
His wife ignored him.
Eleanor corrected my choice of fork again.
Nothing looked doomed.
Nothing felt doomed.
After dinner, I remained indoors for several hours.
Eventually, near eleven, I stepped outside one final time.
The cold was brutal.
I could barely feel my fingers after a minute.
The sea remained perfectly calm.
A man beside me stared outward.
“Wouldn’t want to end up in that tonight.”
I laughed lightly.
“No.”
We both went inside.
A casual remark.
That was all.
At approximately eleven fifteen, I returned to my cabin.
I removed my coat.
Placed my watch beside the bed.
Wrote a final line:
New York soon.
Then I extinguished the lamp.
For a while, I listened to Titanic moving through the quiet sea.
There was no wind against the window.
No heavy water against the hull.
Only the low, steady machinery beneath me.
May you like
I closed my eyes.
Twenty-five minutes later, the glass of water on my table began to tremble.
