e-boats beginning forward on the port side, working aft and then back
on the starboard. This man paid the firemen to lower a starboard boat
before the officers had given the order."

Whiteley's own experience was a hard one. When the uncoiling rope, which
entangled his feet, threw him into the sea, it furrowed the flesh of
his leg, but he did not feel the pain until he was safe aboard the
Carpathia.

"I floated on my life-preserver for several hours," he said, "then I
came across a big oak dresser with two men clinging to it. I hung on to
this till daybreak and the two men dropped off. When the sun came up I
saw the collapsible raft in the distance, just black with men. They were
all standing up, and I swam to it--almost a mile, it seemed to me--and
they would not let me aboard. Mr. Lightoller, the second officer, was
one of them.

"'It's thirty-one lives against yours,, he said, 'you can't come
aboard. There's not room.'"

"I pleaded with him in vain, and then I confess I prayed that somebody
might die, so I could take his place. It was only human. And then some
one did die, and they let me aboard.

"By and by, we saw seven life-boats lashed together, and we were taken
into them."

MEN SHOT DOWN

The officers had to assert their authority by force, and three
foreigners from the steerage who tried to force their way in among the
women and children were shot down without mercy.

Robert Daniel, a Philadelphia passenger, told of terrible scenes at
this period of the disaster. He said men fought and bit and struck one
another like madmen, and exhibited wounds upon his face to prove the
assertion. Mr. Daniel said that he was picked up naked from the ice-cold
water and almost perished from exposure before he was rescued. He and
others told how the Titanic's bow was completely torn away by the impact
with the berg.

K. Whiteman, of Palmyra, N. J., the Titanic's barber, was lowering boats
on deck after the collision, and declared the officers on the bridge,
one of them First Officer Murdock, promptly worked the electrical
apparatus for closing the water-tight compartments. He believed the
machinery was in some way so damaged by the crash that the front
compartments failed to close tightly, although the rear ones were
secure.

Whiteman's manner of escape was unique. He was blown off the deck by the
second of the two explosions of the boilers, and was in the water more
than two hours before he was picked up by a r