steamship tracks, and are what are most carefully looked for. This April
there was abundance of evidence that the field-ice had come farther
south than usual. The _Empress of Britain_, which passed the _Titanic_
on Friday, reported an immense quantity of floating ice in the
neighbourhood of Cape Race. When she arrived in Liverpool it transpired
that, when three days out from Halifax, Nova Scotia, she encountered an
ice-field, a hundred miles in extent, with enormous bergs which appeared
to be joined to the ice-field, forming an immense white line, broken
with peaks and pinnacles on the horizon. The _Carmania_ and the
_Nicaragua_, which were going westward ahead of the _Titanic_, had both
become entangled in ice, and the _Nicaragua_ had sustained considerable
damage. And day by day, almost hour by hour, news was coming in from
other ships commenting on the unusual extent southward of the ice-field,
and on the unusual number of icebergs which they had encountered. No
doubt many of the passengers on the _Titanic_ were hoping that they
would meet with some; it is one of the chief interests of the North
Atlantic voyage in the spring and summer; and nothing is more lovely in
the bright sunshine of day than the sight of one of these giant islands,
with its mountain-peaks sparkling in the sun, and blue waves breaking on
its crystal shores; nothing more impressive than the thought, as one
looks at it, that high as its glittering towers and pinnacles may soar
towards heaven there is eight times as great a depth of ice extending
downwards into the dark sea. It is only at night, or when the waters are
covered with a thick fog produced by the contact of the ice with the
warmer water, that navigating officers, peering forward into the mist,
know how dreadful may be the presence of one of these sheeted monsters,
the ghostly highwaymen of the sea.

VI

Information like this, however, only concerned the little group of
executive officers who took their turns in tramping up and down the
white gratings of the bridge. It was all part of their routine; it was
what they expected to hear at this time of the year and in this part of
the ocean; there was nothing specially interesting to them in the gossip
of the wireless voices. Whatever they heard, we may be sure they did not
talk about it to the passengers. For there is one paramount rule
observed by the officers of passenger liners--and that is to make
everything as pleasant as poss