A Woman of Temperament by Lucile Duff Gordon & Camilla Blois
Author:Lucile Duff Gordon & Camilla Blois [Gordon, Lucile Duff & Blois, Camilla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non Fiction
ISBN: 9781908002426
Amazon: 1908002425
Publisher: Attica Books
Published: 2012-04-04T04:00:00+00:00
Chapter Fourteen
MERCIFULLY there is a limit to the human capacity for suffering. In moments of great shock and sorrow we can feel only so far and then no farther, for the brain seems to become almost paralysed and, in place of consecutive thought, turns over a medley of trivialities. If it were not so we should find life utterly unendurable.
On that night of horror when we rowed away from the place where we had seen the vast bulk of the Titanic sink slowly beneath the sea, as though some relentless giant hand had drawn her under, we scarcely spoke to one another. Our ears were too full of those terrible cries of despair from the poor souls she had carried down with her for us to want to break the silence which succeeded them. There was only the plash of the oars as the men rowed harder than ever, seeking perhaps to get away from their thoughts, with now and then a muttered sentence as they strained their eyes into the gloom ahead looking for some sign of the other boats.
I noticed these things in a hazy, detached sort of way, for I had gone through too much in those two short hours since I left my cabin to think clearly and to add to it I was enduring agonies from sea-sickness. Now anyone who has ever suffered from this unromantic and distressing complaint will agree that there are very few things more calculated to destroy one's morale and unfit one for mental effort. While some hundreds of yards away from me men and women were going to their death beneath the icy waters of the Atlantic and one of the most appalling tragedies of a lifetime was being enacted, I lay stretched out along the side of the boat scarcely conscious of anything but my physical sufferings. Had I been pitched into the sea myself I should not have made the least resistance; in fact death would have been almost in the nature of a relief.
Once or twice during the night I revived a little and tried to talk to reassure Cosmo, who was very worried on my account. As he told me afterwards, I appeared so ill that he feared I might die of exposure before we were rescued. The others followed my example and when the men rested on their oars for a few minutes we chatted of little unimportant things, as people do when they have been through a great mental strain. With one accord we avoided the tragic side of the wreck for we could not trust ourselves to speak of it, but we tried to make feeble jokes about our present plight. I remember that I teased Miss Francatelli about the weird assortment of clothes the poor girl had flung on before leaving the ship, for she was generally very fussy over her clothes.
“Just fancy, you actually left your beautiful nightdress behind you!” I said and we all laughed as though I had said something very witty, though in our hearts we felt very far from laughter.
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