“As far as I am concerned I saw no signs of a panic and not one person in our boat lost his head, nor do I know of a single person being left behind on the top deck.” George A. Harder, of No. 117 Eighth avenue, Brooklyn, who with his bride was saved from the Titanic, told at his home a graphic story of his experience. “When the crash came my wife and I were in our stateroom, about to retire,” said Harder. “Suddenly there came what seemed like a low, long groan at the ship’s bottom. It did not sound like a collision. “Taking my wife by the arm, I rushed to the deck. Passengers were already swarming there, asking what had happened. “I heard an officer order a carpenter below to ascertain the damage. He never returned. That the officers already knew the ship was likely to founder was evident from the fact that one lifeboat containing among others Karl M. Behr, the Brooklyn tennis player, had been launched. Persons on our side of the boat--the starboard side--were climbing into a second boat. “It was a bitter cold night. The stars were bright and their rays were reflected in the surrounding sea, which was as smooth as glass. Farther and farther we drifted away in the lifeboat, leaving behind us the doomed ship. BLOWN TO SAFETY BY EXPLOSION. “Suddenly there sounded from the Titanic the strains of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ As I glanced back at the mighty vessel in the glare of her lights I saw Col. Archibald Gracie clinging to a brass rail near one of the forward funnels. I afterward learned the explosion of the boilers blew him out of the vortex of the sucked in water to calmer water, where he was rescued. “Gradually the distance between the Titanic and our lifeboat increased. Her lights continued to gleam, her band to play. Two hours later, as she loomed a dark mass on the horizon, her lights suddenly went out. Then across the water, mingling with the strains of ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ came the distressing cries of those about to die. “Out of the jumble of foreign tongues could be distinguished the shrieks of steerage women who were grouped at the aft end of the boat. And above all the sounds, like a benediction, sounded that hymn. It was nameless anguish to us to sit in that open boat and realize our helplessness to aid those about to die. We forgot our own losses, our own sufferings. Only a few of us dared to look at the mighty ship as, bow first, she plunged beneath the surface.” Harder denied that many passengers were shot. He said he knows three Italians were killed, but by whom he does not know. Police Magistrate Robert C. Cornell, whose wife and her two sisters, Mrs. Edward Appleton and Mrs. John Murray Brown, of Denver, were among those rescued from the Titanic, told her story. “Mrs. Cornell,” said the Magistrate, “is of the same opinion as many others of the survivors, that many of the lifeboats left the side of the Titanic before they had nearly their capacity.