Revolver shots, heard by many persons shortly before the end of the Titanic caused many rumors. One was that Captain Smith shot himself, another was that First Officer Murdock ended his life. Smith, Murdock and Sixth Officer Moody are known to have been lost. The surviving officers, Lightoller, Pitman, Boxhall and Lowe, have made no statement. Members of the crew discredit all reports of suicide, and say Captain Smith remained on the bridge until just before the ship sank, leaping only after those on the decks had been washed away. It is also related that, when a cook later sought to pull him aboard a lifeboat, he exclaimed, “Let me go!” and, jerking away, went down. What became of the men with life preservers? is a question asked since the disaster by many persons. The preservers did their work of supporting their wearers in the water until the ship went down. Many of those drawn into the vortex, despite the preservers, did not come up again. Dead bodies floated on the surface as the last boats moved away. “NEARER MY GOD TO THEE.” To relate that the ship’s string band gathered in the saloon, near the end, and played “Nearer, My God, To Thee,” sounds like an attempt to give an added solemn color to a scene which was in itself the climax of solemnity. But various passengers and survivors of the crew agree in the declaration that they heard this music. To some of the hearers, with husbands among the dying men in the water, and at the ship’s rail, the strain brought in thought the words “So, by my woes I’ll be Nearer, My God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee.” “Women and children first,” was the order in the filling of the Titanic’s lifeboats. How well that order was fulfilled, the list of missing first and second cabin passengers bears eloquent witness. “Mr.” is before almost every name, and the contrast is but made stronger by the presence of a few names of women--Mrs. Isidor Straus, who chose death rather than to leave her husband’s side; Mrs. Allison, who remained below with her husband and daughter, and others who, in various ways, were kept from entering the line of those to be saved. To most of the passengers, the midnight crash against the ice mountain did not seem of terrific force. Many were so little disturbed by it that they hesitated to dress and put on life preservers, even when summoned by that thundering knocks and shouts of the stewards. Bridge players in the smoking room kept on with their game. Once on deck, many hesitated to enter the swinging lifeboats. The glassy sea, the starlit sky, the absence, in the first few moments, of intense excitement, gave them the feeling that there was only some slight mishap--that those who got into the boats would have a chilly half-hour below, and might later be laughed at.