ed to--the cries of hundreds of
fellow-beings struggling in the icy cold water, crying for help with a
cry that could not be answered.

Third Officer Herbert John Pitman, in charge of one of the boats,
described this cry of agony in his testimony before the Senatorial
Investigating Committee, under the questioning of Senator Smith:

"I heard no cries of distress until after the ship went down," he said.

"How far away were the cries from your life-boat?"

"Several hundred yards, probably, some of them."

"Describe the screams."

"Don't, sir, please! I'd rather not talk about it."

"I'm sorry to press it, but what was it like? Were the screams
spasmodic?"

"It was one long continuous moan."

The witness said the moans and cries continued an hour.

Those in the life-boats longed to return and pick up some of the poor
drowning souls, but they feared this would mean swamping the boats and a
further loss of life.

Some of the men tried to sing to keep the women from hearing the cries,
and rowed hard to get away from the scene of the wreck, but the memory
of those sounds will be one of the things the rescued will find it
difficult to forget.

The waiting sufferers kept a lookout for lights, and several times it
was shouted that steamers' lights were seen, but they turned out to be
either a light from another boat or a star low down on the horizon. It
was hard to keep up hope.

WOMEN TRIED TO COMMIT SUICIDE

"Let me go back--I want to go back to my husband--I'll jump from the
boat if you don't," cried an agonized voice in one life-boat.

"You can do no good by going back--other lives will be lost if you try
to do it. Try to calm yourself for the sake of the living. It may be
that your husband will be picked up somewhere by one of the fishing
boats."

The woman who pleaded to go back, according to Mrs. Vera Dick, of
Calgary, Canada, later tried to throw herself from the life-boat. Mrs.
Dick, describing the scenes in the life-boats, said there were half
a dozen women in that one boat who tried to commit suicide when they
realized that the Titanic had gone down.

"Even in Canada, where we have such clear nights," said Mrs. Dick, "I
have never seen such a clear sky. The stars were very bright and we
could see the Titanic plainly, like a great hotel on the water. Floor
after floor of the lights went out as we watched. It was horrible,
horrible. I can't bear to think about it. From the distance, as we rowed