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 away, we could hear the band playing 'Nearer, My God to Thee.' "Among the life-boats themselves, however, there were scenes just as terrible, perhaps, but to me nothing could outdo the tragic grandeur with which the Titanic went to its death. To realize it, you would have to see the Titanic as I saw it the day we set sail--with the flags flying and the bands playing. Everybody on board was laughing and talking about the Titanic being the biggest and most luxurious boat on the ocean and being unsinkable. To think of it then and to think of it standing out there in the night, wounded to death and gasping for life, is almost too big for the imagination.