Many of the officers and crew of the sloop had experienced the agonies of cold, wounds and salt water when cast adrift on wintry seas, and the memory acted like a whip. As the hours went by the greenish tint of the sea slowly turned to leaden-grey, and the pure white of the driving snow contrasted sharply with the quickening dusk of the December night. It was in the last half-hour of the dog watch that the sloop reached the scene of the disaster and the speed was reduced. Scattered over the sea around, and floating southwards in grim procession, was a mass of wreckage--a broken raft, a number of deck-chairs, spars and cordage, a life-belt and some oars--but of boats with living freights there was not a sign. Steaming slowly round in widening circles, the sloop searched while the light lasted, but the whirling haze of fine snow blotted out the distance, and soon the early darkness of a winter night settled over the sea. The cold became intense. The white beam of a searchlight now flashed out over the black waters. There was a grave risk in this betraying light, one not sanctioned by the theory of war. It made the warship a target for any hostile submarine lurking around, but it seemed impossible to believe that a 6000-ton liner, with probably several hundred human beings on board, could have been so completely obliterated, and to the commander of the sloop the risk seemed justified. Other ships might have intercepted the S.O.S. call and reached the scene of the disaster earlier, but the sloop's wireless, although put into action, could not confirm this, and so the search was continued. On and off during the bitter night the white beam of light flashed out through the snow. For a few seconds it swept the sea close around and was then shut off. In the pall-like blackness which followed ears listened intently, but could distinguish nothing except the lash of the sea. The sound-deadening qualities of falling snow would have cut short the range of any cry, for the human voice at its strongest, and with the atmospheric conditions favourable, can seldom be heard more than 1000 yards distant. So hour after hour of numbing cold went by with nothing to show except the occasional pathway of light on the grey slopes of sea and the low moaning wind. The snowing ceased, and in the cold stillness which so often precedes daybreak in the north a faint cry came from the sea, at first so indistinct and mingled with water noises that it would never have been heard at all if the engines of the sloop had not been shut off, as they had been at frequent intervals during the night, to enable those on board to listen. The cry was quickly followed by the "snore" of a boat's fog-horn. A few turns of the sloop's propellers and in the grey light of the December dawn a large ship's life-boat could be dimly seen, away to starboard, when it rose on the bosom of the swell.