"I have had a miraculous escape. The ship sank by the stern, dragging me down with her. When I was blown up to the surface again I saw a dreadful scene of struggling human beings. There was hardly any wreckage to grasp. Nearly all the boats were smashed, and only three remained afloat. After a desperate struggle, I climbed on the bottom of a broken boat with 28 Lascars and three other Europeans. Our number was reduced to 19 by Thursday night, and only 11 remained on Friday, the rest having died from exposure and injuries. We saw a neutral steamer pass close by on Thursday evening at about 8 o'clock, but she took no notice of the red flare shown by another of the _Persia's_ boats. We saw a large steamer three miles away on the next day; but she too ignored our signals, probably thinking they were a ruse of an enemy submarine. Our broken boat capsized constantly, and we were all the time washed by the waves, so that we were almost exhausted when the second night began. At 8.30 p.m. we saw the Alfred Holt steamer _Ningchow_ near us, and shouted as loudly as we could. On Friday night at 9 o'clock she rescued us. We had been thirty-two hours in the sea without water or food, except one biscuit, since breakfast time on Thursday." Within a day or two of this outrage the British steamer _Glengyle_ was also sunk in the Mediterranean, but happily all the passengers were saved. In the North Sea we had got the submarine danger well in hand, but in the far more extensive Mediterranean the enemy remained powerful for mischief down to the close of the year. [Footnote 19: For an account of the Narrows, see Chapter XX.] [Footnote 20: _Blackwood's Magazine_, October 1915.] CHAPTER XIV. WINTER FIGHTING IN POLAND AND EAST PRUSSIA. In chapter XXIX. of our third volume I told you how von Hindenburg's second attempt on Warsaw was foiled, and how the Russians during the last days of December 1914 stood firm on a front of great strength. At the beginning of the year 1915 the Russian front extended from the Baltic Sea right to the border of Rumania--a distance of at least nine hundred miles. In January 1915 the Russians were holding the longest battle front ever known in the history of the world.