It was now that the band began to play, and continued while the boats were being lowered. We considered this a wise provision tending to allay excitement. I did not recognize any of the tunes, but I know they were cheerful and were not hymns. If, as has been reported, “Nearer My God to Thee” was one of the selections, I assuredly should have noticed it and regarded it as a tactless warning of immediate death to us all and one likely to create a panic that our special efforts were directed towards avoiding, and which we accomplished to the fullest extent. I know of only two survivors whose names are cited by the newspapers as authority for the statement that this hymn was one of those played. On the other hand, all whom I have questioned or corresponded with, including the best qualified, testified emphatically to the contrary. Our hopes were buoyed with the information, imparted through the ship’s officers, that there had been an interchange of wireless messages with passing ships, one of which was certainly coming to our rescue. To reassure the ladies of whom I had assumed special charge, I showed them a bright white light of what I took to be a ship about five miles off and which I felt sure was coming to our rescue. Colonel Astor heard me telling this to them and he asked me to show it and I pointed the light out to him. In so doing we both had now to lean over the rail of the ship and look close in towards the bow, avoiding a lifeboat even then made ready with its gunwale lowered to the level of the floor of the Boat Deck above us and obstructing our view; but instead of growing brighter the light grew dim and less and less distinct and passed away altogether. The light, as I have since learned, with tearful regret for the lost who might have been saved, belonged to the steamer _Californian_ of the Leyland line, Captain Stanley Lord, bound from London to Boston. She belonged to the International Mercantile Marine Company, the owners of the _Titanic_. This was the ship from which two of the six “ice messages” were sent. The first one received and acknowledged by the _Titanic_ was one at 7.30 p. m., an intercepted message to another ship. The next was about 11 p. m., when the Captain of the _Californian_ saw a ship approaching from the eastward, which he was advised to be the _Titanic_, and under his orders this message was sent: “We are stopped and surrounded by ice.” To this the _Titanic’s_ wireless operator brusquely replied, “Shut up, I am busy. I am working Cape Race.” The business here referred to was the sending of wireless messages for passengers on the _Titanic_; and the stronger current of the _Californian_ eastward interfered therewith. Though the navigation of the ship and the issues of life and death were at stake, the right of way was given to communication with Cape Race until within a few minutes of the _Titanic’s_ collision with the iceberg.