with the delicate electrical apparatus, and the wireless voice was silent; and throughout the morning and afternoon, for seven hours, Phillips and Bride were hard at work testing and searching for the little fault that had cut them off from the world of voices. And at last they found it, and the whining and buzzing began again. But it told them nothing new; only the same story, whispered this time from the _Californian_—the story of ice. The day wore on, the dusk fell, lights one by one sprang up and shone within the ship; the young moon rose in a cloudless sky spangled with stars. People remarked on the loveliness of the night as they went to dress for dinner, but they remarked also on its coldness. There was an unusual chill in the air, and lightly clad people were glad to draw in to the big fireplaces in smoke-room or drawing-room or library, and to keep within the comfort of the warm and lamplit rooms. The cold was easily accounted for; it was the ice season, and the airs that were blowing down from the north-west carried with them a breath from the ice-fields. It was so cold that the decks were pretty well deserted, and the usual evening concert, instead of being held on the open deck, was held in the warmth, under cover. And gradually people drifted away to bed, leaving only a few late birds sitting up reading in the library, or playing cards in the smoking-rooms, or following a restaurant dinner-party by quiet conversation in the flower-decked lounge. The ship had settled down for the night; half of her company were peacefully asleep in bed, and many lying down waiting for sleep to come, when something happened. What that something was depended upon what part of the ship you were in. The first thing to attract the attention of most of the first-class passengers was a negative thing—the cessation of that trembling, continuous rhythm which had been the undercurrent of all their waking sensations since the ship left Queenstown. The engines stopped. Some wondered, and put their heads out of their state-room doors, or even threw a wrap about them and went out into the corridors to see what had happened, while others turned over in bed and composed themselves to sleep, deciding to wait until the morning to hear what was the cause of the delay. Lower down in the ship they heard a little more. The sudden harsh clash of the engine-room telegraph bells would startle those who were near enough to hear it, especially as it was followed almost immediately afterwards by the simultaneous ringing all through the lower part of the ship of the gongs that gave warning of the closing of the water-tight doors. After the engines stopped there was a moment of stillness; and then the vibration began again, more insistently this time, with a certain jumping movement which to the experienced ear meant that the engines were being sent full speed astern; and then they stopped again, and again there was stillness.