Wildly gesticulating and with much waving of arms the thoroughly frightened and superstitious fisherman explained matters as best he could. Others sprang to various positions in the boat to investigate for themselves. The story was indeed too true, and consternation at the unknown plainly showed itself on the countenances of all--except perhaps the imperturbable Christian and the other spare hand. Whilst the crew was debating with its skipper what was best to be done under the circumstances, another phase of the phenomenon developed. A huge, unwieldy shape gradually rose from the sea abaft the taffrail. It had a smooth, polished skin, which shone and glistened in the moonlight like the back of a whale. But on looking farther along to gauge as accurately as could be the whole length of this mysterious leviathan of the deep, a break in the smoothness of its form was apparent, together with an excrescence which the skipper of the trawler was not long in recognising as the conning tower of a submarine. Ye gods above! How frightened they all were. How the skipper swore, and raved, and shrieked for a hatchet to cut away. How he sawed at the trawl rope with his belt knife before it arrived, and how he hacked the warp in two when he did get it. What a commotion there was to pack on sail in order to get clear before the Germans could get out of their steel shell and make things unpleasant for them. How everyone flew about and gave orders to everyone else. Yes! All seemed to lose their heads entirely, except the two spare hands whose whole attention seemed attracted aft. They gazed, with looks which might have been mistaken for gleams of triumph, at that huge, ugly monster, now bumping the stern of the little fishing-boat. They noted every detail open to visional observation, while their unusual coolness was not noticed in the general alarm of the crew, who thought only of their individual escape and safety. A close, impartial observer might almost have been led to the belief that the expression on the countenance of Christian betrayed the realisation of an all-too-long delayed event which had at last crystallised and fully justified his anticipations.