Moreover the salt water had apparently seeped through the deck in the battery-room and reached the batteries, probably causing them to go dead, but what was much worse, it was forming chlorine gas. This gas, which is so deadly that it was used during the war for gas attacks, was finding its way into the control-room through small leaks around supposedly watertight fittings in the battery-room bulkhead. Faint whiffs of this gas began to be noticed, both by its pungent smell and by the effect on the throat, which caused dry hacking coughs. While we might fight the carbon dioxide and live for a week, the chlorine gas was a much more serious matter. It cut down our breathing limit from a possible week to two days at most. The Captain was everywhere, encouraging the men. His leadership and resourcefulness were an inspiration to us all. In the face of the coming horrors which hour by hour were stealing in on us, he was somehow able to imbue us all with that “never-give-up” spirit which accomplishes miracles. * * * * * Some time after the lighting system failed, the Captain called the officers together to discuss possible ways of getting some message to the surface. He tried to keep us from seeing how discouraged he was, but we sensed it in spite of his efforts. The Exec advanced a theory that we might shoot out some calcium—obtained from the torpedo torch-pots, a few of which were in the magazine. This could be done through the submarine signaling device which was used in wartime for sending secret smoke signals to the surface to make friendly but overzealous vessels stop trying to sink you with depth mines. This calcium, when ejected, would form gas which upon rising to the surface, and coming in contact with the air, would burst into flame. In this way, the oil which we had blown out might catch fire and thus attract the attention of any passing ship, particularly at night. It seemed rather a far-fetched theory, but we had reached the stage where we had nothing to lose by trying it.