Suddenly the mate gripped him by the arm. "Skipper, a submarine on board us." And there the enemy was, a bare hundred yards off on the starboard quarter. "Hard a-starboard, and a tick ahead!" shouted the skipper, and rushed for the gun, with the crew following. The gun was properly in charge of the mate, and he got to it first; but the brief dialogue which followed robbed him of his glory. "Right, skipper," he said, meaning thereby "This is my job." But in the same breath the skipper said "All right, Jack, I got him! you run on bridge and keep him astern." The _Rosetta’s_ discipline was good; the mate went like a man, and the skipper laid the gun. He was justified by his success. The enemy was very quickly put out of action, being apparently left altogether behind by the hurricane energy of Skipper Novo. From the moment of breaking surface less than sixty seconds had gone by when the _Rosetta’s_ gun found the target. The U-boat was 250 feet long and only 300 feet away; every shot was a hit. The fourth caused an explosion, and flames shot up 4 or 5 feet above the submarine. Evidently she could no longer submerge, and she attempted to make off on the surface. But Skipper Novo was right in his estimate of his own chance—he had "got him." His fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth shots were all direct hits on the receding target, and at the eighth the enemy sank outright. The _Rosetta_ then spoke the smack _Noel_, which had been close to her during the action, and now confirmed all her observations. There was no doubt that the U-boat had been the obstruction which was tangled in the trawl. She had carried it all away, and in order to get clear had been obliged to come to the surface, without knowing where she might find herself, and there she had met her appropriate fate. A third of these fights was a miniature fleet action, with an epic sound about it. In the Downs, and in the first twilight of a November morning, three of his Majesty’s armed drifters—the _Present Help_, the _Paramount_, and the _Majesty_—were beginning their daily sweep for mines, when Skipper Thomas Lane of the _Present Help_, which was spare ship at the moment, sighted an object a mile distant to the eastward. As day was breaking, she was quickly marked for a German submarine—a huge one, with two big guns mounted on deck, one a 4-inch and one a 22-pounder. Nevertheless the _Present Help_, the _Paramount_, and the _Majesty_ opened fire at once with their 6-pounders, not standing off, but closing their enemy, and continuing to close her under heavy fire, until they were hitting her with their own light guns. Even our history can hardly show a grander line of battle than those three tiny ships bearing down upon their great antagonist; and although U48 did not fall to their fire, her surrender was due in the first instance to their determined onset.