"That's fine! We'll get you some dungarees. Can't fool round a submarine in good clothes." The whole table began to take a friendly interest, and a dispute arose as to whose clothes would best fit me. I am a large person. "Give him my extra set, they're on the side of my locker." "Don't you want a cap or something?" "Hey, that's too small, wait and I'll get Tom's coat." "Try these on." They are a wonderful lot, the submarine officers. I felt frightfully submarinish in my outfit. We must have made a picturesque group. The captain led off, wearing a tattered, battered, old uniform of Annapolis days, I followed wearing an old Navy cap jammed on the side of my head and a suit of newly laundered dungarees; the second officer brought up the rear; his outfit consisted of dungaree trousers, a kind of aviator's waistcoat, and an old cloth cap. The submarines were moored close by the side of the mother ship, a double doorway in the wall of the machine shop on the lower deck opening directly upon them. A narrow runway connected the nearest vessel with the sill of this aperture, and mere planks led from one superstructure to another. The day, first real day after weeks of rain, was soft and clear, great low masses of vapour, neither mist nor cloud, but something of both, swept down the long bay on the wings of the wind from the clean, sweet-smelling sea; the sun shone like ancient silver. Little fretful waves of water clear as the water of a spring coursed down the alley ways between the submarines; gulls, piping and barking, whirled like snow flakes overhead. I crossed to one grey alligatorish superstructure, looked down a narrow circular hatch at whose floor I could see the captain waiting for my coming, grasped the steel rings of a narrow ladder, and descended into the submarine. The first impression was of being surrounded by tremendous, almost incredible complexity. A bewildering and intricate mass of delicate mechanical contrivances, valves, stop cocks, wheels, chains, shining pipes, ratchets, faucets, oil-cups, rods, gauges. Second impression, bright cleanliness, shining brass, gleams of steely radiance, stainless walls of white enamel paint. Third impression, size; there was much more room than I had expected. Of course everything is to be seen by floods of steady electric light, since practically no daylight filters down through an open hatchway.