All night long under a gloomy, starless sky we patrolled waters dark as the very waves of the Styx. The hope that nourished us was the thought of finding a submarine on the surface, but we heard no noise through the mysterious dark, and a long, interminable dawn revealed to us nothing but the high crumbling cliffs of a lonely and ill-reputed bay. Where were _they_ then, I have often wondered? When had they their last look at the sun? Had they any consciousness of the end which time was bringing to them with a giant's hurrying step? At about six o'clock we swung off to the southward, and in a short time the coast had faded from sight. From six o'clock to about half past ten we swept in great circles and lines the mist encircled disk of the pale sea which had been entrusted to our keeping. We were at hand to answer any appeal for aid which might flutter through the air, to investigate any suspicious wreckage; above all, to fulfill our function of destruction. I have spoken elsewhere of the terror which lurks in the word _destroyer_. We were hunters; beaters of the ambush of the sea. About us lay the besieged waters, yellow green in colour, vexed with tide rips and mottled with shadows of haze and appearances of shoal. We were on the bridge. Suddenly a voice called down the tube from the lookout on the mast: "Smoke on the horizon just off the port bow, sir." In a little while a vague smudginess made itself seen along the humid southeast, and some fifteen minutes later there emerged from this smudge the advance vessels of a convoy. Now one by one, now in twos and threes, the vessels of the convoy climbed over the dim edge of the world, a handful of destroyers accompanying the fleet. Almost every ship was camouflaged, though the largest of all, a great ocean drudge of a cargo boat, still preserved her decency of dull grey. A southeast wind blowing from behind the convoy sent the smoke of the funnels over the bows and down the western sky. There was something indescribably furtive about the whole business. The ships were going at their very fastest, but to us they seemed to be going very slowly, to be drifting almost, across the southern sky. "We advanced," as our report read later, "to take up a position with the convoy." The watch, always keen on the 660, redoubled its vigilance. The bait was there; the hunt was on. Now, if ever, was the time for submarines. I remember somebody saying, "We may see a sub." The destroyer advanced to within three miles of the convoy, which was then across her bow. The morning was sunny and clear; the sun high in the north. "Periscope! Port bow," suddenly cried the surgeon of the ship, then on watch on the bridge. "About three hundred yards away, near that sort of a barrel thing over there. See it? It's gone now." Powerful glasses swept the suspected area. The captain, cool as ice, took his stand by the wheel. "There it is again, sir. About seventy-five yards nearer this way."