The supper hour arrived, men came in groups to the galley door, some to depart with steamy pannikins, there was a smell of good food very satisfying to children of earth. In the officer's wardroom when dinner was over, and the negro mess boys were silently folding the white cloth, securing the chairs, and tidying up, those not on watch settled down to a friendly talk. All the lights except one bulb hanging over the table in a pyramidal tin shade had been switched off. It was very quiet. Now and then one could hear the splash of a wave against the side, a footfall on the deck overhead, or the tinkle of the knives and forks which the steward was putting away in a drawer. The hanging light swayed with the motion of the ship, trailing a pool of light up and down the oaken table. Cigarette smoke rose in wisps and long, languorous oriental coils to the clean ceiling. A sailor or two came in for his orders. Hushed voices talking apart, a direction to do this or that, a respectful business-like "yes, sir," a quiet withdrawal by the only door. It was all very calm, it had the atmosphere of a cruise, yet those aboard might have been torpedoed any minute, struck a mine, crashed into a submarine fooling about too near the surface (this has happened) or been sunk in thirty seconds by some hurrying, furtive brute of a liner which would have ridden over them as easily as a snake goes over a branch. The talk flowed in many channels, on the problems of destroyers, on the adventures of other boats, on members of the crew soon to be advanced to commissioned rating, and under the thought under the words, could be discerned the one fierce purpose of these fighting lives; the will to strike down the submarine and open the lanes of the sea. Oh, the vigilance, the energy, the keenness of the American patrol! There were tales of U-boats hiding in suspected bays, of merchantmen swiftly and terribly avenged, of voices that cried for help in the night, of life boats almost awash in whose foul waters the dead floated swollen and horrible. The war of the destroyer against the submarine is a matter of tragic melodrama.