Do you know I always thought I was a sailor until I went on my first cruise in that submarine. But no, I’m no sailor and you can take it from me there were precious few of the others of our crew besides the commanding officer and Bill who were sure-enough tars of the old Neptune stripe. I’ll bet you a dollar to a glass of grape-juice that of the thirty-six men on board--or shall I say _in_ board--thirty of them were sea-sick. Of all the rolling and pitching a boat ever did I’ll give the cake to _H-24_. Not only that but when we were running _light_, that is when she was as high out of the water as she could get with all the water out of her ballast tanks, and we had rough weather I had to strap myself in my chair to keep from being thrown around the room. As one of the torpedo men used to sing, “Mr. Captain, stop the ship I want to get out and walk,” and, indeed, I would have given my pay and the bonus to boot to have had my old job back again on the chaser. It was all Bill’s fault and I didn’t mind telling him so either. “I should worry, matey,” he would say, and that’s all the satisfaction I could get out of him. After the _rookies_ got over being seasick we went out on practise trips when each man was taught all about the machinery and how to work it. This was done so that in case a man was put out of action another could take his place. It didn’t take me very long to get _hep_ to all the tricks for I already knew the A B C of oil engines, which again came in handy; storage batteries were right in my line and the rest of the machinery was pie for me. The _H-24_ has a hull that is very much like a huge catfish, that is it has a blunt round head and the torpedo tubes, one on either side, look for all the world like a pair of great eyes; the body tapers off gracefully to a point at the tail and on this the direction rudder is attached. Two horizontal rudders, or _hydroplanes_ as they are called, by which the submarine is given its diving angle, are fastened one to each side of her head and give the appearance of a pair of great lateral fins. Her hull is built up of thin but exceedingly strong sheets of steel and these are riveted together in the same fashion as the hull of any steel ship. When you consider that the hull of a submarine must be able to stand a pressure of at least 200 pounds to the square inch--as much as a high pressure steam boiler--without collapsing when it is fully submerged it must be clear that the strongest steel plate which can be made must be used. A steel deck, or superstructure as it is called, covers the top of the hull from bow to stern, nearly, and on its middle sets the _conning tower_. A steering wheel and compass are fixed to the side of the conning tower so that the boat can be steered from the outside when she is running light or awash.