"Quack! Red-white-blue," they could understand, though what it might mean they could not conceive. But when it came to "Quack! High-low-jack," the thing was beyond all reason. This was something new, probably a German trick. The British naval officers were concerned about it, and were decidedly relieved when they found it was no enemy concoction but came from the American sub-chasers which had lately arrived from across the Atlantic. They wanted to know what kind of a "quack" game the Americans were playing. And they were vastly amused when told that it was a new code they had devised that could be easily remembered by officers and men, but could not be deciphered by the Germans. The commander of one group named his boats in jingles or phrases. Three boats, as I have stated, constituted a submarine hunting unit. One set he designated as "red-white-blue," another as "corn-meal-mush," and a third as "high-low-jack." "Quack! Quack! Quack!" meant "operate at once." The men were fond of making parodies on "Mother Goose" and other familiar rhymes, applicable to their job of hunting the U-boats. One of these, paraphrasing "The Spider and the Fly," went this way: "Won't you come into my area?" said the chaser to the "sub"; "I'll treat you just as kindly as I would a tiger cub; "I will listen to your motors, I will catch you without fail, "And then I promise I will put some salt upon your tail." What do you suppose the Germans thought of all this queer stuff that was coming over the radiophone? I should have liked to have seen the U-boat captains under water, and code experts in Berlin searching the books and racking their brains to find out its meaning, for no boats or calls or orders were ever phrased in such language before. The sub-chasers put the Navy flag signals into words instead of letters. "Able-Boy!" was the code to "Take hunt formation; distance 500 yards." They had a word for every letter in the alphabet: Able, boy, cast, dog, easy, fox, George, have, item, jig, king, love, Mike, Nan, oboe, pup, quack, rot, sail, tare, unit, vice, watch, X-ray, yoke, zed. Almost any necessary order or information could be transmitted by radiophone by means of this code. Here is a typical instance of how it worked when a submarine was heard: Listener of Boat No. 1 reports: "Submarine, 90 degrees." Executive officer; "Submarine, 123 degrees." Executive reports: "2 (number of wing-boat) turbine 112 degrees." Executive reports: "3 (number of other wing-boat) submarine 130 degrees." Captain orders: "Course 123 degrees." Executive to Radio: "Fox-unit; dog-easy-cast!" Executive to Listener: "Up tube."