"Well, we've got our orders at last," begins the commander, addressing his crew of thirty, and the crew look solemn. For this is the U-47-1/2's first experience of active service. She has done nothing save trial trips hitherto and has just been overhauled for her first fighting cruise. Her commander snaps out a number of orders. Provisions are to be taken "up to the neck." Fresh water is to be put aboard, and engine-room supplies to be supplemented. A mere plank is the gangway to the little vessel. As the commander, followed by his officers, comes aboard, a sailor hands to each of the officers a ball of cotton waste, the one article aboard a submarine which never leaves an officer's hands. For of all oily, grimy, greasy places the inside of the submarine is supreme. The steel walls, the doors, the companion-ladders all sweat oil, and the hands must be wiped dry at every touch. Through a narrow hole aft the commander descends by a straight iron ladder into a misty region whose only light comes from electric glow-lamps. The air reeks with the smell of oil. Here is the engine-room and, stifling as the atmosphere is with the hatches up, it is as nothing compared to what the men have to breathe when everything is hermetically sealed. Here are slung hammocks, where men of one engine-watch sleep while their comrades move about the humming, purring apartment, bumping the sleepers with their heads and elbows. But little things like that do not make for wakefulness on a submarine. The apartment or vault is about ten feet long; standing in the middle, a man by stretching out his arms may easily have his fingers in contact with the steel walls on either side. Overhead is a network of wires, while all about there is a maze of levers, throttles, wheels, and various mechanical appliances that are the dismay of all but the mind specially trained in submarine operation. The commander very minutely inspects everything; a flaw will mean a long sleep on the bottom, thirty men dead. Everything is tested. Then, satisfied, the commander creeps through a hole into the central control-station, where the chief engineer is at his post. The engineer is an extraordinary individual; the life of the boat and its effectiveness are in his care. There must be lightning repairs when anything goes wrong on an undersea craft, and in all respects the chief's touch must be that of a magician.