The range was about five miles, but owing to the bad light Captain Grenfell could not see whether the enemy was closing. In order to induce her so to do, at 8 a.m. he altered course to N. 45 W. This brought the enemy nearly astern, and at the same time _Penshurst_ slowed down to half speed. By this time the sun was above the horizon, and the light was worse than before, but the submarine was apparently altering course to cut off the _Wileyside_, and ignoring _Penshurst_. Therefore, at 8.6 a.m. the latter altered course so as again to bring the submarine abeam. This had the desired effect, for at 8.10 a.m. the submarine fired a third shot, which fell about 200 yards short of _Penshurst_, and this proved that Q-ship and submarine were closing. Two minutes later _Penshurst_ stopped her engines and the usual ‘panic’ evolution was carried out, by which time the submarine had closed to within 3,000 yards, and turned on a course parallel with the Q-ship, reducing to slow speed and being just abaft the _Penshurst’s_ port beam and silhouetted against the glare of the sun, three Germans being seen standing in the conning-tower. In order to spin out the time, the Q-ship’s boats were being turned out and lowered as clumsily as possible, and now the U-boat sent along a couple more shots, one of which fell over and the other short. Thus far it had been a contest of brain, and Captain Grenfell had succeeded in making the enemy conform to the British will. At 8.20 a.m., as there seemed no possibility of inducing the submarine to come any closer, _Penshurst_ opened fire, but there was time to fire only a couple of rounds from the 12-pounder and 6-pounder and three rounds from the 3-pounder before the German hurriedly dived, for all three guns had dropped their shots pretty close to the target. The shooting had been done under difficult circumstances, for it was at a black spot against a strong glare. When once the enemy submerged, _Penshurst_ went full speed to the spot and dropped a depth charge, but the German had escaped, and she would live to warn her sister submarines about the Q-ship which had surprised her. For this U-boat had had a careful look at _Penshurst_, and Captain Grenfell could hardly hope to surprise the submarine again and bring her to action, so he altered course to the eastward with the object of intercepting another U-boat, whose presence had been reported at 11.15 that forenoon 5 miles north of Alderney. Very likely the submarine with whom he had just been engaged would send out by her _telefunken_ wireless a full description of the Q-ship, so, as she steamed along, _Penshurst_ now altered her appearance by painting herself a different colour and by lowering the mizzen-mast during the night. Thus, when the sun rose on November 30, on what was to be _Penshurst’s_ lucky day, she seemed to be a totally different ship.