"I don't think it would have made a great deal of difference in his own fate which he did, but you can bet it made a lot of difference to me. I don't mind telling you that I was never gladder about anything in my life--at least anything since the rain that came at the end of a three-months' drought to save my corn-crop a few years back--than when those moon-faces went into eclipse and I saw him begin to submerge. Although it had never formed a part of any plan I had ever worked out, I give you my word that I fully intended to ram him, and that would have meant--well, about the same thing as one airplane charging into another. I should almost certainly have finished him, while at the same operation--but I don't need to tell you that a match-box like this was never made for bull-at-a-gate tactics. I've never heard of one of this class of M.L.s getting home with a good square butt at a U-boat, and I'm very happy to say that it didn't happen on this occasion. I don't think that we even so much as grazed his 'jump-string'; but the whole length of him was in plain sight sloping away from his surface swirl, and it was easy as picking ripe pippins to plant an 'ash-can' just where it was needed. The only aggravating thing about it was that, although oil came boiling up in floods for three days, there was never a Hun, nor even an unmistakable fragment of U-boat wreckage, picked up as a souvenir. There was never any doubt about the sinking, however, for the trawlers located the wreck on the bottom with a sweep, and gave it a few more 'cans' for luck. "But the best evidence in my own mind," concluded D----, pulling the blankets up higher over his shoulders as he settled back into the bunk, "is the fact that, six weeks later, the identical stunt I had tried this time actually lured another Fritz up to eat out of my hand almost exactly as I had been planning for. Now, if that first one had really survived and been able to return to base, it is certain that its skipper would have told what he saw, and that there would have been a general order (such as came out some months later when they finally did twig the game) warning all U-boats against coming up to gloat at close range over burning M.L.s. The fact that this second one was such easy picking proves beyond a doubt that the other never got back." "That last was the one you 'threw the hammer' at, wasn't it?" I asked, leaning far out to make my words carry down to D----'s now blanket-muffled ears. "Yes," came the wool-dulled answer. "Tell you some other night. Gotta get warm now. Toddy can's empty. Make a tent of the blankets with your knees, and take the electric heater to bed in it, if you can't stop shivering any other way. Good night." CHAPTER IX "Q"