"Most of the 'Q-boats' they were figuring on at that time were of the slower freighter type, with a rather powerful gun mounted for'ard and concealed as well as possible by something rigged up to look like deck cargo. "That was, however, all well and good as far as it went, I figured, but, from such study of the Hun's little ways as I had been able to make, I had my doubts as to whether an old cargo boat would prove tempting enough bait to put a Fritz in the proper mental state for a real 'rise'--one in which he'd deliver himself up to you bound and gagged, so to speak. _That_ was the kind of a thing I wanted to make a bid for, and, by cracky, I pulled it off. "From all I could pick up, from the inside and outside, about the ships that had already been torpedoed, I came to the conclusion that the Hun would go to a lot more trouble, and take a deal bigger chance, to put down a vessel with a number of passengers than he would with a freighter. And even that early in the War a U-boat had exposed itself to being rammed by a destroyer, when it could have avoided the attack entirely by foregoing the pleasure of a Parthian shot at a lifeboat which was already half-swamped in the heavy seas. _That_ was the little trait of the Hun's that I reckoned on playing up to when I began to figure on taking the '----' out U-boat strafing without any gun larger than a Maxim aboard her. I'd have been glad enough of a good four-incher, understand, if there had been any way in the world it could have been concealed. But there wasn't, and rather than miss getting into the game at all, I was quite content to tackle it with such weapons as were available. That was where my 'che-ild' came in. "On the score of weapons available, there were only two--the lance-bomb and the depth-charge. For the kind of game I had in mind, it was to the former that I pinned my faith. It was powerful enough to do all the damage needful to the shell of a submarine if only a chance to get home with it could be contrived. 'Getting it home' has always been the great difficulty with the lance-bomb, and up to that time the only chap to have any luck with it was the skipper of a M.L.--another Yank, by the way, who came over and got into the game in the same way, and about the same time, that I did. He had been the champion sixteen-pound hammer-thrower in some Middle Western college only a year or two before, and, by taking a double turn on his heeling deck, managed to chuck the bomb (which is on the end of a wooden handle, much like the old throwing hammer) about three times as far as anyone ever dreamed of, and cracked in the nose of a lurking U-boat with it.