"What had happened, as nearly as we could reconstruct it, was this: The U-boat had been a mine-layer, probably interrupted on its way to lay its eggs off one of our main fleet bases. The chances are that it had been sufficiently injured by my depth-charges to make it more of a risk than its skipper cared to take to proceed farther from his base; quite likely, indeed, he had to put back at once. Then the chance of preparing a little surprise party for the ship responsible for his trouble must have occurred to him, and the result was that a snug little nest of mines was laid all the way around the marking buoy. Having more mines than he needed to barrage the buoy, he had scuttled several of those remaining after the first job was completed, and these had been the ones set off by the explosive charge on the trawlers' sweep. The spreading of wreckage as bait around the trap was probably an afterthought, for it was so hurriedly done that it really defeated the end it was intended to accomplish. I am inclined to think, in fact, that, if the mines had laid round the buoy, with no spread of oil or wreckage left to decoy us into them, they might have had a victim or two to their credit. They were laid shallow enough to have bumped both sloops and destroyers, and the exploding of a mine against the bows of one or the other of these may well have been the first warning we had of Fritz's little joke. As it was, that part of the show was so crudely done that it gave away that something was wrong. "Yes, I have always thought of that as 'Fritz's little joke,'" continued the captain, bracing himself at a new angle to meet a rollicking cork-screw action that was working into the ship's wallowings. "It was just the sort of a plant I would like to have left for Fritz, if our rôles had been reversed, and for a while I felt rather more kindly toward all Fritzes on account of having knocked up against it. That feeling persisted until three or four months later, when the fortunes of war--in the shape of a luckily-planted depth-charge--paved the way for an opportunity for me to tell the story to a certain Hun _Unterseeboot_ officer during the hour or two he was my guest on the way to base. He spoke English fairly, and understood it well; so that I was able to run through the yarn just about as I have told it to you. He gave vent to his approval in guttural 'Ya's' and grunts of satisfaction until I ended by asking him if he didn't think it was a jolly clever little joke. And what do you think he said to that? "'Choke,' he boomed explosively; 'choke, vy, mein frent, dot vos not ein choke ad all. He vos dryin to zink your destroy'r. Dot ist no choke.'" The captain stretched himself with a whimsical smile. "How unpleasant it would be to be shipmates with a chap like that who couldn't see the funny side of being blown up," he observed presently. "Just as unpleasant," I replied, "as it is pleasant to be shipmates with a man who _could_."