"Not quite," I replied hastily, recognising from long experience the forerunning signs of a modest man trying to side-step going into details respecting some episode in which he happens to have played a leading part. "Not quite. It chances that I've heard something of the bagging of U.C.--from Admiral ---- not long after it occurred, and he said it was one of the cleverest bits of work of the kind that anyone has pulled off. I didn't connect you and the _Flash_ with it, though. But now that you're caught with the goods, the chance to hear several of the details the Admiral had failed to learn is too good to miss. How did you manage to slip up on her in the first place, and did you wing her skipper at the outset, and----?" Evidently figuring it would be best not to let me pile up too big a lead of questions for him to answer, the captain sat down resignedly and took up the thread of the story at somewhere near the beginning. "How did we manage to slip up on her?" he repeated. "Well, principally, I should say, because she was 'preoccupied.' I told you last night that I used to get away for a bit of tiger shooting while I was on Eastern stations, and you mentioned that you'd had a go at it yourself now and then. So we both have probably picked up a smattering of the ways of tigers. Now I've always maintained that the fact that I had given a bit of study to the ways of man-eaters was a big help to me in understanding the ways of Huns. A hungry tiger, on the prowl for something to devour, is about the hardest brute in the world to stalk successfully; while, on the other hand, one that has made its kill and is sating its bloody lust upon it is just about the easiest. It's just the same with a U-boat. The one best chance we have of surprising one on the surface is while it is in the act of sinking a merchantman by bombs or shell-fire, or just after the victim has been torpedoed and the pirate is standing-by to fire on the boats and pick up any officers it may think worth while to take prisoner. That was what was responsible for the luck that befell me in the instance in question. The U.C.--a day or two previously to the one on which she was slated to meet her finish, had sunk the British merchantman _Hilda Bronson_, and carried off as prisoners the captain and mate. These men, after we rescued them, were able to give us some account of how their hosts spent the morning of the day on which they encountered the _Flash_. Their general practice, of course, was to submerge in the daytime and run on the surface, charging batteries, during the night. Emboldened by two or three recent successes in sinking small merchantmen by gun-fire and bombs, they appeared to have become very contemptuous of our anti-submarine measures, and declared that they were just as safe on the surface in the daytime as at night. Bearing out the probability that these words were by no means spoken in jest, is the fact that they did not dive at daybreak, but