"Then there must have been a blue moon shedding its light over these waters last month," he said decisively. "I quite agree with you that Fritz hasn't got the nerve--or it may be because he's got too much sense--to take a chance at a destroyer any more. But in the matter of putting up a fight for his life--yes, even for giving a real run for the money--well, all I can say is that if you'd been out on the _Sherill_ about three weeks ago, you wouldn't be making that complaint about one particular Fritz at least. If going eighteen hours, with two or three destroyers and a sloop or two doing everything they know how to crack in his shell all the time, without chucking his hand in, and very likely getting clear in the end--if that isn't putting up a fight for life and giving a run for the money, I don't know what is." I had heard this astonishing "battle of wakes and wits," as someone had christened it, referred to on several occasions, but had never had the chance to hear any of the details from one who had had anything like the opportunities always open to a signalman to follow what is going on. "Most of the bunch have heard all they want to hear of it already," the lad replied with a laugh when I asked him to tell me the story; "and, besides, a more or less long-winded yarn of the kind I suppose you want would tire 'em to tears anyway. If you really want to hear something of it, come over to the _Sherill_ (that's her stern there, just beyond the _Flossie_) any time after eight bells. I go on watch then, but it's a 'stand easy' in port, and there'll be time for all the yarning you want." I closed with that offer at once, and eight bells had not long gone before I had picked my precarious way over to the _Sherill_, and climbed the ladders to her snug little bridge. My man was there already, whiling away the time by rewriting an old college football song (he had been in his freshman year at Michigan when America came into the war) to fit destroyer work in the North Atlantic. I found him stuck at the end of the second line of the first verse, because the only rhymes he could think of for flotilla were Manila and camarilla, neither of which seemed sufficiently opposite to be of use, and he was rather glad of an excuse for putting the job by to await later inspiration. I gave him a "lead" for the U-boat yarn he had lured me there to hear, and he launched into it at once. This is the story the young signalman of U.S.S. _Sherill_ told me, the while the red squares of the cottagers' windows blinked blandly along the bank in the lengthening twilight and the purple shadows of the western hills piled deeper and duskier upon the "quiet waters of the River Lee." * * * * *