IV RICH SPOILS 68 V THE WITCH-KETTLE 91 VI A DAY OF TERROR 115 VII A LIVELY CHASE 140 VIII THE BRITISH BULL-DOG 163 IX HOMEWARD BOUND! 189 THE ADVENTURES OF THE U-202 THE ADVENTURES OF THE U-202 I OUR FIRST SUCCESS _At the hunting grounds North Sea, April 12, 19—. Course: northwest. Wind: southwest, strength 3-4. Sea: strength 3. View: good. Both machines in high speed._ We were very comfortable in the conning tower because the weather was fine and the sun burned with its heat our field-gray skin jackets. “Soon we will have summer,” I said to the officer on guard, Lieutenant Petersen, who was sitting with me on the conning tower’s platform. I felt entirely too hot in my thick underwear. Petersen, who, like me, was sitting with his legs dangling in the open hatch on whose edge we had placed ourselves, put his hand on the deck and loosened the thick, camel’s wool scarf, twice wrapped around his neck, as if suddenly he realized it was too hot for him, too. “I think I’ll soon discharge this one from service,” said Petersen, and pulled at the faithful winter friend as if he wished to strip it off. “Don’t be too hasty, my dear lieutenant,” I replied laughing. “Just wait until to-night, and then I am sure that you will repent and take your faithful friend back into the service.” “Are we going to keep above the water to-night, Herr Captain-Lieutenant, or are we to submerge?” he asked me. “It depends on what comes up,” I answered. “It rests as usual with the weather.” Thus we were talking and smoking on the conning tower while our eyes scanned the horizon and kept a sharp lookout all around us. On the little platform, which in a sharp angle triangle unites itself from behind with the tower, the subordinate officer corporal was on guard, and with a skin cloth was cleaning the lenses on his double spy-glass, which were wet. “Did you also get a dousing, Krappohl?” I asked. “Then you didn’t look out, either. That rascal soaked my cigarette just as he did the lenses on your spy-glass. That’s the dickens of a trick.” With the word “rascal” I meant the splashing wave, which, while the sea was in a perfect calm, without any reason climbed up to us on the tower. If there had been a storm it would have been nothing to mention. Then we often did not have a dry thread on our bodies. But such a shameless scoundrel, which in the midst of the most beautiful weather suddenly throws himself over a person, is something to make one angry.