In spite of some inward observations, I spared her any other comment than to say, “How jolly!” as if the exchange had been the most matter-of-course thing in the world. I spoke just now of riding tempests and zephyrs, and something like that it was to plow along at every ounce of steam, with cross seas, head seas, seas abeam, and seas abaft, as each new zigzag caught them. On the roaring of the wind and the plunge and thunder of the waves one rose into regions of tumultuous play where life and death were the stakes. I saw no signs of fear, and still less of panic; nor, so far as the eye could read, anything more than a sporting excitement. One would have said that our peril was accepted as being all in the game, part of the day’s work. By the end of 1916 Atlantic travelers had come to take the submarine for granted, just as the statesmen of Plantagenet and Tudor times took the headsman’s block as one of the natural risks of going into politics. But we looked instinctively for a periscope. It is not an easy thing for any one to see, and for me it was more difficult than for most. I saw none; or I saw a hundred. With the imperfect vision of my one eye the crests of the billows bristled with moving four-inch pipes; and then suddenly all would disappear and I saw nothing but the waves curling upward into coronets of foam with veils of trailing lace. Not that I was worse off in this respect than my fellow-travelers. As they ran for their boats they would pause, take a hurried look at the seas, exclaiming, “There it is!” and then, more doubtfully, “No, no!” all in one breath. The “No, no!” was generally uttered in a tone of disappointment, since to cross the ocean and sight no submarine would have been like journeying through Egypt and missing the pyramids. And yet our danger was apparent. Only a fortnight before the _Kamouraska_, sister ship to the _Assiniboia_, had been sent to the bottom in these very waters, with great loss of life. Of the tragedy the papers had given us realistic pictures that were fresh in all our minds. There was a preliminary scene on board not unlike the one we were enacting. We saw later a shell bursting on the deck, somewhere amidships. We saw the passengers and crew taking to the boats with shells kicking up geysers among them as they tried to get away. We saw the great ship sticking as straight up out of the water as a Cleopatra’s Needle, before going slowly down. We saw the U-boat herself lying on the water like a crocodile, some four thousand yards away; we saw Queenstown as a morgue. All this was as vividly in our minds as a rehearsal to the actors of a play; and yet we were probably no more nervous than the company on a first night when the curtain is going up.