The _Corsair_ was in company with the yachts _Wakiva_ and _Alcedo_, and promptly signalled them to disregard her movements as she was going in search of survivors. Shortly after noon, the wreck of a schooner was sighted, the hull awash, and many barrels of oil floating near it. The _Corsair’s_ gunners fired seven shots into the derelict, but were unable to sink it and the yacht hastened on her errand of mercy, guided by the squared areas of the secret chart to which the radio message had referred. Three hours later the first boat was found, a dory four men from the French fishing bark, _Saint Pierre_, which had been set on fire by a boarding party from a U-boat one hundred and eighty miles off Ushant. The mate, who was one of those rescued, swore that after the crew of the _Saint Pierre_ had scrambled into the boats two more large submarines appeared, and that all three of these infernal sea monsters had made a circuit of the hapless bark before destroying her. It was also his belief that each submarine was very formidable, at least a hundred metres in length and mounting two large cannon. The crew of the _Corsair_ cheered at the tidings while they sympathized with the forlorn fishermen. “The U-boats were coming in bunches,” joyously reflected the deck force, and the “black gang” slung the coal with an earnest determination to give her twenty knots or blow the boilers out of her. The ship raced to scan the sea for the other boats of the _Saint Pierre_ and at 4.35 P.M. heard firing in the direction of a tall barkentine whose sails gleamed seven miles to the northward. Here was a second fisherman in trouble and a U-boat actually shelling her within sight of the U.S.S. _Corsair_! Ten minutes more, with speed worked up to eighteen knots, and the submarine could be clearly recognized through the binoculars aimed from bridge and crow’s-nest. Etched very small against the horizon was the deck, like a fine, black line, and the conning tower as a tiny hump in the middle, while a gun winked as a red spark, and the water splashed high near the target of a sailing vessel and was visible as so many white specks resembling dabs of cotton. The _Corsair_ was then four miles distant, too far to use her own guns effectively. The submarine delayed five minutes longer, rolling on the surface and using her battery in order to sink the fisherman without wasting a precious torpedo on a victim so unimportant. Then the cruel U-boat filled her ballast tanks and submerged as a whale sounds when alarmed. Sighs from the _Corsair’s_ decks were mingled with the deep and hearty curses of the saltwater vocabulary. The commander expurgated his report when it came to writing it, and this was his unadorned narrative: