During the night of this same day the _Corsair_ was zigzagging toward Brest at twelve knots when she encountered one of the submarines which had been running amuck among the fishing vessels. The weather was hazy and obscured and an occasional rain squall drove across the ship. The bridge and deck watches were peering into the gloom which lifted between the squalls to let a watery moon gleam through. Lieutenant Tod was officer of the watch and Quartermaster Augustus C. Smith, Jr., stood at the wheel. At 11.25 P.M. one of the whistling flurries of rain and wind had passed and the sea was visible in the illumination of the misty moonlight. No more than five hundred yards away the outline of a large submarine was clearly discernible as it rested at leisure upon the surface of the water, having emerged, no doubt, to open hatches and give the crew a breathing spell. This was a sight which the crew of the _Corsair_ had dreamed of. It was too good to be true. Quartermaster Augustus Smith, a bland, unruffled young man in all circumstances, had an uncommonly keen pair of eyes and he did not have to be informed that yonder was the enemy. He spun the wheel at the order. Lieutenant Tod threw the handle of the engine-room indicator to emergency speed, and the _Corsair_ swung to rush straight at the U-boat, hoping to ram. Commander Kittinger and his executive, Lieutenant Commander Porter, instantaneously appeared upon the bridge, while Ensign Gray dashed for the chart-house deck to make certain that the forward gun crew had sighted the submarine for themselves. There was excitement, but no confusion. Long training and disciplined habit had prepared them all for such an episode as this, like sprinters set and ready on the mark. No time was lost in wondering what ought to be done. Those who hunted Fritz had to be quickwitted or else he would scupper them. The submarine, caught napping, went ahead on its oil engines, moving slowly on the surface and almost in the same direction as the plunging _Corsair_ whose forward battery endeavored to bear on the mark, which was difficult for lack of a bow-chaser. Number Two gun barked once and the shell kicked up foam astern of the U-boat which was submerging in the very devil of a hurry, as one may imagine. Before the _Corsair_ could fire again, the conning tower had vanished and the gray shape of the slinking submarine was slanting downward in a “crash dive.” The yacht had three hundred yards to go before she passed over the spot. Her keel failed to strike and rip through the thin plates of the German craft which was, perhaps, thirty feet beneath the sea, but a bubbling wake was visible and into it the depth charges began to drop from the stern of the _Corsair_. The gunner’s mates played no favorites, but let go an English “ash can” with 120 pounds of TNT, then two French “Grenades Giraud,” and finally an American Sperry bomb.