Now the hull of a submarine is tested to resist the pressure of the water up to a certain depth; after that the joints leak, plates buckle, and finally the whole structure collapses like a crumpled egg-shell. With one eye on the depth-gauge the British lieutenant forced the German down to the safety limit and, foot by foot, beyond it. Then gradually they heard the enemy begin to bump along their bottom; he had broken away from the death-lock and was rolling helplessly aft beneath their hull. The sounds ceased and the needle on the dial jerked back and began to retrace its course. The British submarine rose, to contemplate a circle of oil slowly widening on the surface in the region of the encounter. Few of these grim games of Peep-bo! are without a moral of some sort. A gentleman adventurer within the mouth of a certain river was aware of a considerable to-do on board flag-draped tugs and river-craft; he himself shared in the universal elation on sighting through his periscope a large submarine, also gaily decked with flags, evidently proceeding on a trial trip. He waited until she was abreast of him and then torpedoed her, blowing her sky-high. Remained then the business of getting home. Dashing blindly down towards the open sea with periscope beneath the surface, he stuck on a sandbank and there lay, barely submerged. A Zeppelin at once located him: but in view of his position and the almost certain prospect of his capture, forbore to drop bombs; instead she indicated his position to a flotilla of destroyers and stood by to watch the fun. The commander of the submarine raised his periscope for a final look round and found a destroyer abreast his stern torpedo tube. He admits that things looked blackish, but there was the torpedo in the tube and there was the destroyer. He fired and hit her; the next instant, released from the embrace of the mud by the shock of the discharge, the submarine quietly slid into deep water and returned home. In big brass letters on an ebonite panel in the interior of the submarine is her motto--one word: RESURGAM. * * * * * There are both heights and depths attainable by the Spirit of Man, concerning which the adventurer who has been there is for ever silent. His mother or his wife may eventually wring something out of him, but not another man. Readers of the following narrative must therefore content themselves with the bald facts and the consolation that they are true. What the man thought about during his two hours’ fight for life: how he felt when Death, acknowledging defeat, opened his bony fingers and let him go, is his own affair--and possibly one other’s.