A few days later a deputation of his brother submarine captains summoned the hero to the wardroom (what time the sun had risen over the fore-yard), and there, to the accompaniment of cocktails and an illuminated address, solemnly presented him with a pair of binoculars subtly fashioned out of beer bottles: in the wording of the gunner’s supply note that accompanied them “complete in case, tin, black-japanned.” That all things might be done decently and in order, the recipient was bidden to sign an official receipt-note for the same. Now the moral of this may appear a trifle obscure; but it serves to illustrate the attitude towards life of the Navy-under-the-Sea. The lives of these defenceless victims of Hunnish brutality had been saved--therefore the occasion demanded not heroics, but high mirth. The hero of the affair admits to having partly missed the joke. But this may be accounted for by the fact that the binoculars were empty, and that later on, when presented with his monthly mess-bill, he discovered that the official receipt which bore his signature included the cocktails ordered by the deputation during the presentation ceremony. So much for the Jest of Life. There is a private magazine which appears monthly in a certain east-coast port; it is edited by a submarine officer, written by submarine officers, and its circulation is confined chiefly to the Navy-under-the-Sea: but it affords the truest and clearest insight that can be obtained of the psychology of the Submarine Service. The success of a publication of this nature depends upon raw personalities--indeed there is very little other “copy” obtainable; the readers demand it voraciously, and the victims chuckle and tear off the editor’s trousers in the smoking-room. Month by month, as you turn the witty pages, familiar names reappear, derided, scandalously libelled, mercilessly chaffed to make the mirth of the Mess. Then abruptly a name appears no more. “Art called away to the north. Old sea-dog? Yet, ere you depart, Clasp once more this hand held forth.... Good-bye! God bless your dear old heart!” The above lines are quoted from the magazine in question, with the editor’s permission, and in reverent memory of a very gallant officer, to sum up, as no prose could, the attitude towards Death of these “gentlemen unafraid.” It happened that another of Britain’s little wet ships went into the northern mists and returned no more. As was the custom, a brother officer of the Submarine Service went ashore to tell the tale to the wife of her commanding officer, returning from the task white and silent.