“In the morning there was no sign of Fritz, so we concluded that he had either sunk himself to the bottom or had somehow managed to get out of the harbour. In either case we should not see him more. So we just forgot him as we had forgotten others who had been chased and had escaped. But he turned up again after all. For twenty-four hours nothing much happened except the regular routine, though after the scare we were all very wide awake for more U boats, and then we had orders to proceed to sea. I was senior snotty of the _Olympus_, and I was on the after look-out platform as the ship cast loose from her moorings and moved away, to take her place in the line. As we got going there was a curious grating noise all along the bottom just as if we had been lightly aground; everyone was puzzled to account for it as there were heaps of water under us. The grating went on till we were clear of our berth, and then in the midst of the wide foaming wake rolled up the long thin hull of a submarine. A destroyer dashed up, and the forward gun was in the act of firing when a loud voice from her bridge called on the gunners to stop. ‘Don’t fire on a coffin,’ roared her commander. It was the German submarine, which after some thirty hours under water had become a dead hulk. All the air had long since been used up and the crew were lying at their posts—cold meat, poor devils. A beastly way to die.” “Beastly,” murmured the Marine. “War is a foul game.” “Still,” went on the Sub-Lieutenant, cheerfully, “a dead Fritz is always much more wholesome than a live one, and here were a score of him safely dead.” “But what had happened to the submarine?” asked the Marine, not being a sailor. “Don’t you see?” explained the Sub-Lieutenant, who had held his story to be artistically finished. “What a Pongo it is! Fritz had wandered about blind, deep down under water, until his batteries had given out. Then the submarine rose, fouled our bottom by the merest accident, and stuck there jammed against our bilge keels till the movement of the ship had thrown it clear. It swung to the tide with us. The chances against the submarine rising under one of the battleships were thousands to one, but chances like that have a way of coming off at sea. Nothing at sea ever causes surprise, my son.” The Sub-Lieutenant spoke with the assurance of a grey-haired Admiral; he was barely twenty years old, but he was wise with the profound salt wisdom of the sea and will never get any older or less wise though he lives to be ninety. * * * * *