soon as possible, whether an altercation was necessary with the trawler or not, and so the petty officer was instructed to get a move on. As a matter of fact, the trawler was Dutch, and hoisted her colours to prove it, so that no shooting was necessary; but the chief feature of the incident was that from his arrival on deck with the axe, to the "plop" of the last wire being cut through five minutes later (when he straightened up, and luridly asked when the shooting was going to begin), the petty officer never looked round or faced to see what kind of enemy he had to engage. He chopped with his back turned, showing a fine lack of curiosity and a strict attention to business. The submarine sailor is really an imperturbable person. A boat was engaged in attacking a U-boat which had come to the surface half a mile away to charge her batteries, unaware of the presence of the E boat diving past on patrol. The sighting of the enemy, and the call to "action stations," came as the sailor servant was laying the officers' breakfast; the attack, owing to the circles and evolutions of the target, took an hour. As the E boat turned in on her firing course, her captain lowered the periscope, and steadying his voice to hide his excitement, passed the word: "We'll fire in three minutes--stand by bow tubes"; and at once a voice spoke by his side--a voice confident in the fact that a definite time-interval had at last been mentioned--"Your coffee, sir. Will you have it now? It's getting cold." It is regretted that the captain's placidity was so far short of his subordinate's that he abruptly refused the offer. The same sailor on one occasion, when acting as officers' cook, quite surpassed himself at dinner by producing a very excellent but mysterious savoury when the boat was a week out on patrol. His tact was not equal to his cooking, however, for on being questioned as to the savoury's ingredients, he explained that "four o' the eggs and the last bit o' cheese went west yesterday, and I didn't like to waste 'em." But then curry-powder will camouflage anything if you use enough. The submarine sailor is a picked man and a high standard is expected of him. The officers do their best to show him what the standard should be, but he is able to produce examples on his own for the instruction of his messmates. When in July 1918 "C 25" was attacked by five German seaplanes off Harwich, and the captain and all hands on deck were shot down by machine-gun fire, the first lieutenant started up the conning-tower to investigate, and as he came up, Leading-Seaman Barge, the only one alive of four on the bridge, called down to him, "Dive; don't worry about me, I'm done for." The boat did not dive; she got back to harbour on the surface, but Leading-Seaman Barge was dead five minutes after his last speech--a speech which, thinking it over, appears to be not a bad epitaph.