"I have a look round, and if it's all clear I sing out below to start the charge. They get on with it then, and the engines start bumping the batteries up full bore, and at the same time we move slow ahead. I only keep just the conning-tower out, and no more buoyancy, so we have men on the hydroplane wheels to keep her from doing a dive accidentally, and as we're moving ahead a little 'up helm' keeps her fairly dry. The hand on deck does 'look-out' astern and I look out ahead; meanwhile the people below carry on smoking (that's the chance they've been waiting for all day). If the look-out sees anything at all he gives a yell and points at it, and then jumps down inside the conning-tower. If I don't like it when I turn round and see it, I press the button and follow him down. If I see something first I hit the look-out, and he jumps down and I follow. They're all on the top line below, so as soon as I press the button and the horns sound (they make a din all over the boat) they open the vents and put her bow down with the planes, and then by the time I've closed the lid over my head the gauge is showing fifteen feet, and she's going down at a big slant. If I'm slack on the lid I get wet. If I'm too slack and the First Lieutenant thinks I'm not going to get the top lid shut before she's under, he slams the lower doors and either leaves me isolated in the tower or else swimming around on the surface till he comes up later to look for me. (No--I've never got left like that yet, but some people have been pretty near it. It's not safe for the First Lieutenant to hang on too long for you--he might fill the boat.) It's quite simple. With a well-trained crew anything's safe, and you can cut it as fine as you like. When you've heard the propellers from overhead[1] you just keep along at sixty feet for ten minutes or so, and then you come up and get on with the work again. Oh! I'm bored with all this talking. You ought to be able to run a trip inside by yourself by now. But there's one thing always makes me mad, that's the Heligoland leave-boat. She leaves the island on Friday afternoons and she comes back on Monday morning. She's a big flat-bottomed coal barge--too shallow draught to torpedo--and crammed with men. You can't use a gun, because she's towed by a small tug with a big gun forward and a little one aft; and besides, we're not allowed to give away the fact that we're there by having a joke with small craft. But it's devilish aggravating, all the same, to see the bloated Hun going off for the week-end while we dive up and down for a week waiting for something to turn up. We get our leave all right though. We get three days to the half crew each trip, so that each of us gets leave every other trip. The business is too exciting for me to take leave seriously. I just go to all the revues and amusements I can if I go up to town, and if it's winter-time like now, I get in three days' shooting here.