A surface ship has a certain fixed draught, and she has to keep that figure always before her mind's eye. A submarine never approaches the coast or navigates in thick weather, unless trimmed down until she is drawing several feet more than usual. When in this condition a meeting with the shore does not matter much. If she slides up on the land, she blows her tanks and slides off again, so that grounding in a submarine comes to be looked on as a very ordinary and matter-of-fact sort of business. "E 2" was cruising in a fog in the Bight, and was trimmed down in case of accidents, when she came well on to the beach under the western cliffs of Heligoland,--she was so close to the gun-emplacement that the guns could not be depressed enough to bear on her, which was certainly fortunate. The Germans were very agitated. They ran about, hailing and bellowing at her and working themselves up to a great state of mind. "E 2," however, blew her tanks out and backed off; as she did so a torpedo-boat arrived and opened fire on her. "E 2," finding salvos falling close aboard of her, decided that there was hardly time to turn round and depart submerged in the usual way, so she continued to go astern, and, reversing the hydroplanes, dived off backwards--none of the shots hitting her; and, in fact, the accurate estimation of deflection by the torpedo-boat, in view of "E 2's" squid-like action, must have been difficult. A matter that caused a good deal of amusement to our submarine service throughout the war, and which probably made the Germans laugh also, was the great "petrol myth." It is a story which is at least as good as the Russian troops that travelled through England. Every part of the coast was reported to be the scene of mysterious rendezvous between U-boats and German spies, and at these meetings petrol cans changed hands--the U-boats taking the full tins, and the spy, presumably, insisting on getting the empty tins back, or else the sum of two shillings each in lieu. Heaven knows who invented the story, but it sounds like a "leg-pull," which had got out of hand and spread like a disease. For one thing, submarines don't use petrol--they use Diesel engines and heavy oil. For another thing, a submarine, depending on her size, carries from 30 to 300 tons of fuel in her tanks. If a wicked German spy was kind enough to take a couple of tins of petrol aboard a U-boat, he would, presuming that the captain owned a motor bicycle, be gladly welcomed; but his gift would hardly add to the radius of action of the boat. A submarine can keep the sea longer than a surface ship can, and has a much longer radius of action--the heavy-oil engine is economical and efficient, and such things as special fuel-carrying tenders or submerged fuel-tanks are unnecessary luxuries. It is true that U-boats used on occasions the little creeks and bays of Scotland and the Orkneys to shelter in, and in fact one boat landed some men on one of