The clatter and excitement of flooding tubes and opening doors lasted hardly sixty seconds, but it was punctuated by several sentences from the periscope position such as: "_Are_ you going to get those tubes ready?" and less plaintively, "How much _something_ longer now?" The captain's thoughts were out in the mist above him where his range of view was bounded on two sides by faintly seen grey masses that rushed past him at close range. The reports of, "Ready, bow tubes"; "beam tubes ready, sir," came through the voice-pipes as the first lieutenant hurried from forward, panting from his exertions. "All ready, sir," he said, and paused for breath. "What is it, sir; can you see?..." The captain interrupted: "_Yes_," he said, "blinkin' mist and battle-cruisers. Port beam, stand by; port beam, fire! Starboard twenty-five; stop port, full speed starboard; look out forrard, Number One, I'm going to let go the lot." The first lieutenant vanished through the control-room door as the familiar sound of a destroyer passing at short range began again to fill the boat. At the periscope the captain swore silently and continuously at the mist, the enemy, and the L-boat. He was between the destroyer screen and the big ships; the whole High Sea Fleet seemed to be coming by, and he had the very vaguest idea of their formation or even of their course. His first torpedo had missed, and it was more than likely the track of it would be seen. The L-boat spun round under the drive of the screw and the helm she carried, and as two destroyers of the screen converged on her periscope in high fountains of spray, she fired her bow salvo of torpedoes at the nearest of the big dim ships that crossed her bows. The range was short and the salvo ragged, for one torpedo "hung in the tube" a few seconds before leaving, its engines roaring and driving the water from the tube over the men abaft it in a drenching shower. That torpedo hit the ship astern of and beyond the target--the first bow torpedo to leave exploding right aft on the target herself. The converging destroyers swerved outwards slightly to avoid mutual collision, and the two "Wasserbomben" they dropped as they turned were let go more in anger than with accurate aim. Thirty feet down the L-boat, her forward tanks flooding and her nose down at an angle of 15°, was driving her gauge round in an urgent hurry to gain depth. Seventy--eighty--ninety-five. "Hold her up now. Blow number two external. Stop both--_dammit_, hold her up, man. Stop both--hold on, everybody!"