The day dawned clear and fine, with no wind and every promise of calm spring weather. At six o'clock the submarine's whistle blew shrilly, and a few tardy passengers approaching from the direction of the yard gates broke into a run. As they climbed the iron rungs up to the low grey-painted bridge, the gangway by which they had boarded was lifted clear into the air and swung away to the basin-side by a hissing, clattering, 10-ton crane, and at an order from the boat's Captain the securing wires and hemp hawsers splashed into the oily still water. The telegraph clanged decisively, and to an answering whirr and boil under her stern the boat moved slowly ahead towards the open basin entrance. She increased speed as she neared the narrow passage, and the whirling eddies of a flooding tide outside came in view. As her stem came out into the river she took a sharp sheer up-stream, then came quickly round towards the open sea as the twenty degrees of helm that she was carrying took effect on her. Little puffs of white and brown smoke began to show round her stern as the engines were clutched in and started, and in five minutes she was heading down-river at a fair twelve knots, with the low sun glancing from her round hull and lighting the queer mixture of Futurist painting that covered her. She carried a matter of eleven people on her bridge--a bridge designed to accommodate, perhaps, four or five. Her fighting complement was thirty-one all told, but at this moment she held over fifty. Needless to say, it was the passengers who seemed to take up most room. They comprised overseers, foremen, chargemen, a manager or two, about a dozen caulkers and engineers, and a pilot. In addition she carried an overseer of overseers--a Commander from the submarine Commodore's staff. He was present as schoolmaster, judge, and as friend to the Captain of the boat, and his job was one the Captain of the boat was not in the least envious of. The Captain knew that his crew were only partially trained, that he himself was new to E boats, and that the boat might not be all he hoped to find her in the way of reliability and hull-strength, but he felt that at any rate he knew more or less what the personnel, including himself, were like, while the Inspecting Commander must be, or ought to be, the most nervous man in submarines, with his job of travelling from trial to trial, unbroken by a chance of a trip in a fully-tested boat with a fully-trained crew.