As they swung round the last river-buoy and saw the outer lightship draw clear of the land, a destroyer overtook them, and passed on ahead to lead them to sea. The boat was going thirty miles out to get deep water for her hull-test, and it was not safe for a British boat to be that distance, or even a third of that distance, from the mouth of a British harbour unescorted, unless she was there on her war business. This was not because of the enemy--far from it; it was to save her from the enthusiastic but misguided attentions of the multitudes of "Fritz-hunters" who drew no distinction between submarines of their own or the enemy's flag. As she neared the light-vessel, the submarine increased speed and some of the "yarning-party" on the bridge departed below down the conning-tower. The programme included a full-speed surface-trial which was to start from the lightship and finish at the diving-ground, and for the next two hours the engineers and engine-overseers were to be the only busy passengers. From the engine-room bulkhead to the bows, the crew and officers moved to and fro--testing, instructing, and, it should be added, grumbling continuously, for the multitude of passengers were a considerable handicap in the way of an efficient and (the great ideal) an unexciting and placid diving-trial. The inside of the boat was incredibly dirty from a naval point of view. She had not been built at one of these yards where no workman can live without a quid of tobacco in his cheek (in fact by the trials standard of some yards she was clean), but it was obvious that she would take a good month's scrubbing and polishing before she was, in her officers' estimation, even sanitary. At ten o'clock an order came from on deck, and a couple of sailors ascended the conning-tower carrying a few rounds of 12-pounder ammunition. The trials she was to do were to be complete and to everybody's satisfaction, and the building firm, being a firm which would sooner see their work over- than under-tested, had suggested a few rounds from the bow-gun before the dive, with the idea that if the gun-mounting was going to cause leaks through to the hull as a result of recoil, it should be given the chance to do it now instead of later when the boat was in enemy waters. A biscuit-tin was dropped, the boat circled round, and at a range of a hundred yards the gunlayer proceeded to miss the box completely. However, the shooting did not matter--the gun had recoiled a few times and that was all that was required. The fact of the gunlayer finding later that he had shipped the sights of the H.A. gun on to his bow-gun before practice, was a merely trifling incident among the errors that one might expect to occur on trials.