carried back to the centre of the boat and heard a sharp hissing sound like the rush of air. The next thing he recalled was coming to on the dock. The _Alligator_ was the first of the large cruising type of submarines which we built for the Russian Government. These vessels were five hundred and thirty-five tons submerged displacement, which was about twice that of the displacement of any submarines which had previously been built; and I was very anxious to get a trial of her before the winter season came on in the fall of 1907. As the winter closes all navigation in the Gulf of Finland for six or seven months, and as there were a number of new features to be tried out in this boat, I knew that unless I succeeded in getting a trial before the winter shut down I would have several months of worry as to whether or not the boat would function satisfactorily when submerged. Delays occurred, so that we were not able to get our trial as early as expected. The action of the weather indicated that navigation was likely to be closed within a day's time, as frequently occurs in those northern latitudes. We had not received the periscopes or lights, and the boat was not entirely completed, but was sufficiently far advanced to make it safe for me to try her on a submerged run. Consequently we arranged with the commandant of Cronstadt to supply us with a sea-going tender and went out for a trial in the open gulf, where we could get sufficient water to navigate such a large boat. It was very rough and stormy, and it took us some little time to get our final adjustments to enable us to submerge completely. We found that we did not have sufficient ballast to enable her to be submerged by filling the usual water ballast tanks, so we had to let some additional water in her motor-room, being careful not to let it rise high enough to saturate the windings of our dynamo-motors. In the meantime the storm had been increasing in velocity and a very rough sea had arisen. I had observed through the sighting hood that the tender was making very bad weather of it; the last I saw of her she was pitching and jumping out of the water to such an extent that at times I could see her keel from the stem to nearly one-half her length. When we got under water we became so much interested in the operation, which was entirely satisfactory, that we did not come to the surface again for about fifteen minutes. Then we simply rose for a look around and submerged again, giving no thought to the tender. The seas were so high that we could not see any distance from our sighting hood, and supposed she was somewhere in the vicinity. We continued our tests, alternately submerging and trying her out on the turns and at different speeds of motors until our battery was nearly run down, then we blew tanks and came to the surface just at dusk, expecting to find the tender to lead us back to Cronstadt. We had no lights or compass at this time, but fortunately we were able to