While I was considering this, and picturing it to myself as a swiftly travelling destroyer, I discovered at a fair distance behind the two lights something that looked like a white moving ray, or like a faintly illuminated wave. We could not make out what this meant till I decided that this wave must belong to the lights themselves, as they moved together and kept pace with each other. And a few minutes later there appeared tremblingly on the strong lens of the glasses the faint outline of a mighty steamer, which with elaborate superstructure was approaching in the dark night. The white ray of light was her stern water, which owing to the colossal length of the ship was only visible at a considerable distance from her side lights. For some minutes longer we continued to stare, then we discovered four towering funnels, and were soon convinced that we had a big Cunard liner in front of us which was racing up in semi-darkness, only showing her head-lights. It really was a ghostly apparition, to observe how the mighty darkened ship raced on through the night. There is not much need to be romantically inclined in order to picture this meeting with the "Flying Dutchman," while Humke expressed his feelings in the words: "Lor', ain't she just a beauty, lads!" "Full speed ahead!" and with "helm hard astarboard" we slipped away from the course of the mighty Cunarder. All the men of the watch off duty meanwhile had come up to get a view of her from the deck and hatches. In spite of a sharp look-out nothing appeared in sight during the next few days. The weather keeping fine our homeward journey--even more than when we were outward-bound--assumed the character of a peaceful, uneventful business voyage. It was now that we first began fully to appreciate the convenient and practical inner fittings of the whole boat, and particularly our cabins and cosy little mess-room. Often as we sat round the table at mess while the gramophones played gaily, we thought with gratitude of those who had not only invented the seaworthy shape of our boat, but had fitted her interior up so that a life of comparative comfort and ease was possible even under the sea. When on these occasions our gallant Stucke, with his blonde white hair, his honest face full of earnest gravity, and his habitually surprised expression placed a bottle of good red Californian wine in front of us, as we lay comfortably "somewhere" at the bottom of the sea, while overhead, at a height of X fathoms, a hearty wind was blowing, it needed little imagination to picture oneself as a second Captain Nemo, who with his highly modern Nautilus could probe the depths, and snap his fingers at the injustice and tyranny of a certain people--provided, that is to say, one had read Jules Verne.