For I must here confess, what I had hitherto carefully concealed from everyone, that it was only as captain of a submarine trader on my return journey from America that I was enabled to make good a very sad deficiency in my education. The chance I had wasted in my youth I now came across at the age of forty-nine in the steel body of the "U Deutschland," of making myself acquainted with Jules Verne's _Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea_. The book had been sent me while I was at Baltimore through the kindness of an American friend. It is a book--how shall I describe it?--of incitement and emulation. I read it with the greatest interest. * * * * * The rest of our return journey is soon told. We travelled on smoothly and peacefully homewards, avoiding a few distant steamers above water--in which little game we had gradually become extremely well practised--and meeting on the whole with good weather, some mist, and much smooth sea. One afternoon I was sitting working at the writing-table in my cabin, when suddenly I heard from the control-room close by the order "20 to starboard" repeated. Immediately after came "10 to port," whereupon, without waiting to hear any more, I hurried on deck. There a strange sight awaited me. All around, as far as the eye could reach, the sea was covered with a mass of dark, floating oil casks through which we had to steer our way. At first I took the black, weird-looking objects, which danced up and down on the waves before us, for a mine-field, until the characteristic shape of the sharp angular casks, or so-called barrels, and their contents which had spread partly over the water, testified to their harmlessness. Nevertheless we had to steer carefully through this strange plantation, as the area was too wide a one to avoid without going considerably out of our course. We estimated the number of casks that were visible to us as at least a thousand. "Fine practice," remarked Krapohl, "for the elegance with which we shall twist through the English mine-fields later on. I think we might risk the return through the English Channel." We went on, therefore, at half-speed to port--starboard--port, for over an hour. Scattered parts of vessels were to be seen on the water, possibly the results of wrecks or mines. We must by this time have gradually come within the sphere of the English look-out ships. The watch was doubled, everyone standing at their submerging stations. From time to time we noticed vessels whose attention we avoided by submerging or altering our course. One warship, apparently a small English cruiser, we allowed no possibility of seeing us by immediately diving. When, after an hour's undersea journey, we again rose slowly to the surface, we saw from a depth of 6½ fathoms, through the periscope, another English ship, and went down again to 11 fathoms, and this was repeated three times in succession.