That evening the salvage ship, fitted for the occasion with special platforms on which the bodies were placed, steamed out to sea. At midnight she stopped. The salvage men with bared heads stood solemnly by while the chaplain read the burial service in grave, sonorous tones. Then, very reverently, the dead were committed to the deep and the cleansing sea closed over them. CHAPTER X Although we live in an enlightened age, superstition is still rife, and not many people would care to dive for the first time in a submarine bearing the unlucky number 13. Yet in spite of the fact that sailors are generally credited with being more superstitious than most people, no thought of danger crossed the minds of the seventy-three men who during the war stepped aboard the British submarine K.13 in order to carry out her trials. She was a wonderful craft, 334 feet long, just under 27 feet wide amidships, and as she lay at her moorings she displaced 1880 tons. Like her sister ships of the same type, she was one of the fastest submarines afloat, capable on the surface of overtaking most battleships in order to send them to their doom, able to take her place with the Grand Fleet and steam along with them at top speed without being left behind. This wonderful speed was attained by fitting her with steam turbines in addition to the usual oil engines and electric motors. Her stumpy funnels folded down when she was diving, and the introduction of steam made it essential to fit fairly big ventilators. In order to dive she could take into her ballast tanks 800 tons of water in four minutes, but with a big submarine over 100 yards long, all divided into many compartments, diving was a delicate operation that depended for its safety upon all the men carrying out their duties instantly. It was necessary that the crew should be quite conversant with their craft and that there should be perfect team work. But an absolutely new craft is bound to present some strange features to her first crew. In this case she was a new development in submarine practice, and it was probably the fact that the K.13 was unfamiliar that brought about the ensuing disaster.