"Notwithstanding the distance, we unite our grief with yours in weeping over the memory of him who in spite of all will ever remain our captain. Stricken by a blow of fate just when victory smiled most brightly, Commandant Morillot died like a hero, after having accomplished the almost impossible to save his vessel and his crew." More months elapsed; then Chief Master Electrician Joffry and Quartermaster Mahe, both of the _Monge_, were returned to France from Austria in an exchange of prisoners. And they told the story. II--STORY OF A COLLISION AT 30 KNOTS The _Monge_ belonged to the class of submarines that have to use a steam engine for recharging their diving accumulators. It had been scouting ahead of the rest of the flotilla and had crept close to the Bocche di Cattaro that night when the Austrian fleet came out. At 12.15 A. M. Commandant Morillot sighted the lights of the Austrian vessels. How many he couldn't tell, nor how far away they were. He submerged to 20 feet, leaving the night periscope above the surface. Suddenly he was aware of a rapidly approaching huge black mass, and was giving orders to fire a torpedo from the port tube when a hitherto unseen vessel passed at 30 knots right over the _Monge_. Its keel struck the submarine; the shock was terrific. The little boat rolled almost over. The conning tower was smashed and the sea poured in through a gaping hole. The crew of the _Monge_ tumbled in heaps against the partitions of the compartments in which they happened to be. The stern dropped, the bows rose, and the boat began sinking stern foremost at an angle of 30 or 40 degrees. Abominable gases rose as the sea water flooded the tanks of sulphuric acid. The electric lights went out. The _Monge_ wabbled downwards in pitch darkness. It is such moments as these that test master and men. How both were equal to the emergency, let Chief Electrician Joffry relate: III--TWO HUNDRED FEET BENEATH THE SEA "Clutching the periscope table," he said, "the Commandant faces this blow. He is a man whom nothing disconcerts. He orders that all submerging tanks be emptied. Several times he repeats the order to discharge the water. But the compressed air is not powerful enough to expel it, and we continue to sink. The hull creaks all over, but especially astern, for the stern, by reason of the angle at which we are going down, is sixty feet lower and under a pressure of two atmospheres greater than the bow. It is the steel heart of the _Monge_ that is groaning. We must have at least 180 or 200 feet of water above us. Believing that this is the end, we sing the 'Marseillaise.'" Quartermaster Mahe says the electric batteries were short-circuited by the crash and the inrush of water. The turbines stopped at the moment the lights went out.