Our little vessel, put at our disposal by the French Ministry of Marine to view the defences of a certain formidable naval base on the coast of France, was calmly traversing the waters near the mouth of the harbor, when a young officer, standing beside me on the bridge said: "We must look out for submarines near here." "Germans?" I asked. "Oh, yes," he replied, "Germans, of course." We had already passed through the net that protects the mouth of the harbor and had been warned that we were going through a mine field, and that sometimes, especially in bad weather, the mines got loose and drifted about casually, getting in most anybody's way. Now we had the added pleasure of a possible encounter with a German submarine. "How many German submarines are there in the Mediterranean?" I asked. "About thirty-five," he said. Recalling my geography, it seemed we had a pretty good chance of being seen. "Are you a submarine officer?" I asked. He told me that he was, and added that he would not change his work for any other branch of the service. I told him that I had always understood submarine service was particularly unpleasant and trying on the nerves. "Oh, no. On the contrary, it is very restful," he said, "and extremely interesting and great sport." "How old are you?" I asked. He was thirty-two and unmarried. "Perhaps that accounts for it," I said. "Perhaps," he agreed. "I don't know. But it is the sporting interest that makes the submarine service so fine." He told of cruising in the North Sea, watching for German torpedo boats, of weeks on guard duty in the Channel, assuring the service between France and England, and of other weeks submerged in the Adriatic, blockading the Austrian ports. "We had to pick our way through the mine fields submerged," he said, "and then lie forty hours submerged on blockade duty. When our turn ended, we would pick our way back through the mines for a rest." "But surely that was trying on the nerves," I said. "Oh, no," he declared. "Not at all. We had a good rest there. There was nothing to do but sleep and watch." "What was the worst part of that service?" I asked. "The hydroplanes," he answered readily. "They were always flying over the harbor looking for us, and there was always the possibility that one of them would discover us and drop a bomb." "In that event what would happen to you?" I asked. "No one would ever know," he replied, "unless we sank in shallow enough water to be raised." He said it in the most casual manner. "Has there ever been a fight between two submarines?" was my next question. He had been in two in the North Sea, he told me. "If you are on the surface, you fight with your guns," he said, "but, if you are under the surface, you go at it with torpedoes; there is not much chance with torpedoes, because you can only see the periscope and you have no idea which way the other fellow is going. Nothing happened in either fight I had. We both got off safely."