‘Start the pump on the auxiliary. Speed up to 500 on the motors.’ The purr of the motors increased, and the adjusting pump added its clack to the subdued noises. Raymond hoped that the extra speed by giving her more steerage-weigh, and with the hydroplanes ‘hard-a-rise,’ would bring her up without the tedious necessity of blowing main ballast. She was going down fast, however. Forty, fifty, sixty, seventy feet the depth-gauge recorded. At seventy-five feet she stopped. ‘Stand by the hatches,’ cried Seagrave. ‘Report any leak at once.’ She rose slowly and Raymond stopped the pump. The coxswain twirled his wheel, and she was bringing up at thirty feet when an avalanche of water came down the conning-tower hatch. The captain sprang for the ladder through the mass of water and disappeared up the shaft. The flow decreased and stopped, and he reappeared drenched to the skin. Everybody got very busy suddenly. Nobody seemed to wish to be unduly noticed, and all showed a strange eagerness for work of any sort. The coxswain winked at the helmsman, and that worthy leant towards the compass with a fixed stare. ‘These ruddy hatches!’ bellowed Raymond. ‘The damned thing came open, and I’ve only got one shirt in the boat.’ ‘Here, messenger,’ he added, pulling it off, ‘take this into the engine-room and get it dried. No water in the battery, is there, Seagrave?’ ‘No, sir,’ replied the ‘Sub’ with a stony countenance. ‘That’s the best of these high coamings, and we’ve got the rubber deck-cloth screwed well down. The batteries are all right.’ ‘Well, that’s a bit of luck, anyway. And now, after that lot, another little drink wouldn’t do us any harm. But don’t wake Boyd, as we haven’t much whisky left.’ The pressure in the boat had slightly lifted the hatch on the catch slipping its socket. Otherwise, owing to the weight of thirty feet of water, it could never have admitted the slightest drop. ‘All’s well that ends well,’ said Raymond, as he raised his glass, ‘but that water coming in like that certainly shook me. I didn’t think there was so much pressure in the boat.’ ‘It shook me far more to see you looking like a drowned rat when you came down. This is what is known ashore as “Seeing Life.”’ ‘You keep a look-out with that “perisher,” my boy, and don’t worry about me. You’ve got a shirt to wear, and I haven’t, unless it’s dry before we rise.’ Presently they relapsed into silence, and Raymond dropped off to sleep again, while the ‘Sub’ carried on with the watch. At four o’clock tea put in an appearance, after which Boyd took his turn at the periscope watch, while the others sat reading. The wind had been increasing since noon, and the sea was getting up. Looking through the periscope his view was often obscured by the waves, and occasionally they broke right over, shutting out the scene as if a light blue curtain had been flung over the eyes and torn away again.