‘Flood the tubes,’ cried Seagrave, getting busy with his arm-chair. ‘Come on now. Bear a hand there. Tubes flooded, sir, and firing-tanks charged. Swing the bow-cap.’ (Another youth shot through air.) ‘That’s the style. Now we’re doing something. All ready, sir.’ ‘Steady the helm. Down periscope. Thirty feet,’ continued Raymond. ‘Easy now, eighteen feet again. Up periscope. Steady that helm now. Carefully does it. Ahhhh. Don’t kick us, Boyd. Stand by.’ ‘Stand by, sir.’ ‘Easy now. Ready to take her down. Deflections 400. Look out there; look out again and we bump her. Now once more and ... Fire!’ and a pillow shot out of the catapult device like a feathery cannon ball and bowled over a rather dignified if youthful captain amid howls of delight. ‘Eighty feet,’ shouted Raymond; ‘take her down, men, quick now. Oh, hell! we’re rammed,’ and the whole room rose and fell on itself in a kicking and struggling mass. ‘Here, I say you fellows,’ cried the irate army captain. ‘This is a bit thick. I’ve got decent clothes on. You are a lot of ... of Submarine Toughs.’ He was dragged to his feet and dried and brushed (there had been a good deal of water floating about, ‘to make it more realistic,’ as Seagrave put it), and his ruffled feelings were restored with whisky. Then the party disappeared to tidy itself for the dance, and ten minutes later the seekers after submarine knowledge trickled down to the drawing-room where the ‘Submarine Toughs’ were waiting to receive the ladies, looking very angelic and innocent in spite of the recent _mêlée_. The ladies arrived, and the dance opened with a waltz banged out of the patient if wheezy old hotel piano by the gushing Miss Bored Stiff, and ten couples took the floor with great gusto, while the manager alternately held up his hands in horror and beamed benevolently on the revels. The waltz was followed by a set of lancers, and the game got really going. Supper was much in evidence, and Sam Browne belts and dark blue and gold dashed about with ices and claret cup, and picked up fans and wrote things on programmes and generally did the gallant. And so, Miss Bored Stiff played, and the girls giggled, and the mothers beamed, and even a few of the fathers, terrifying people, were sufficiently melted to accept a drink, and the evening wore on and everybody enjoyed themselves. The young gentleman in khaki, with the thin gold stripe on his sleeve, danced with the girl in the red sash four times, and the Army Captain acted as steward till he lost his rosette, more by design than accident, and hurled himself into the two-step like a three-year-old. Then the mothers gathered their bairns about them, and ‘good-nights’ were exchanged, and the fathers remained and gave expert opinions about the war, and listened with deference to the expert opinions of others who two years before they would have considered babes-in-arms, and every one went happily to bed.