The most unpleasant incident of a whole chapter of exciting passages occurred in the Sea of Marmora. The submarine ran foul of the cable that anchored a mine. As other canisters of death were in the vicinity, it was much too perilous to attempt to go astern in the hope that the steel rope would become disentangled. The mine was the submarine’s unwelcome guest for eleven miles. Every officer and man knew it, and each realized only too well exactly what would occur if one of the horns of the beastly thing bumped against the boat or struck some floating object. What with submerged torpedo-tubes skilfully rigged up by the Turks on shore, land batteries, forts, floating and anchored mines, there was sufficient food for reflection to say nothing of the sinister appendage, and it is perhaps not surprising that the company was serious. If conversation was not animated this was not entirely due to the somewhat sultry atmosphere of E 11. However, Nasmith got rid of the mine at last, and when he emerged among the battleships and cruisers at the other end of the Dardanelles no King or Kaiser ever received a warmer welcome. This young hero of thirty-two years, who had already attracted notice by his ready resource when A 4 inadvertently sank while exercising at Spithead in 1905, had certainly earned his V.C., and the same may be recorded of his brother-officers, Lieutenant Guy D’Oyle-Hughes, R.N., and Acting-Lieutenant Robert Brown, who were given similar distinctions to those awarded to the subordinate officers of E 14. Had Nelson been alive we may be quite sure he would have admitted the heroes of this chapter to his gallant ‘band of brothers.’ Their exploits are memorable, as Bacon says of another great naval episode, “even beyond credit, and to the Height of some Heroicall Fable.” CHAPTER XIII _On Certain Happenings in the Baltic_ “_British submarines may take to themselves the credit of having damaged our trade and shipping in the Baltic._”—CAPTAIN PERSIUS.