"Shaken, you ask? No, not very bad: a few assorted bruises and a wrenched thumb; though poor Jonesy on the _Z-3_ had a wave knock him up against the rail and smash in a couple of ribs. But no being sick for him; he kept to his feet and carried on in spite of the pain, in spite of being in a boat which registered a roll of seventy degrees. I used to watch the old hooker rolling under me. You've never been on a submarine when she's rolling,--talk about rolling--oh, boy! We all say seventy degrees, because that's as far as our instruments register. There were times when I almost thought she was on her way to make a complete revolution. You can imagine what it was like inside. To begin with, the oily air was none too sweet, because every time we opened a hatch we shipped enough water to make the old hooker look like a start at a swimming tank; and then she was lurching so continuously and violently that to move six feet was an expedition. The men were wonderful--wonderful! Each man at his allotted task, and--what's that English word?--carrying on. Our little cook couldn't do a thing with the stove, might as well have tried to cook on a miniature earthquake; but he saw that all of us had something to eat--doing his bit, game as could be." He paused again. The Embankment was fading away in the dark. A waiter appeared, and drew down the thick, light-proof curtains. "Yes, the men were wonderful--wonderful. And there wasn't very much sickness. Let's see, how far had I got?--Since it was impossible to make any headway, we lay to for forty-eight hours. The deck began to go the second morning, some of the plates being ripped right off. And blow--well, as I told you in the beginning, I never saw anything like it. The disk of the sea was just one great ragged mass of foam being hurled through space by a wind screaming past with the voice and force of a million express trains. [Sidenote: The submarines run on the surface to save electricity.] "Perhaps you are wondering why we didn't submerge. We simply couldn't use up our electricity. It takes oil and running on the surface to create the electric power, and we had a long, long journey ahead. Then ice began to form on the superstructure, and we had to get out a crew to chop it off. It was something of a job; there wasn't much to hang on to, and the waves were still breaking over us. But we freed her of the danger, and she went on-- "We used to wonder where the other boys were, in the midst of all the racket. One ship was drifting toward the New England coast, her compass smashed to flinders; others had run for Bermuda, others were still at sea. [Sidenote: Good weather at last.]