And then a hand appeared on the topmost rung of the nearer ladder, and a bulky sailor, a very human sailor in very human dungarees, poked his head out of the aperture, surveyed the inhospitable night, and disappeared. [Sidenote: Submarines are going out to-night.] "He's on Branch's boat. They're going out to-night," said the officer who was guiding me about. "To-night? How on earth will he ever find his way to the open sea?" "Knows the bay like a book. However, if the weather gets any worse, I doubt if the captain will let him go. Branch will be wild if they don't let him out. Somebody has just reported wreckage off the coast, so there must be a Hun round." "But aren't our subs sometimes mistaken for Germans?" "Oh, yes," was the calm answer. [Sidenote: The boats may never come back.] I thought of that ominous phrase I had noted in the British records,--"failed to report,"--and I remembered the stolid British captain who had said to me, speaking of submarines, "Sometimes nobody knows just what happened. Out there in the deep water, whatever happens, happens in a hurry." My guide and I went below to the officers' corridor. Now and then, through the quiet, a mandolin or guitar could be heard far off twanging some sentimental island ditty; and beneath these sweeter sounds lay a monotonous mechanical humming. "What's that sound?" I asked. "That's the Filipino mess-boys having a little festino in their quarters. The humming? Oh, that's the mother-ship's dynamos charging the batteries of Branch's boat. Saves running on the surface." [Sidenote: The captain of the patrol cheerful.] My guide knocked at a door. Within his tidy little room, the captain who was to go out on patrol was packing the personal belongings he needed on the trip. "Hello!" he cried cheerily when he saw us; "come on in. I'm only doing a little packing up. What's it like outside?" "Raining same as ever, but I don't think it's blowing up any harder." [Sidenote: Reading matter is in demand.] "Hooray!" cried the young captain with heartfelt sincerity; "then I'll get out to-night. You know the captain told me that if it got any worse, he'd hold me till to-morrow morning. I told him I'd rather go out to-night. Perfect cinch once you get to the mouth of the bay; all you have to do is submerge and take it easy. What do you think of the news? Smithie thinks he saw a Hun yesterday. Got anything good to read? Somebody's pinched that magazine I was reading. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen--that ought to be enough handkerchiefs. Hello, there goes the juice!" The humming of the dynamo was dying away slowly, fading with an effect of lengthening distance. The guitar orchestra, as if to celebrate its deliverance, burst into a triumphant rendering of Sousa's "Stars and Stripes."