The fresh Northern breeze sent the waves steeplechasing across the
surface of the harbour, and lapping over the hull of a British
Submarine as she moved slowly past the anchored lines of the
Battle-fleet towards the entrance.

Her Commanding Officer stood beside the helmsman, holding a soiled chart in his hands; further aft on the elliptical railed platform of the conning tower a tall, angular, grey-haired man, clad in civilian garb, stood talking to the First Lieutenant. A Yeoman of Signals, his glass tucked into his left arm-pit, was securing the halliards to the telescopic mast, at which fluttered a frayed White Ensign. A couple of figures in sea-boots and duffle coats were still coiling down ropes and securing fenders, crawling like flies about the whale-backed hull. A hundred and fifty feet astern of the conning-tower the unseen propellers threw the water into vortices that went curling away down the long wake.

"We'll pick up the trawler outside," said the Lieutenant-Commander, folding up the chart and sticking it into the breast of his monkey-jacket. "Deep water out there, and we can play about." His face was burned by the sun to the colour of an old brick wall; the tanned skin somehow made his eyes look bluer and his hair fairer than was actually the case; it accentuated the whiteness of his teeth, and gave his quick smile an oddly arresting charm.

The elderly civilian considered him with grave interest before replying. "Thank you," he said. "That's just what I want to do—play about!"

"The other experts are all in the trawler, with the apparatus," supplemented the Lieutenant-Commander. "We're under your orders, sir, for these experiments."

"Thank you," said Sir William Thorogood, Scientist; he drew a cigar case out of his pocket. "I feel rather like a man accepting another's hospitality and spending the day trying to pick his brains."

The Submarine-Commander smiled rather grimly. "You mean you're trying to find a way of cutting our claws and making us harmless?" he said.

"Well—Fritz's claws," amended Sir William.

"Same thing," replied the Lieutenant-Commander. "What's ours to-day is theirs tomorrow—figuratively speakin', that is. If it's sauce for the goose it's sauce for the gander—just tit for tat, this game."

"That," said Sir William, "is rather a novel point of view. It's not exactly one that is taken by the bulk of people ashore."

The figure beside the helmsman crinkled up his eyes as he stared ahead and gave a low-voiced order to the helmsman. "Oh?" he said. "I don't know much about what people ashore think, except that they're all rattled over this so-called Submarine menace. Anyone that's scared is apt to cling to one point of view."

"That is so," replied the Scientist. "But I chose to come out with you to-day for these experiments on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief."

"That's sound," said the Submarine expert. "Because, you know, in the Navy we all look at life from different points of view, according to our jobs. No, thanks, I won't smoke till we get outside. Now, those fellows"—the speaker jerked his head astern to the great grey Battleships—"those big-ship wallahs—they're only just beginning to take Us seriously. I put in my big-ship time at the beginning of the war—we do a year in a big ship, you know, for our sins—and the fellows in the Mess used to jeer at Us. They talked about their rams…." He laughed. "Rams!" he repeated. "They called us pirates. P'raps we were, but we didn't carry bathrooms in those early boats—nor yet manicure sets…. Port ten! … Ease to five—steady!"

The speaker was silent for a moment, musing. "I don't know that I altogether blame 'em." He turned to his First Lieutenant, a youth some years his junior with preposterously long eyelashes. "'Member the manoeuvres before the War?" The other laughed and nodded. "I torpedoed my revered parent's Battleship," continued the speaker, "at two hundred yards in broad daylight and a flat calm." He chuckled. "Lor' bless me! It's like a fairy tale, lookin' back on it after two years of war."

"Haven't they rather altered their tune since, though?" asked the visitor.

"A bit, yes. They don't quite know how to take us nowadays. We come in from patrol and tie up alongside them to give the men the run of the canteen; they ask us to dinner and give cinema shows for the sailors, bless 'em. We're beginning to feel quite the giddy heroes when we find ourselves among the Battle-fleet."

"Cold feet," interposed the First Lieutenant. "That's what's behind it all. We're It…."

Sir William laughed. "Well," he said, "what about those craft yonder?
There I suppose you have yet another point of view?"

A division of Armed Trawlers lumbered out of their path, the bow gun on each blunt forecastle rising and dipping as they plunged in the incoming swell.

"Ah!" said the Lieutenant-Commander, "they're different. They never had any preconceived notions about us or their own invulnerability. The boot's on the other foot there. We used to jeer at them once; but now I'm not so certain…."

"You never know what the hell they'll do next," explained the Lieutenant with the shadow of his eyelashes on his cheek-bone. "That's the trouble. 'They knows nothin' an' they fears nothin','" he quoted, smiling.

"The personal element comes in more, I suppose, in those craft," said
Sir William musingly. He focused his glasses on a turf cabin ashore.
"The Admiral was telling me that a London brain specialist was born in
one of those crofter's huts."

The Submarine Commander nodded. "It's not unlikely," he said. "These Northern fishermen are a fine breed. But this patrol work has developed a new type of seaman altogether. We've got a fellow up here huntin' Fritzes—he's a merchant seaman with a commission in the Naval Reserve…. There are times when he makes me frightened, that sportsman. It's a blessing the Hun can't reproduce his type: anyhow, I haven't met any over the other side, or up the Baltic."

"Name of Gedge?" enquired Sir William dryly.

"That's the lad," was the reply. "D'you know him, sir?"

"No, but I've heard of him."

"You'll see him presently," said the other. "He's waiting for us outside onboard his trawler. If you go onboard, have a look at the beam of his fore-hatch: rather interestin'."

"What about it?" asked Sir William.

"A little row of notches—that's all. He adds another from time to time, and I feel sort of sorry for Fritz when he's about."

"Like rats' tails hanging on a stable door," supplemented the First
Lieutenant in explanation.

"I see," said Sir William. "This is going to be interesting." He pitched the stump of his cigar overboard and turned up the collar of his ulster as the spray began to drift past their heads.

"We work together sometimes," said the Submarine Officer, "Gedge and I. Little stunts, you know…. It's part of my job, of course, huntin' Fritzes, but it's more than a job with him: it's a holy mission. That's why I'm a bit frightened of him really." The speaker searched the visitor's face with his guileless blue eyes. "I'm afraid of meeting him one day, unexpectedly, before I can establish our identity!" His quick smile flashed across his sunburnt face and was gone again.

The Submarine was passing under frowning walls of cliff, and the murmur of the surf thundering about the caverns and buttresses of that rock-bound coast almost drowned the throb of the engines beneath their feet. Far out to seaward a formation of Mine-sweeping Sloops crept away to the west. Close inshore, where the gulls circled vociferously, an insignificant trawler with a rusty funnel lay rolling in the swell. A wisp of bunting jerked to the stumpy foremast, and a pair of hand-flags zigzagged above the trawler's wheel-house. The Yeoman of Signals on the Submarine's conning tower stiffened like a statue as he read the message.

"Says, 'Will Sir William Thor-r-ogood come aboar-r-d, sir? If so, he'll send a boat.'" His speech placed him at home in these Northern latitudes.

"Reply, 'Yes. Please send boat.'"

A quarter of an hour later Sir William was climbing out of a tubby dinghy over the trawler's bulwarks. A big bronzed man in a jersey and sea-boots, wearing the monkey-jacket of a Lieutenant of the Reserve and a uniform cap slightly askew, came forward, one enormous hand outstretched in greeting. "Pleased to meet you, sir," he said. "My name's Gedge."

Sir William shook hands and winced.

"I've heard of you," he said, "and I was anxious to meet you. What d'you think of that toy?"

He nodded aft at a web of wire-coils, vulcanite levers and brass keys, standing beneath a wooden shelter in the stern. Three or four officers from the Fleet were gathered round it with note-books in their hands testing and adjusting amid its intricacies.

"I've been lookin' at it," admitted the big man non-committally. "It sounds like a cinch, but I understand it ain't perfect yet?"

"Not by what you might call a long chalk," was the dry reply.

The big man looked relieved. "That's all right," he said. "Because when it is I guess I can go right along and get to bed. That little outfit's going to finish the war, sir."

"Hardly," said Sir William. "But it's intended to help things in that direction. Unfortunately, you see, there's still a factor—what we call an unknown quantity——" He lapsed into technical explanations. The other listened for a while and then shook his head.

"Maybe you're right," he said, "but I couldn't say. I'm no scholar—ran away from school too young. But it seems to me——" He lifted a booted foot and rested it on the low gunwale, "Workin' at long distances, there's the pull of the tides…."

Sir William's eyeglass dropped. He recovered it and screwed it home.

"Am I right, sir?" asked the big man.

"You are," said the Scientist. "You've studied tides, too, have you?"

The Submarine Hunter chuckled. "I've learned to respect 'em," he replied dryly. "Down the Malay Archipelago I learned something about tides, spittin' overboard from salvage craft…." He stood upright. "Well, sir, we'd better get to business. These gentlemen here are the brains of the party"—he nodded at the group aft. "I'm only in the picture to put them wise as to certain practical conditions of the game…." He dropped his voice to a confidential undertone as they walked aft. "The Navy scares me. It's so damned big, and there's so much gold lace—and it's so almighty efficient…."

Half an hour's discussion settled the modus operandi for the experiment. The Submarine Commander rose from the gunwale and tossed away his cigarette-end, then he grinned at the Submarine Hunter who stood with one shoulder against the structure aft, shredding tobacco into the palm of his hand.

"Gardez-vous, Old Sport!" he said, as he began to climb down into the dinghy, where Sir William joined him.

"That's French, ain't it?" said the Submarine Hunter. "Don't speak the lingo."

One of the Naval officers standing by the apparatus laughed. "It's a challenge," he said. "Means 'Mind your eye!'"

The Hunter jerked his clasp knife in the direction of the fore-hatch. "I can mind it all right," he replied grimly, and laughed with a sudden disconcerting bark of amusement.

* * * * *

"Now," said the Submarine Commander as the pointed bows swung round for the open sea, "we'll get away out of it. Must keep on the surface for a while—too many short-tempered little patrol boats close in to let us cruise with only a periscope showing." He waved his hand in the direction of countless smudges of smoke ringing the clear horizon. "But once we're clear of those we'll dive and hide somewhere for a while. Give old man Gedge something to scratch his head about, lookin' for us. Then we'll play round and test the apparatus…. You'll be able to observe the compass all the time, and I'll give you the distances. There's a young flood making …"

For the space of a couple of hours the boat slid swiftly through the waves and successive cordons of patrols passed them onwards with flickering signals. The men onboard a line of rusty drifters leaned over the sides of their plunging craft and waved as the jaws of their baleful traps opened to let them pass through. Above their heads a gull circled inquisitively, shrilling the high, thin Song of the Seventh Sea: astern the peaks of Ultima Thule faded like opals into the blue.

A little cluster of rocky islands rose at length out of the sea ahead; the Submarine Commander took a swift bearing and rolled up the chart.

"That'll do," he said; "now we'll dive. There's a shoal patch hereabouts, and we'll sit on the bottom and have lunch while old man Gedge starts looking for us. After lunch we'll let him get near and try a bit of daylight stalking." He glanced at the sun overhead. "Bit early, yet awhile," he added.

One by one, led by Sir William, they descended the steel-runged ladder into the electric-lit depths of the Submarine. A hatch closed with a muffled clang: a few curt orders were followed by a succession of gurgles like those of the tide flooding through a cavern; the Commanding Officer moved from the eyepiece of the periscope, and gravely contemplated a needle creeping slowly round the face of a large dial. A Petty Officer, with an expression emotionless as that of a traveller in a railway tunnel, sat by the dial manipulating a brass wheel; a few feet away sat a Leading Seaman similarly employed. The eyes of both men were fixed on the hesitating needle as it shivered round. Finally the needle wavered, crept on another inch and paused, trembling. The Lieutenant-Commander glanced fore and aft, stripped off a pair of soiled gauntlets and made a low-voiced observation. The two men, as if released from a spell, turned away from their dials.

"There we are," said the Captain cheerfully, "sitting snug on a nice sandy bottom in ten fathoms of water. What's for lunch?" He led the way forward to a folding table between the polished mahogany bunks. "Fried chops, ain't it?" he enquired, sniffing.

They took their seats on camp stools while a bluejacket dealt out tin plates like playing cards. Sir William turned from a scrutiny of the tiny book-shelf over the port bunk. At the head of the bunk was nailed the photograph of a girlish face, and in close proximity to it one of a lusty baby exploring a fur rug apparently in search of clothes.

"Not much of a library, I'm afraid," said the host, seating himself.
"I'm not much of a reader myself. The Sub's the bookworm of this boat."

The First Lieutenant of the Submarine shot a swift glance of suspicion at his Commanding Officer as he helped himself to a chop. The look, however, appeared to pass unnoticed.

"Some months ago," continued his Captain, speaking with his mouth full, "we were caught in shallow water over the other side——" he jerked his head upwards and to the South East. "We were sitting on the bottom waiting for it to get dark before we came up and charged batteries. I was having a stretch-off on my bunk here, and the Sub, of course, had his nose in a book as usual. From subsequent developments it appears that a Hun seaplane saw us and proceeded to bomb us with great good will but indifferent success."

"We ought never to have been there," interrupted the First Lieutenant coldly. "Bad navigation on the Captain's part."

"Granted," said the Lieutenant-Commander. "The first bomb was rather wide of the mark, but it woke me, and I saw the Sub's eyelids flicker. After that I watched him. The Hun bombed us steadily for a quarter of an hour (missing every time, of course), and the Sub never raised his eyes from his book."

"I was interested," said the First Lieutenant shortly; his eyes, in one swift glance captain-wards, said more.

"Quite. I was only trying to prove you were a book-worm."

"What was the book?" enquired Sir William.

"Oh, Meredith, sir. Richard something-or-another. Topping yarn."

The guest steered the conversation out of literary channels.

"Were you over the other side much?" he asked blandly.

"Pretty well all the war, till we came up North," was the Lieutenant-Commander's reply. "You'll have to use the same knife for the butter; hope you don't mind. We get into piggish ways here, I'm afraid…. Amusin' work at times, but nothing to the Dardanelles; we never got out there, though; spent all our time nuzzling sandbanks off the Ems and thereabouts. Of course, one sees more of Fritz in that way, but I can't say it exactly heightens one's opinion of him. We used to think at the beginning of the war that Fritz was a sportsman—for a German, you know. But he's really just a dirty dog taking very kindly to the teaching of bigger and dirtier dogs than himself."

Sir William pondered this intelligence. "That's the generally accepted theory," he said.

"They may have had some white men in their submarines at one time, but we've either downed them or they've got Prussianised. They've disgraced the very word submarine to all eternity." The speaker shook his head over the besmirched escutcheon of his young profession.

"They're cowards, all right," added the Lieutenant. "'Member that
Fritz we chased all the way to Heligoland on the surface?"

"Yep. Signalled to him with a flashing lamp to stop and fight: called him every dirty name we could lay our tongues on. Think he'd turn and have it out? Not much! … Yet he had the bigger gun and the higher speed. Signalled back, 'Not to-day, thank you!' and legged it inside gun-range of the forts. Phew! That made us pretty hot, didn't it, Sub?"

"Nerves," said the Lieutenant. "Their nerves are just putrid. There was another night once——" he talked quickly between spoonfuls of rice pudding. "In a fog … we were making a lightship off the Dutch coast to verify our position…. Approached submerged, steering by sound of their submarine bell, and then came to the surface to get a bearing. There must have been half a dozen Fritzes round that light, all lost and fluttering like moths round a candle. We bagged one, sitting, and blew him to hell…. The rest plopped under like a lot of seals and simply scattered. Fight? 'Not to-day, thank you.' They're only good for tackling unarmed merchantmen and leaving women in open boats." The speaker wiped his mouth with his napkin. "By God! I wouldn't be a Hun when the war's over. They're having a nice little drop of leave now to what they'll get if they ever dare put their noses outside their own filthy country."

"Amen," said Sir William.

The Captain of the boat rose from his seat, glancing at his watch. "Now then," he said to the Scientist, "Come to the periscope and let's have a look round. Gedge ought to be over the horizon by now."

The men moved quietly to their stations and the tanks were blown. Slowly the gauge needles crept back on their appointed paths. The Submarine Commander motioned his guest to the periscope and gave him a glimpse of flying spray and sun-kissed wave tops. A mile or so away lay the group of islands they had seen before lunch, and close inshore a mass of floating dÉbris bobbed among the waves.

"Baskets, I think—jettison of sorts. I'm going to get amongst it and
go down with the tide, keeping the periscope hidden: it's an old dodge.
You can just see the smoke of Gedge's bus coming over the horizon.
We'll give him a little game of Peep-bo!"

Sir William drew his watch from his pocket and walked over to the compass. "In four minutes' time," he said, "I shall start making observations: according to our arrangements Gedge should start the experiment then."

"That's right," said the Lieutenant-Commander with his eyes pressed against the eye-piece of the periscope. "Oh, good! It's bales of hay floating, not baskets. Better still: no chance of damaging the periscope. There's Gedge——!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Hee! Hee! Hee!
I see you, but you can't see me!"

He slewed the periscope through a few points and back to the original position. "Hullo!" he said presently, "what's he up to? He's altered course…. Thinks he sees something, I suppose. You're wrong, my lad. We're not in that direction."

The minutes passed in silence. Forward in the bow compartment a man was softly whistling a tune to himself. The feet of the figure at the periscope moved with a shuffle on the steel plating.

"How's the time?" he asked presently.

"He ought to have started the apparatus," said Sir William, standing, watch in hand, by the compass. "What's he doing?"

"Legging it to the Northward at the rate of knots—eight points off his course, if he thinks he's going to get anywhere near us … Ah! Now he's coming round…. Humph! You're getting warm, my lad!" Another prolonged silence followed, and suddenly the Lieutenant-Commander spoke again.

"Sub," he said in a curiously restrained tone, "just come here a minute."

The Lieutenant moved obediently to his side and applied his eye to the periscope.

"Well?" said the Captain after a pause. "Well, Sister Anne?"

The Lieutenant turned his head swiftly for an instant and looked at his Commanding Officer. "Have we got any boat out on this patrol to-day?" he asked.

The other shook his head. "Not within thirty miles of this. 'Sides, he wouldn't come through here submerged, with only his periscope dipping."

"It's a Fritz, then," said the Lieutenant, an ominous calm in his voice. He stepped aside and relinquished the eye-piece.

"It is," said the other. "It's a naughty, disobedient Fritz. He's coming through in broad daylight, which he's been told not to do. He hasn't seen us yet—he's watching old man Gedge. Gedge thinks it's us and is pretending he hasn't seen him…. Lord! It's like a French musical comedy."

Sir William put his watch back in his pocket and stood looking from one speaker to the other. Finally he removed his eye-glass and began to polish it with scrupulous care.

"Do I understand——" he began.

The voice of the Lieutenant-Commander at the periscope cut him short.
"Stand by the tubes!" he shouted.

There was a swift bustle of men's footsteps down the electric-lit perspective of glistening machinery.

"Fritz must be in a tearing hurry to get home," commented the First Lieutenant. "P'raps they've all got plague or running short of food … or just tired of life?"

"P'raps," conceded the Lieutenant-Commander. "Anyhow, that's as may be…. The beam torpedo tube will just bear nicely in a minute." The white teeth beneath the rubber eye-piece of the periscope showed for an instant in a broad grin. "Won't old man Gedge jump!"

"Starboard beam tube ready!"

Sir William replaced his eye-glass. A sudden bead of perspiration ran down and vanished into his left eyebrow.

"The Lord," said the Lieutenant in a low voice, "has placed the enemy upon our lee bow, Sir William."

"Has he?" said Sir William dryly. "Then I hope He'll have mercy on their souls."

The motionless figure at the periscope gave a couple of low-voiced orders, and in the ensuing silence Sir William felt the artery in his throat quicken and beat like a piston. Then—

"Fire!"

The boat rolled to port, and all her framework shook like the body of a man shaken by a sudden sob. Back she came to her original trim, and the Lieutenant, standing by the beam tube, raised his wrist watch and studied it intently. The seconds passed, throbbing, intolerable, and merged into Eternity. A sudden concussion seemed to strike the boat from bow to stern, and as she steadied the motionless figures, standing expressionless at their stations, suddenly sprang into life and action.

There was the metallic sound of metal striking metal as the hatchway opened, a rush of cool, sweet air, and the Scientist found himself beside the two officers, without the slightest recollection of how he got there, standing in the wind and sunlight on the streaming platform of the conning-tower. The boat was heading with the waves tumbling away on either side of them in the direction of a cloud of grey smoke that still hung over the water, slowly dissolving in the wind. As they approached a dark patch of oil spread outwards from a miniature maelstrom where vast bubbles heaved themselves up and broke; the air was sickly with the smell of benzoline, and mingled with it were the acrid fumes of gas and burnt clothing. A dark scum gathered in widening circles, with here and there the white belly of a dead fish catching the sun: a few scraps of wreckage went by, but no sign of a man or what had once been a man.

"Pretty shot," said the First Lieutenant approvingly, and leaned over the rail to superintend the dropping of a sinker and buoy. The Commanding Officer said nothing. Beneath the tan his face was white, and his hand, as he raised his glasses to sweep the horizon, trembled slightly.

The Yeoman of Signals turned to Sir William and jerked his thumb at the water. "Eh!" he said soberly, "yon had a quick call!"

"I ask for no other when my hour strikes," replied the Scientist.

"Maybe juist yeer hands are clean," said the Yeoman, and turned to level his telescope at the trawler which was rapidly approaching with a cloud of smoke reeling from her funnel and the waves breaking white across her high bows.

"Here comes Gedge," observed the Lieutenant-Commander, speaking for the first time, "foaming at the mouth and suffering from the reaction of fright. Hark! He's started talking…."

Amid the cluster of figures in the trawler's bow stood a big man with a megaphone to his mouth. The wind carried scraps of sentences across the water.

"… Darned bunch of tricks aft…. How was I to know…. Scared blue … torpedo … prisoners…. Blamed inventors…."

"Translate," said Sir William. The Lieutenant-Commander coughed apologetically. "He's peevish," he said. "Thought it was us blowing up at first. Wants to know why we wasted a torpedo: thinks he could have captured her and taken the crew prisoners if we'd left it to him."

"Silly ass!" from the First Lieutenant. "How could we let him know he was playing round with a Fritz? If we'd shown ourselves Fritz would have torpedoed us!"

"I appreciate the compliment," began Sir William, "that he implies to my device, but, as a matter of fact, I hardly think the apparatus is sufficiently perfect yet——"

The Lieutenant-Commander laughed rather brutally. "He isn't paying compliments. He went on to say he didn't want the assistance of—er—new inventions to bag a Fritz once he's sighted him."

The First Lieutenant came quickly to the rescue. "Of course," he said, "that's all rot. We're only too grateful to—to Science for trying to invent a new gadget…. Only, you see, sir, in the meanwhile, until you hit on it we feel we aren't doing so badly—er—just carrying on."