an open hearth. Nearly every one in the lighted smoke room
was playing cards, so that the conversation was practically confined to
the mentioning of bids and the orders of drinks from the stewards.

"What do you think are our chances of being torpedoed?" was the question
I put before the circle in front of the fireplace.

The deliberative Mr. Henry Chetham, a London solicitor, was the first to
answer.

"Well," he drawled, "I should say about four thousand to one."

Lucien J. Jerome of the British Diplomatic Service, returning with an
Ecuadorian valet from South America, advanced his opinion.

I was much impressed with his opinion because the speaker himself had
impressed me deeply. He was the best monocle juggler I had ever met. In
his right eye he carried a monocle without a rim and without a ribbon
or thread to save it, should it ever have fallen from his eye.

Repeatedly during the trip, I had seen Mr. Jerome standing on the
hurrideck of the _Laconia_ facing the wind but holding the glass disk in
his eye with a muscular grip that must have been vise-like. I had even
followed him around the deck several times in a desire to be present
when the monocle blew out, but the British diplomatist never for once
lost his grip on it. I had come to the opinion that the piece of glass
was fixed to his eye and that he slept with it. After the fashion of the
British Diplomatic Service, he expressed his opinion most affirmatively.

"Nonsense," he said with reference to Mr. Chetham's estimate. "Utter
nonsense. Considering the zone that we are in and the class of the ship,
I should put the chances down at two hundred and fifty to one that we
don't meet a 'sub.'"

At that minute the torpedo hit us.

Have you ever stood on the deck of a ferry boat as it arrived in the
slip? And have you ever experienced the slight sideward shove when the
boat rubs against the piling and comes to a stop? That was the
unmistakable lurch we felt, but no one expects to run into pilings in
mid-ocean, so every one knew what it was.

At the same time, there came a muffled noise--not extremely loud nor yet
very sharp--just a noise like the slamming of some large oaken door a
good distance away. Realising that we had been torpedoed, my imagination
was rather disappointed at the slightness of the shock and the meekness
of the report. One or two chairs tipped over, a few glasses crashed from
table to floor and in an instant every man in the room was on