and the officers of
the sub were fully cognizant of their peril. As a precaution McClure
stopped the engines entirely and then gave orders to submerge to one
hundred feet. Slowly but steadily the vessel dropped away into the
fathoms and was soon beyond the range of guns, depth bombs or other
menacing projectiles. When at last the depth dial showed the desired
depth the _Monitor_ was headed straight out to the open sea and
started ahead at eight knots an hour.

Unmolested, but feeling her way cautiously along until well out of the
danger zone of nets and mines, the _Monitor_ moved out to sea and set
her course for the Strait of Dover.

By noon she had made excellent progress.

Not a vessel had yet been sighted, and with the freedom of the open
sea the sub was able to cruise on the surface at full speed. Several
hours later the _Monitor_ picked up H.M.S. _Chesterton_, turned over
the German prisoners, and gave warning of the intended U-boat raid
on the transports. "We sank the mother ship of the submarines,"
McClure told the _Chesterton's_ commander, "but they'll probably
get their supplies elsewhere and try to pull off the stunt."

The world was electrified next morning by the news of a great battle
between the Allied High Seas Fleet and the German submarine flotilla,
in which the Germans, outnumbered and outgeneraled, were beaten off
with the loss of several giant U-boats. The _Monitor_ played a very
important part in the engagement and had the satisfaction of sinking
one of the enemy ships by gunfire, coming up at close range right
beside the U-boat and engaging her in an old-fashioned hand-to-hand
conflict.

Several days later while cruising in the North Sea a call came to the
_Monitor_---a radiogram from the flagship of the American admiral,
summoning the sub to a rendezvous with other allied submarines for
important instructions.

CHAPTER XXIV

INTO ZEEBRUGGE

The appointed time the _Monitor_ arrived with other units of the
American submarine fleet at the designated point off the English
coast, to which point the undersea flotilla had been ordered by
wireless. There, awaiting them, was the Admiral's flagship, and all
around her trim vessels flying the Stars and Stripes---"sentinels
of democracy."

In the fleet mobilized the _Monitor_ spoke several vessels that had
accompanied the _Dewey_ across the Atlantic on her first voyage into
the war zone; there, also, were many other submarines bu