g his way from one hatch to another, I saw rolled
fifteen or twenty feet and slammed up against the torpedo-tube which
prevented his going overboard. He limped out of sight, rubbing his
shoulder, and probably never knew how lucky he was in being caught by
_that_ wave instead of one which came along a minute later.

The slams which she received from the next two or three seas left the
_Zip_ in a somewhat chastened mood, and rather less sanguine respecting
her ability to go on pulling off that little stunt of surmounting waves
by biting them in the neck and then trampling their bodies under foot.
She was beginning to realise that she had a body of her own, and that
there was something else around that could bite--yes, and kick, and
gouge, and punch below the belt, and do all the other low-down tricks of
the underhand fighter.

Languid and uncertain of movement, like a dazed prize-fighter, she was
just steadying herself from the jolt a bustling brute of a comber had
dealt her in passing, when the skyline ahead was blotted out by the
imminent green-black loom of a running wall of water which, from its
height and steepness, might well have been kicked up by a Valparaiso
"Norther" or a South Sea hurricane.

It may have been the chastened state of mind the last sea had left her
in which was responsible for _Zip's_ deciding to take this one "lying
down"; or again, it may be that she was acting, in reverse, after the
example set by the rabbit who, because he couldn't go under the hill,
went over it. At any rate, after one shuddering look at the mountainous
menace tottering above her bows, she made up her mind that she was
better off under the sea than on the surface, and deliberately dived. Of
course, it was the Parthian kick the last sea had given her stern that
was really responsible for her bows starting to go down at the very
instant those of every other ship that one had had experience of would
have been beginning to point skyward, but to all intents and purposes
she looked, from the bridge, to be submerging of her own free and
considered decision. The principal thing which differentiated it from
the ordinary dive of a submarine was the fact that it was made at a
sharper angle and at about four times the speed.

There was something almost uncanny in the quietness with which that
plunge began; though, on the latter score, there was nothing to complain
of by about half a second later. I have seen at one time or another
al