the
_Moonflower_ was allowed to sport a star on her funnel. The story he
told, the while he rolled cigarettes and worked his jaws on Yankee
chewing-gum, revealed rather too much that may be used in some future
surprise party to make it possible to publish just yet, but it had the
desired effect of turning the current of reminiscence U-boatward. That
was what I wanted, for, now that men from several other destroyers had
come aboard and sauntered aft to join the party, the opportunity for
finding out at firsthand just what the American sailors thought of the
anti-submarine game at the end of a year and a half of it was too good
to be missed.

There was a considerable variety of opinions expressed in that last hour
of the second dog-watch on the intricate inside stuff of the anti-U-boat
game, just as there had been about baseball, but there was one point on
which they were practically agreed: that Fritz, especially during the
last six months, was not giving them a proper run for their money. This
is the way one of them, a bronzed seaman gunner, with the long
gorilla-like arms of a Sam Langford, and gnarled knots of protuberant
muscles at the angles of his jaws, epitomized it: "We sees Fritzie, or
we don't. Mostly we don't, for he ducks under when he pipes our smoke.
If he's stalkin' a convoy there's jest a chance of him givin' us time
for a rangin' shot at him on the surface. Then we waltzes over to his
grease and scatters a bunch of 'cans' round his restin'-place. An' if
the luck's with us, we gets him; an' if the luck's with him, we don't.
If we crack open his shell, down he goes; if we jest start him leakin',
up he comes. Only dif'rence is that, in one case, it's all hands down,
and in t'other, all hands up--'Kamerad!' In both cases, no fight, no run
for our money. Now when we first come over, an' 'fore we'd put the fear
o' God into Fritzie's heart, he wasn't above takin' a chance at a
come-back now an' again. _Then_ there was occas'nal moments of
ple'surabl' excitement, like the time when"--and he went on to tell of
how an enterprising U-boat commander slipped a slug into the _Courser_
abreast her after superstructure, and "beat it" off before that stricken
destroyer had a chance to retaliate. Only the fact that, by a miracle,
the torpedo failed to detonate her depth-charges saved the _Courser_
from destruction, and even as it was, rare seamanship had been required
to take her back to port. And he also told of the unlu