ss, and before the first
armed trawler showed up in answer to my S.O.S. Just why he didn't, I
could never make quite sure, but the chances are it was one or both of
two things. It is quite possible that the biff from the
depth-charge--which must still have been almost as near to him as it was
to me when it exploded--may have done the submarine really serious
injury, perhaps even sinking it. We never found any evidence, however,
that this had been the case. Whether he was damaged or not, there is no
doubt that his close call gave him a bad scare. There could have been
nothing in the explosion to tell him that it did any harm to his enemy,
and, since he did not have his periscope up, there was no way he could
see what had happened. Doubtless expecting another 'can' any moment, and
knowing well that it would be only a matter of an hour or two until
there would be a lot more craft joining in the chase, it is probable
that he followed the tactics which you can always count on a U-boat
following when it knows a hunt is on--that is, to submerge deeply and
lose no time in making itself just as scarce as possible in the
neighbourhood where the hue-and-cry has started. That's the only way I
can account for the fact that this particular pirate didn't have a
revenge after his own Hunnish heart. We were about evenly matched for
guns probably, and doubtless I would have had rather better than an even
break on that score, because a surface craft can stand more holing than
a submarine. But there was nothing to prevent his taking a sneaking
sight through his periscope from a safe distance and then slipping a
mouldie at us, which, helpless as we were for a while, there would have
been no way of avoiding. A moving ship of almost any class, provided it
has a gun to make him keep his distance, has a good fighting chance of
saving herself from being torpedoed by the proper use of her helm; a
disabled ship, though she has all the guns in the world, has no show if
the Fritz really thinks she's worth wasting two or three torpedoes on.
If he has his nerve, and any luck at all, he ought to finish the job
with one.

"So I think you'll have to admit," said K---- with a whimsical smile,
"that, under the circumstances and considering what might have happened,
I felt that I had no legitimate kick coming in having to take her home
under sail. Fact is, I considered myself in luck to have a ship to take
home at all. The rudder, luckily, though a good dea