there to try it out, and no danger of starving
while we try it.

THE SEA BABIES

Submarines have been cutting a large figure in this war. There is
probably a general curiosity to know how they are operated. I know I was
curious to know, and, _Collier's_ having secured me permission from the
Electric Boat Company, I went over to Cape Cod to take in a trial trip
or two of some boats they were building for the British Government.

There was one all ready for sea.

Long and narrow, and modelled like a stretched-out egg she was, with one
end of the egg running to a point by way of a stern, and the other
flattened to an up-and-down wedge-like bow. A heavy black line marked
her run.

Below her run she was tinted to the pale green of inshore waters, and to
a grayish blue above. Everything above her deck, which was only a raised
fore-and-aft platform for the crew to walk on, with countless little
round scupper-holes in its sides--above the deck her conning-tower, and
above that again her periscope casing--all were blue-gray.

The feeling of the morning was of heavy wind and rain or snow to come;
and a hard, cold breath of the sea and a taste of the rain were already
on us as we crossed the plank from the mother ship to the deck of the
"sub" and, one after the other, fitted ourselves into the main hatchway
and wiggled down into her.

Our submarine, from the inside, was an amazing collection of engines,
tanks, gauges, tubes, pipes, valves, wheels, torpedoes, tube heads,
electric registers, electric lights, and whatnot. A flat steel floor ran
from the forward end to the engine-room aft. Between the floor and the
arched deck overhead were three heavy steel bulkheads with heavy steel
doors. A narrow iron skeleton ladder led up to her conning-tower; small
steel rungs bolted to the casing showed the way to a square after-deck
hatch.

When all the others of us were below, the captain came squeezing down
from the conning-tower hatch and took his position at the periscope.

To the captain's left stood a man whose job it was to hold the sub to
the depth of water desired. This was the diving-rudder man, a most
expert one, we were told, who had been known to hold a submerged sub at
full speed to within six inches of one depth for two miles at a stretch.
A thin brass scale and a curved tube of colored water with an air bubble
in it helped out the diving-rudder man's calculations. The least
deviation of the sub's course fro