on
transoms in that destroyer below, nor too much dryness on her flying
bridge. And yet here was our little sub--full speed and all--heading
straight into high-curling seas and making fine weather of it.

Plunging her bow under, and through she'd go; and when she did the seas
would go swashing up atop of her make-believe deck and come rolling down
her round-top plates and squishing through the hundreds of round holes
in her deck sides. But steady? Up on her little bridge we did not half
the time have to hold on to her little steel-rope rail lines to keep our
balance. She kept on going, hooked-up all the way, seas and wind and all
to hinder her, and finished her five-hour run without so much as wetting
our coat fronts up on the conning-tower bridge. A great little sea
boat--a submarine.

Now for the personnel of the crew. The crew of the sub described were
not sailors. The captain was an old seagoer--yes; and it would be a safe
guess that the diving-rudder man had a seagoing experience; and one
other perhaps; but the fellows who stood by the other things below came
straight from the boat works. They had helped, most of them, to build
her: which was one good reason for having them along on her trial trip.

And there are thousands of young fellows working around garages and in
machine-shops and electric-light plants ashore who are the very men
needed for submarines. There will always have to be a sailor or two in a
submarine; or there should be, for a real sailor is always a handy man
to have around--he knows things that nobody else knows.

And so, if hanging around there are any young fellows with a taste for
adventure and a trend for naval warfare, these submarines look to be the
thing. They are only little fellows now, and, as they stand to-day,
limited as to range and power of offense, but stay by and grow up with
them, and by and by be with them when they will be as big as the
battleships and of a radius of action that will stretch from here
to--well, as far as they like; drawing their energy from the sun above
them, or the sea-tides about them, and not having to see enemy ships to
be able to fight them--equipped with devices not now invented but which
will serve to feel those other ships and, feeling them, to plot their
direction and distance!

Imagine a fleet of those lads battling under water some day--allowing no
surface craft to live--feeling each other out and plotting direction and
distance as they feel, a