the picture; I might have been looking at
invaders of the sleeping earth. The wind swept past in great booming
salvoes; rain fell in sloping, liquid rods through the brilliancy of
electric lamps burning with a steadiness that had something in it
strange, incomprehensible, and out of place in the motion of the storm.

And then a hand appeared on the topmost rung of the nearer ladder, and a
bulky sailor, a very human sailor in very human dungarees, poked his
head out of the aperture, surveyed the inhospitable night, and
disappeared.

[Sidenote: Submarines are going out to-night.]

"He's on Branch's boat. They're going out to-night," said the officer
who was guiding me about.

"To-night? How on earth will he ever find his way to the open sea?"

"Knows the bay like a book. However, if the weather gets any worse, I
doubt if the captain will let him go. Branch will be wild if they don't
let him out. Somebody has just reported wreckage off the coast, so there
must be a Hun round."

"But aren't our subs sometimes mistaken for Germans?"

"Oh, yes," was the calm answer.

[Sidenote: The boats may never come back.]

I thought of that ominous phrase I had noted in the British
records,--"failed to report,"--and I remembered the stolid British
captain who had said to me, speaking of submarines, "Sometimes nobody
knows just what happened. Out there in the deep water, whatever happens,
happens in a hurry."

My guide and I went below to the officers' corridor. Now and then,
through the quiet, a mandolin or guitar could be heard far off twanging
some sentimental island ditty; and beneath these sweeter sounds lay a
monotonous mechanical humming.

"What's that sound?" I asked.

"That's the Filipino mess-boys having a little festino in their
quarters. The humming? Oh, that's the mother-ship's dynamos charging the
batteries of Branch's boat. Saves running on the surface."

[Sidenote: The captain of the patrol cheerful.]

My guide knocked at a door. Within his tidy little room, the captain who
was to go out on patrol was packing the personal belongings he needed on
the trip.

"Hello!" he cried cheerily when he saw us; "come on in. I'm only doing a
little packing up. What's it like outside?"

"Raining same as ever, but I don't think it's blowing up any harder."

[Sidenote: Reading matter is in demand.]

"Hooray!" cried the young captain with heartfelt sincerity; "then I'll
get out to-night. You know the captain told me th