at if it got any worse,
he'd hold me till to-morrow morning. I told him I'd rather go out
to-night. Perfect cinch once you get to the mouth of the bay; all you
have to do is submerge and take it easy. What do you think of the news?
Smithie thinks he saw a Hun yesterday. Got anything good to read?
Somebody's pinched that magazine I was reading. Thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen--that ought to be enough handkerchiefs. Hello, there goes the
juice!"

The humming of the dynamo was dying away slowly, fading with an effect
of lengthening distance. The guitar orchestra, as if to celebrate its
deliverance, burst into a triumphant rendering of Sousa's "Stars and
Stripes."

My guide and I waited till after midnight to watch the going of Branch's
_Z-5_. Branch and his second, stuffed into black oilskins down whose
gleaming surface ran beaded drops of rain, stood on the bridge; a number
of sailors were busy doing various things along the deck. The electric
lights shone in all their calm unearthly brilliance. Then slowly, very
slowly, the _Z-5_ began to gather headway, the clear water seemed to
flow past her green sides, and she rode out of the pool of light into
the darkness waiting close at hand.

"Good-bye! Good luck!" we cried.

A vagrant shower came roaring down into the shining pool.

"Good-bye!" cried voices through the night.

[Sidenote: The submarines disappear in the dark.]

Three minutes later all trace of the _Z-5_ had disappeared in the dark.

[Sidenote: Night and day are the same on a submarine.]

Captain Bill of the _Z-3_ was out on patrol. His vessel was running
submerged. The air within--they had but recently dived--was new and
sweet; and that raw cold which eats into submerged submarines had not
begun to take the joy out of life. It was the third day out; the time,
five o'clock in the afternoon. The outer world, however, did not
penetrate into the submarine. Night or day, on the surface or submerged,
only one time, a kind of motionless electric high noon, existed within
those concave walls of gleaming cream-white enamel.

Those of the crew not on watch were taking it easy. Like unto their
officers, submarine sailors are an unusual lot. They are _real_ sailors,
or machinist sailors--boys for whose quality the navy has a flattering,
picturesque, and quite unprintable adjective. A submarine man, mind you,
works harder than perhaps any other man of his grade in the navy,
because the vessel in which he lives is not