times when I almost thought she was on her way to make a complete
revolution. You can imagine what it was like inside. To begin with, the
oily air was none too sweet, because every time we opened a hatch we
shipped enough water to make the old hooker look like a start at a
swimming tank; and then she was lurching so continuously and violently
that to move six feet was an expedition. The men were
wonderful--wonderful! Each man at his allotted task, and--what's that
English word?--carrying on. Our little cook couldn't do a thing with the
stove, might as well have tried to cook on a miniature earthquake; but
he saw that all of us had something to eat--doing his bit, game as could
be."

He paused again. The Embankment was fading away in the dark. A waiter
appeared, and drew down the thick, light-proof curtains.

"Yes, the men were wonderful--wonderful. And there wasn't very much
sickness. Let's see, how far had I got?--Since it was impossible to make
any headway, we lay to for forty-eight hours. The deck began to go the
second morning, some of the plates being ripped right off. And
blow--well, as I told you in the beginning, I never saw anything like
it. The disk of the sea was just one great ragged mass of foam being
hurled through space by a wind screaming past with the voice and force
of a million express trains.

[Sidenote: The submarines run on the surface to save electricity.]

"Perhaps you are wondering why we didn't submerge. We simply couldn't
use up our electricity. It takes oil and running on the surface to
create the electric power, and we had a long, long journey ahead. Then
ice began to form on the superstructure, and we had to get out a crew to