"Hungry, dirty; oh, so dirty! We hadn't had any sort of bath or wash for
about three weeks; we all were green-looking from having been cooped up
so long, and our unshaven grease-streaked faces would have upset a
dinosaur. The authorities were wonderfully kind, and looked after us and
our men in the very best style. I thought we could never stop eating,
and a real sleep--oh, boy!"

"Did you fly the flag as you came in?" I asked.

"You bet we did!" answered the captain, his keen, handsome face lighting
at the memory. "You see," he continued in a practical spirit, "they
would probably have pumped us full of holes if we hadn't."

And that is the way the American submarines crossed the Atlantic to do
their share for the Great Cause.

[Sidenote: A guest on the mother-ship.]

I got to the port of the submarines just as an uncertain and rainy
afternoon had finally decided to turn into a wild and disagreeable
night. Short, drenching showers of rain fell, one after the other, like
the strokes of a lash; a wind came up out of the sea, and one could hear
the thunder of surf on the headlands. The mother-ship lay moored in a
wild, desolate, and indescribably romantic bay; she floated in a
sheltered pool, a very oasis of modernity, a marvelous creature of
another world and another time. There was just light enough for me to
see that her lines were those of a giant yacht. Then a curtain of rain
beat hissing down on the sea, and the ship and the vague darkening
landscape disappeared--disappeared as if they had melted away in the
shower. Presently the bulk of the vessel appeared again. At once we drew