genuine, the other, mercifully, false. There was a boat not only at,
but _in_ the mouth of a river--well home in German territory. She was
spotted, and went under, her commander perfectly aware that there was
not more than five feet of water over her conning-tower, so that even
a torpedo-boat, let alone a destroyer, would hit it if she came over.
But nothing hit anything. The search was conducted on scientific
principles while they sat on the silt and suffered. Then the commander
heard the rasp of a wire trawl sweeping over his hull. It was not a
nice sound, but there happened to be a couple of gramophones aboard,
and he turned them both on to drown it. And in due time that boat got
home with everybody's hair of just the same colour as when they had
started!

The other nightmare arose out of silence and imagination. A boat had
gone to bed on the bottom in a spot where she might reasonably expect
to be looked for, but it was a convenient jumping-off, or up, place
for the work in hand. About the bad hour of 2.30 A.M. the commander
was waked by one of his men, who whispered to him: "They've got the
chains on us, sir!" Whether it was pure nightmare, an hallucination of
long wakefulness, something relaxing and releasing in that packed box
of machinery, or the disgustful reality, the commander could not tell,
but it had all the makings of panic in it. So the Lord and long
training put it into his head to reply! "Have they? Well, we shan't be
coming up till nine o'clock this morning. Well see about it then. Turn
out that light, please."

_He_ did not sleep, but the dreamer and the others did, and when
morning came and he gave the order to rise, and she rose unhampered,
and he saw the grey, smeared seas from above once again, he said it
was a very refreshing sight.