ound the underworld of "sub-dom"; and the Germans
swore they would never be caught again. So when another sub chased and
shelled an old tub of a sailing ship her commander took good care to
make sure he had not caught another Q. First and second panic parties,
or what he thought were panic parties, did not satisfy him. But at
last, when he had seen the ship's papers and had counted the crew, he
laughed at his own mistake and came close alongside, ordering the boats
away in spite of the skipper's entreaties to be allowed to go back and
get his wife, who was crying her eyes out on deck with her baby in her
arms. When the boats rowed off the poor woman went mad, rushing about
wildly, with piercing shrieks, and finally, just as the German was
coming on board, throwing her baby straight into his conning tower.
What the Germans thought of this will never be known; for the baby was
made of rubber filled with high explosive, and it blew the sub to
smithereens.

CHAPTER XXVII

SURRENDER!

(1918)

As Jutland broke the spirit of the Germans who fought on the surface so
minefields, netting, convoys, patrolling, and Q boats broke the spirit
of those who fought in submarines. Drake's Sea-Dogs would take their
chance of coming home alive when the insurance on their ships used to
be made by men whom Shakespeare calls the "putters-out of five for
one." As we say now, the chances were five to one against the Sea-Dog
ship that went to foreign parts in time of war. But, when the odds
reached four to one against the German subs, the German crews began to
mutiny, refusing to go aboard of what they saw were fast becoming just
new steel coffins of the sea. A Belgian maid, compelled to slave for
officers of German submarines at Zeebrugge, kept count of those who
returned alive. The same number, twenty, always boarded in the house.
But, before the British came and drove the Germans out, no less than
sixteen of her twenty masters had stepped into dead men's shoes.

Finally, in the early morning of November the 3rd, when, in wild
despair, the Kaiser ordered the whole Fleet out for one last fight, the
men of aircraft, surface craft, and submarines alike refused point
blank to go; and the German Revolution then and there began. It was
the German Navy that rose first, brought to its senses by the might of
British sea-power. The Army followed. Then the people.

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (th