ptania_. The latter,
apparently as steady as though "chocked up" in a dry-dock, drove
serenely on in great swinging zigzags.

The captain came up from the chart-room and took a long look around.
"It's just about as I expected," he said, shaking his head dubiously.
"It isn't so rough but what a submarine might stage an attack if her
skipper had the nerve; and it's a darn sight too rough for destroyers to
screen the _Lymptania_ with her holding to anything like full speed.
It's all up now to _what_ speed she will try to hold us to."

"But what's the matter with this?" I protested. "We're still hitting the
high places for speed, and, while I wouldn't call this exactly
comfortable, we still seem to be making pretty good weather of it."

The captain smiled indulgently. "You're right," he said, "as far as you
go. We are indeed hitting the high places, but--the high places haven't
started hitting us yet. Wait just about five or ten minutes," he added,
turning his glasses to where the great liner, silhouetted for the moment
against the sunset clouds, ploughed along on our port beam, "and you'll
see the difference. Ah!" this as he steadied his glasses on where the
boiling wake of the _Lymptania_, beginning to bend away in a sharp curve
indicating a considerable alteration of course. "There she goes now.
Hold tight!"

With his hand on the engine-room telegraph, the captain gave the men at
the wheel a course to conform to that of the _Lymptania_. Quick as a
cat on her helm, the _Zip_ swung swiftly through eight points and
plunged ahead. This brought on her bows seas that had been rolling up
abeam, and we were up against the real thing at last.

The first sea, which she caught while she was still turning, the _Zip_
contented herself with slicing off the truculently-tossing top of before
crunching it underfoot. It was a smartly-executed performance, and
seemed to promise encouragingly as to the way she might be expected to
dispose of the next ones. The second in line, however, which she met
head-on and essayed the same tactics with, dampened her ardour--and just
about everything and everybody else below the foretop--by detaching a
few tons of its bumptious bulk and raking her fore-and-aft with its
rumbling green-white flood. The bridge was above the main weight of that
blow, but 'midships and aft I saw men bracing themselves against a
knee-deep stream. One bareheaded and bare-armed man, who had evidently
been surprised in makin