e of his U-boats rigged up a mast and sails
and lured on victims by posing as a fisherman in distress.

"Obviously, it's a game you can't use any kind of craft that is plainly
a warship in, and the burning question always is as to how far you will
sacrifice punishing power to harmlessness of appearance. A light gun or
two is about as far as you can go in the way of shooting-irons, and
even these are very difficult to conceal on a small boat. Likewise a
torpedo tube. I tried that first stunt of mine without either, and
that's where the psychology came in.

"Most of the 'Q-boats' they were figuring on at that time were of the
slower freighter type, with a rather powerful gun mounted for'ard and
concealed as well as possible by something rigged up to look like deck
cargo.

"That was, however, all well and good as far as it went, I figured, but,
from such study of the Hun's little ways as I had been able to make, I
had my doubts as to whether an old cargo boat would prove tempting
enough bait to put a Fritz in the proper mental state for a real
'rise'--one in which he'd deliver himself up to you bound and gagged, so
to speak. _That_ was the kind of a thing I wanted to make a bid for,
and, by cracky, I pulled it off.

"From all I could pick up, from the inside and outside, about the ships
that had already been torpedoed, I came to the conclusion that the Hun
would go to a lot more trouble, and take a deal bigger chance, to put
down a vessel with a number of passengers than he would with a
freighter. And even that early in the War a U-boat had exposed itself to
being rammed by a destroyer, when it could have avoided the attack
entirely by foregoing the pleasure of a Parthian shot at a lifeboat
which was already half-swamped in the heavy seas. _That_ was the little
trait of the Hun's that I reckoned on playing up to when I began to
figure on taking the '----' out U-boat strafing without any gun larger
than a Maxim aboard her. I'd have been glad enough of a good
four-incher, understand, if there had been any way in the world it could
have been concealed. But there wasn't, and rather than miss getting into
the game at all, I was quite content to tackle it with such weapons as
were available. That was where my 'che-ild' came in.

"On the score of weapons available, there were only two--the lance-bomb
and the depth-charge. For the kind of game I had in mind, it was to the
former that I pinned my faith. It was powerful enough