to do all the
damage needful to the shell of a submarine if only a chance to get home
with it could be contrived. 'Getting it home' has always been the great
difficulty with the lance-bomb, and up to that time the only chap to
have any luck with it was the skipper of a M.L.--another Yank, by the
way, who came over and got into the game in the same way, and about the
same time, that I did. He had been the champion sixteen-pound
hammer-thrower in some Middle Western college only a year or two before,
and, by taking a double turn on his heeling deck, managed to chuck the
bomb (which is on the end of a wooden handle, much like the old throwing
hammer) about three times as far as anyone ever dreamed of, and cracked
in the nose of a lurking U-boat with it.

"Unluckily, I was not a hammer-thrower, and so had to try to bring about
an easier shot. It was with this purpose in view that I submitted a
proposal to reconvert the '----' temporarily to the outward seeming of a
pleasure yacht; to make her appear so tempting a bait that the Hun's
lust for _schrecklichkeit_, or whatever they call it, would lure him
close enough to give me a chance at him. They were rather inclined to
scoff at the plan at first, principally on the ground that the enemy,
knowing that there was no pleasure yachting going on in the North Sea,
would instantly be suspicious of a craft of that character. I pointed
out that there was still a bit of yachting going on in the Norfolk
Broads, which the Hun, with his comprehensive knowledge of the East
Coast, might well know of, and that there would be nothing strange in a
craft from there being blown to sea in a spell of nor'west weather. Of
course, the '----' isn't a Broads type by a long way, but I didn't
expect the Hun to linger over fine distinctions any more than the trout
coming up for a fly does. The sequel fully proved that I was right.

"It was largely because the stunt I had in mind promised to cost little
more than a new coat of paint and a few rehearsals, which could easily
be carried on in the course of our ordinary patrol duties, that I
finally received somewhat grudging authorisation to go ahead with it. It
was not till the whole show was over that I learned from the laughing
admission of the officer who helped secure that authorization, that the
fact that the output of real M.L.'s was becoming large enough so that
they were about independent of the use of yachts and other pleasure
craft for patrol wo