ed (the words run like Marryat's) "enemy squadron coming up fast
from eastward, proceeding inshore of us." They were two heavy
battleships with an escort of destroyers, and E9 turned to attack. She
does not say how she crept up in that smooth sea within a quarter of a
mile of the leading ship, "a three-funnel ship, of either the
Deutschland or Braunschweig class," but she managed it, and fired both
bow torpedoes at her.

"No. 1 torpedo was seen and heard to strike her just before foremost
funnel: smoke and _debris_ appeared to go as high as masthead." That
much E9 saw before one of the guardian destroyers ran at her. "So,"
says she, "observing her I took my periscope off the battleship." This
was excusable, as the destroyer was coming up with intent to kill and
E9 had to flood her tanks and get down quickly. Even so, the destroyer
only just missed her, and she struck bottom in 43 feet. "But," says
E9, who, if she could not see, kept her ears open, "at the correct
interval (the 45 or 50 seconds mentioned in the previous case) the
second torpedo was heard to explode, though not actually seen." E9
came up twenty minutes later to make sure. The destroyer was waiting
for her a couple of hundred yards away, and again E9 dipped for the
life, but "just had time to see one large vessel approximately four or
five miles away."

Putting courage aside, think for a moment of the mere drill of it
all--that last dive for that attack on the chosen battleship; the eye
at the periscope watching "No. 1 torpedo" get home; the rush of the
vengeful destroyer; the instant orders for flooding everything; the
swift descent which had to be arranged for with full knowledge of the
shallow sea-floors waiting below, and a guess at the course that might
be taken by the seeking bows above, for assuming a destroyer to draw
10 feet and a submarine on the bottom to stand 25 feet to the top of
her conning-tower, there is not much clearance in 43 feet salt water,
specially if the boat jumps when she touches bottom. And through all
these and half a hundred other simultaneous considerations, imagine
the trained minds below, counting, as only torpedo-men can count, the
run of the merciless seconds that should tell when that second shot
arrived. Then "at the correct interval" as laid down in the table of
distances, the boom and the jar of No. 2 torpedo, the relief, the
exhaled breath and untightened lips; the impatient waiting for a
second peep, and when that