een through the
deadlights? Or did she suddenly swim into his vision from behind, and
obscure, without warning, his periscope with a single brown clutching
hand? Was she alone, or one of a mob of splashing, shouting small
craft? He may well have been too busy to note, for there were patrols
all around him, a minefield of curious design and undefined area
somewhere in front, and steam trawlers vigorously sweeping for him
astern and ahead. And when E14 had burrowed and bumped and scraped
through six hours of blind death, she found the Sea of Marmara
crawling with craft, and was kept down almost continuously and grew
hot and stuffy in consequence. Nor could she charge her batteries in
peace, so at the end of another hectic, hunted day of starting them up
and breaking off and diving--which is bad for the temper--she decided
to quit those infested waters near the coast and charge up somewhere
off the traffic routes.

This accomplished, after a long, hot run, which did the motors no
good, she went back to her beat, where she picked up three destroyers
convoying a couple of troopships. But it was a glassy calm and the
destroyers "came for me." She got off a long-range torpedo at one
transport, and ducked before she could judge results. She apologises
for this on the grounds that one of her periscopes had been
damaged--not, as one would expect, by the gentleman leaning out of the
little steamboat, but by some casual shot--calibre not specified--the
day before. "And so," says E14, "I could not risk my remaining one
being bent." However, she heard a thud, and the depth-gauges--those
great clock-hands on the white-faced circles--"flicked," which is
another sign of dreadful certainty down under. When she rose again she
saw a destroyer convoying one burning transport to the nearest beach.
That afternoon she met a sister-boat (now gone to Valhalla), who told
her that she was almost out of torpedoes, and they arranged a
rendezvous for next day, but "before we could communicate we had to
dive, and I did not see her again." There must be many such meetings
in the Trade, under all skies--boat rising beside boat at the point
agreed upon for interchange of news and materials; the talk shouted
aloud with the speakers' eyes always on the horizon and all hands
standing by to dive, even in the middle of a sentence.

ANNOYING PATROL SHIPS

E14 kept to her job, on the edge of the procession of traffic. Patrol
vessels annoyed her to such an