l have no chance to tell of them until the war is over.
Nor is it possible during wartimes to secure descriptions even of
our own underwater boats. But the interior of the typical submarine
may be imagined as in size and shape something like an unusually
long street car. Along the sides, where seats would normally be, are
packed wheels, cylinders, motors, pumps, machinery of all imaginable
kinds and some of it utterly unimaginable to the lay observer. The
whole interior is painted white and bathed in electric light. The
casual visitor from "above seas" is dazed by the array of machinery
and shrinks as he walks the narrow aisle lest he become entangled in
it.

Running on the surface the submarine chamber is filled with a roar
and clatter like a boiler shop in full operation. The Diesel engines
are compact and powerful, but the racket they make more nearly
corresponds to their power than to their size. On the surface too
the boat rolls and pitches and the stranger passenger, unequipped
with sea legs grabs for support as the subway rider reaches for a
strap on the curves. But let the order come to submerge. The Diesels
are stopped. The electric motors take up the task, spinning
noiselessly in their jackets. In a moment or two all rolling ceases.
One can hardly tell whether the ship is moving at all--it might for
all its motion tells be resting quietly on the bottom. If you could
disabuse your mind for a moment of the recollection that you were in
a great steel cigar heavy laden with explosives, and deep under the
surface of the sea you would find the experience no more exciting
than a trip through the Pennsylvania tubes. But there is something
uncanny about the silence.

[Illustration: Permission of _Scientific American_.

_A Torpedo Designed by Fulton._]

Go forward to the conical compartment at the very bow. There you
will find the torpedo chamber for the submarine, like the cigar to
which it is so often compared, carries its fire at its front tip.
The most common type of boat will have two or four torpedo tubes in
this chamber. The more modern ones will have a second torpedo
chamber astern with the same number of tubes and carry other
torpedoes on deck which by an ingenious device can be launched from
their outside cradles by mechanism within the boat. In the torpedo
chamber are twice as many spare torpedoes as there are tubes, made
fast along the sides. Here too the anchor winch stands with the
cable attached to