water is to be put aboard, and engine-room supplies to be
supplemented.

A mere plank is the gangway to the little vessel. As the
commander, followed by his officers, comes aboard, a sailor hands
to each a ball of cotton-waste, the sign and symbol of a
submarine officer, which never leaves his hand. For the steel
walls of his craft, the doors, and the companion-ladder all
sweat oil, and at every touch the hands must be wiped dry. The
doorways are narrow round holes. Through one of the holes aft the
commander descends by a breakneck iron ladder into the black hole
lit by electric glow-lamps. The air is heavy with the smell of
oil, and to the unaccustomed longshoreman it is almost choking,
though the hatches are off. The submarine man breathes this air
as if it were the purest ozone. Here in the engine-room aft men
must live and strain every nerve even if for days at a time every
crack whereby the fresh air could get in is hermetically sealed.
On their tense watchfulness thirty lives depend.

Here, too, are slung some hammocks, and in them one watch tries,
and, what is more, succeeds in sleeping, though the men moving
about bump them with head and elbows at every turn, and the low
and narrow vault is full of the hum and purr of machinery. In
length the vault is about ten feet, but if a man of normal
stature stands in the middle and raises his arms to about half
shoulder height his hands will touch the cold, moist steel walls
on either side. A network of wires runs overhead, and there is a
juggler's outfit of handles, levers, and instruments. The
commander inspects everything minutely, then creeps through a
hole into the central control station, where the chief engineer
is at his post. With just about enough assistance to run a fairly
simple machine ashore the chief engineer of a submarine is
expected to control, correct, and, if necessary, repair at sea an
infinitely complex machinery which must not break down for an
instant if thirty men are to return alive to the hulk.

Forward is another narrow steel vault serving at once as
engine-room and crew's quarters. Next to it is a place like a
cupboard, where the cook has just room to stand in front of his
doll's house galley-stove. It is electrically heated, that the
already oppressive ai