miral in a London office, the
middle of it only to a commander at Kirkwall, and the end of it
only to a trawler skipper off the coast of Ireland. But here and
there it is possible to piece the fragments together into a
complete adventure, as in the following record of a successful
chase, where the glorious facts outrun all the imaginations of
the wildest melodrama.

There were suspicious vessels at anchor, one moonless night, in a
small bay near the Mumbles. They lay there like shadows, but
before long they knew that the night was alive for a hundred
miles with silent talk about them. At dawn His Majesty's trawlers
_Golden Feather_ and _Peggy Nutten_ foamed up, but the shadows
had disappeared.

The trawlers were ordered to search the coast thoroughly for any
submarine stores that might have been left there. "Thoroughly" in
this war means a great deal. It means that even the bottom of the
sea must be searched. This was done by grapnels; but the bottom
was rocky and seemed unfit for a base. Nothing was found but a
battered old lobster pot, crammed with seaweed and little green
crabs.

Probably these appearances were more than usually deceitful; for
shortly afterward watchers on the coast reported a strange
fishing boat, with patched brown sails, heading for the suspected
bay. Before the patrols came up, however, she seemed to be
alarmed. The brown sails were suddenly taken in; the disguised
conning tower was revealed, and this innocent fishing boat,
gracefully submerging, left only the smiling and spotless April
seas to the bewildered eyes of the coast guard.

In the meantime signals were pulsing and flashing on land and
sea, and the U-boat had hardly dipped when, over the smooth green
swell, a great sea hawk came whirring up to join the hunt, a hawk
with light yellow wings and a body of service grey--the latest
type of seaplane. It was one of those oily seas in which a
watcher from the air may follow a submarine for miles, as an
olive green shadow under the lighter green. The U-boat doubled
twice; but it was half an hour before her sunken shadow was lost
to sight under choppy blue waters, and long before that time she
was evidently at ease in her mind and pursuing a steady course.
For the moment her trail was then lost, and the h