chief officer of the steamer was in charge of one. They were
returning to their ship, and told me that we had hit the
submarine. We escorted them through the nets and parted very good
friends."

"But how did you get the scalp of this U-boat?" I asked.

"We signalled to the admiral, and sent the Daffy to investigate.
She found the place, all right. It was a choppy sea, but there
was one smooth patch in it, just where we told 'em the submarine
had disappeared; a big patch of water like wavy satin, two or
three hundred yards of it, coloured like the stripes on mackerel,
all blue and green with oil. They took a specimen of the oil."

"Did it satisfy the Admiralty?"

"No. Nothing satisfies the Admiralty but certainties. They count
the minimum losses of the enemy, and the maximum of their own.
Very proper, too. Then you know where you are. But, mind you, I
don't believe we finished him off that morning. Oil don't prove
that. It only proves we hit him. I believe it was the 'Maggie and
Rose' that killed him, or the 'Hawthorn.' No; it wasn't either.
It was the 'Loch Awe.'"

"How was that?"

"Well, as Commander White was telling you, we'd shot out nets to
the north and south of him. There were two or three hundred
miles, perhaps, in which he might wriggle about; but he couldn't
get out of the trap, even if he knew where to look for the
danger. He tried to run for home, and that's what finished him.
They'll tell you all about that on the 'Loch Awe.'"

So the next day I heard the end of the yarn from a sandy-haired
skipper in a trawler whose old romantic name was dark with new
significance. He was terribly logical. In his cabin--a
comfortable room with a fine big stove--he had a picture of his
wife and daughters, all very rigid and uncomfortable. He also had
three books. They included neither Burns nor Scott. One was the
Bible, thumbed by his grandfather and his father till the paper
had worn yellow and thin at the sides. The second, I am sorry to
say, was called _The Beautiful White Devil_. The third was an odd
volume of Froude in the _Everyman_ edition. It dealt with the
Armada.

"I was towin' my nets wi' the rest o' my group," he said, "till
about 3 o'clock i' the mornin' on yon occasion. It was fine
weather wi' a kind o'