new
how they had gone on for days at a high pitch of excitement.

In my plans, I had counted on the darkness, which must come soon. We
would be very economical of the power, so that it would take us to the
point which I had selected after carefully studying the chart. We kept
to the same course for half an hour. Then, when the darkness must have
settled down, I turned off at an angle of ninety degrees, and headed
straight for the coast, where I knew the depth would permit us to rest
on the bottom, to wait until the enemy had given up his manhunt. This
would be towards morning, I thought, especially if the storm coming up
from the southwest should increase in violence so that the searching of
the water with nets would become very difficult.

The point that I had selected for our resting place was far from
comfortable. And it was marked on the chart, not with the reassuring
"Sd." which indicated a sand bottom, but with the dreaded "St." which
meant the bottom was stony. But we had no choice. And when the devil is
in a pinch, he will eat flies, although he is accustomed to better food.
We did not rise again, since we knew it was dark over the sea, but
continued at a considerable depth without incident and slowly approached
our goal.

About midnight, according to my calculations, we would be able to touch
the bottom. And the storage batteries had to last up to that time.
Krueger figured and figured and came to the conclusion that they would
hardly last long enough.

Until ten o'clock we had heard our friend's propellers over us several
times. Thereafter all became quiet on the surface, and, relieved, I drew
a deep breath. They had lost the scent. It became bearable again in the
U-boat. I sat on the stairway leading to the "Centrale" and was eating
sandwiches and drinking hot tea with the other officers and the rest of
the crew. It was almost twelve o'clock and still we had not touched
bottom. What would happen if the computation of our location was wrong?
This could easily have occurred, because of the strong current and our
slow speed.

Half-past twelve! Still no bottom! Engineer Krueger was nervously
stamping his feet and turned out one electric light after another in
order to save power. For the same reason, the electric heating apparatus
had been cut off for a long time, and we were very cold.

At five minutes to one we felt a slight scraping. The motors were
stopped and then we reversed them in order to decrease