“Hungry, dirty; oh, so dirty!  We hadn’t had any sort of bath or wash for about three weeks; we all were green-looking from having been cooped up so long, and our unshaven grease-streaked faces would have upset a dinosaur.  The authorities were wonderfully kind, and looked after us and our men in the very best style.  I thought we could never stop eating, and a real sleep—­oh, boy!”

“Did you fly the flag as you came in?” I asked.

“You bet we did!” answered the captain, his keen, handsome face lighting at the memory.  “You see,” he continued in a practical spirit, “they would probably have pumped us full of holes if we hadn’t.”

And that is the way the American submarines crossed the Atlantic to do their share for the Great Cause.

[Sidenote:  A guest on the mother-ship.]

I got to the port of the submarines just as an uncertain and rainy afternoon had finally decided to turn into a wild and disagreeable night.  Short, drenching showers of rain fell, one after the other, like the strokes of a lash; a wind came up out of the sea, and one could hear the thunder of surf on the headlands.  The mother-ship lay moored in a wild, desolate, and indescribably romantic bay; she floated in a sheltered pool, a very oasis of modernity, a marvelous creature of another world and another time.  There was just light enough for me to see that her lines were those of a giant yacht.  Then a curtain of rain beat hissing down on the sea, and the ship and the vague darkening landscape disappeared—­disappeared as if they had melted away in the shower.  Presently the bulk of the vessel appeared again.  At once we drew alongside, and from that moment on, I was the guest of the vessel, recipient of a hospitality and courtesy for which I here make grateful acknowledgment to my friends and hosts.

[Sidenote:  The ship is most skillfully handled.]

The mother-ship of the submarines was a combination of flagship, supply-station, repair-shop, and hotel.  The officers of the submarines had rooms aboard her, which they occupied when off patrol, and the crews off duty slung their hammocks ’tween decks.  The boat was pretty well crowded, having more submarines to look after than she had been built to care for; but thanks to the skill of her officers, everything was going as smoothly as could be.  The vessel had, so to speak, a submarine atmosphere.  Everybody aboard lived, worked, and would have died for the submarine.  They believed in the submarine, believed in it with an enthusiasm which rested on pillars of practical fact.

[Sidenote:  The heroism of the men who tried the first submarine.]