“Oh, yes,” was the calm answer.

[Sidenote:  The boats may never come back.]

I thought of that ominous phrase I had noted in the British records,—­“failed to report,”—­and I remembered the stolid British captain who had said to me, speaking of submarines, “Sometimes nobody knows just what happened.  Out there in the deep water, whatever happens, happens in a hurry.”

My guide and I went below to the officers’ corridor.  Now and then, through the quiet, a mandolin or guitar could be heard far off twanging some sentimental island ditty; and beneath these sweeter sounds lay a monotonous mechanical humming.

“What’s that sound?” I asked.

“That’s the Filipino mess-boys having a little festino in their quarters.  The humming?  Oh, that’s the mother-ship’s dynamos charging the batteries of Branch’s boat.  Saves running on the surface.”

[Sidenote:  The captain of the patrol cheerful.]

My guide knocked at a door.  Within his tidy little room, the captain who was to go out on patrol was packing the personal belongings he needed on the trip.

“Hello!” he cried cheerily when he saw us; “come on in.  I’m only doing a little packing up.  What’s it like outside?”

“Raining same as ever, but I don’t think it’s blowing up any harder.”

[Sidenote:  Reading matter is in demand.]

“Hooray!” cried the young captain with heartfelt sincerity; “then I’ll get out to-night.  You know the captain told me that if it got any worse, he’d hold me till to-morrow morning.  I told him I’d rather go out to-night.  Perfect cinch once you get to the mouth of the bay; all you have to do is submerge and take it easy.  What do you think of the news?  Smithie thinks he saw a Hun yesterday.  Got anything good to read?  Somebody’s pinched that magazine I was reading.  Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—­that ought to be enough handkerchiefs.  Hello, there goes the juice!”

The humming of the dynamo was dying away slowly, fading with an effect of lengthening distance.  The guitar orchestra, as if to celebrate its deliverance, burst into a triumphant rendering of Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes.”

My guide and I waited till after midnight to watch the going of Branch’s Z-5.  Branch and his second, stuffed into black oilskins down whose gleaming surface ran beaded drops of rain, stood on the bridge; a number of sailors were busy doing various things along the deck.  The electric lights shone in all their calm unearthly brilliance.  Then slowly, very slowly, the Z-5 began to gather headway, the clear water seemed to flow past her green sides, and she rode out of the pool of light into the darkness waiting close at hand.

“Good-bye!  Good luck!” we cried.

A vagrant shower came roaring down into the shining pool.

“Good-bye!” cried voices through the night.

[Sidenote:  The submarines disappear in the dark.]