A friendly hullabaloo broke forth.  Chairs scraped, one fell with a crash.

“Hello, boys!”

“Hi, Ned!”

“For the love of Pete, Joe, shave off those whiskers of yours; they make you look like Trotzky.”

“See any Germans?”

“What’s the news?”

“What’s doing?”

“Hi, Manuelo”—­this to a Filipino mess-boy who stood looking on with impassive curiosity—­“serve three more breakfasts.”

“Anything go for you?”

“Well, if here isn’t our old Bump!”

[Sidenote:  Captain Ned begins his story.]

The crowd gathered round Captain Ned, who had established contact (this is a military term quite out of place in a work on the navy) with the eagerly sought, horribly elusive German.

“Go on, Ned, give us an earful.  What time did you say it was?”

[Sidenote:  An enemy submarine that escaped.]

“About 5 a.m.” answered the captain.  He stood leaning against a door, and the fine head, the pallor, the touch of fatigue, all made a very striking and appealing picture.  “Say about eight minutes after five.  I’d just come up to take a look-see, and saw him just about two miles away, on the surface, and moving right along.  So I went under to get into a good position, came up again, and let him have one.  Well, he saw it just as it was almost on him, swung her round, and dived like a ton of lead.”

The audience listened in silent sympathy.  One could see the disappointment on the captain’s face.

“Where was he?”

“About so-and-so.”

“That’s the jinx that got after the convoy sure as you live.”

[Sidenote:  Two blind ships that tried to find each other under water.]

The speaker had had his own adventures with the Germans.  A month or so before, he had shoved up his periscope and spotted a Fritz on the surface in full noonday.  The watchful Fritz, however, had been lucky enough to see the enemy almost at once, and had dived.  The American followed suit.  The eyeless submarine manoeuvred about, some eighty feet under, the German evidently “making his getaway,” the American hoping to be lucky enough to pick up Fritz’s trail, and get a shot at him when he rose again to the top.  And while the two blind ships manoeuvred there in the dark of the abyss, the keel of the fleeing German had actually, by a curious chance, scraped along the top of the American vessel and carried away the wireless aerials!

All were silent for a few seconds, thinking over the affair.  It was not difficult to read the thought in every mind, the thought of getting at the Germans.  The characteristic aggressiveness of the American mind, heritage of a people compelled to subdue a vast, wild continent, is a wonderful military attribute.  The idea of our navy is, “Get after ’em, keep after ’em, stay after ’em, don’t give ’em an instant of security or rest.”  And none have this fighting spirit deeper in their hearts than our gallant boys of the submarine patrol.