I believe, the submarine that fought the Turkish cavalry on the beach.  And in addition to matters much more marvellous than any I have hinted at, the reports deal with repairs and shifts and contrivances carried through in the face of dangers that read like the last delirium of romance.  One boat went down the Straits and found herself rather canted over to one side.  A mine and chain had jammed under her forward diving-plane.  So far as I made out, she shook it off by standing on her head and jerking backwards; or it may have been, for the thing has occurred more than once, she merely rose as much as she could, when she could, and then “released it by hand,” as the official phrase goes.

FOUR NIGHTMARES

And who, a few months ago, could have invented, or having invented, would have dared to print such a nightmare as this:  There was a boat in the North Sea who ran into a net and was caught by the nose.  She rose, still entangled, meaning to cut the thing away on the surface.  But a Zeppelin in waiting saw and bombed her, and she had to go down again at once—­but not too wildly or she would get herself more wrapped up than ever.  She went down, and by slow working and weaving and wriggling, guided only by guesses at the meaning of each scrape and grind of the net on her blind forehead, at last she drew clear.  Then she sat on the bottom and thought.  The question was whether she should go back at once and warn her confederates against the trap, or wait till the destroyers which she knew the Zeppelin would have signalled for, should come out to finish her still entangled, as they would suppose, in the net?  It was a simple calculation of comparative speeds and positions, and when it was worked out she decided to try for the double event.  Within a few minutes of the time she had allowed for them, she heard the twitter of four destroyers’ screws quartering above her; rose; got her shot in; saw one destroyer crumple; hung round till another took the wreck in tow; said good-bye to the spare brace (she was at the end of her supplies), and reached the rendezvous in time to turn her friends.

And since we are dealing in nightmares, here are two more—­one genuine, the other, mercifully, false.  There was a boat not only at, but in the mouth of a river—­well home in German territory.  She was spotted, and went under, her commander perfectly aware that there was not more than five feet of water over her conning-tower, so that even a torpedo-boat, let alone a destroyer, would hit it if she came over.  But nothing hit anything.  The search was conducted on scientific principles while they sat on the silt and suffered.  Then the commander heard the rasp of a wire trawl sweeping over his hull.  It was not a nice sound, but there happened to be a couple of gramophones aboard, and he turned them both on to drown it.  And in due time that boat got home with everybody’s hair of just the same colour as when they had started!