who, too, may have heard that unmistakable sound, she goes to bed below in the chill dark till it is time to turn homewards.  When she rose she met storm from the north and logged it accordingly.  “Spray froze as it struck, and bridge became a mass of ice.  Experienced considerable difficulty in keeping the conning-tower hatch free from ice.  Found it necessary to keep a man continuously employed on this work.  Bridge screen immovable, ice six inches thick on it.  Telegraphs frozen.”  In this state she forges ahead till midnight, and any one who pleases can imagine the thoughts of the continuous employee scraping and hammering round the hatch, as well as the delight of his friends below when the ice-slush spattered down the conning-tower.  At last she considered it “advisable to free the boat of ice, so went below.”

“AS REQUISITE”

In the Senior Service the two words “as requisite” cover everything that need not be talked about.  E9 next day “proceeded as requisite” through a series of snowstorms and recurring deposits of ice on the bridge till she got in touch with her friend the ice-breaker; and in her company ploughed and rooted her way back to the work we know.  There is nothing to show that it was a near thing for E9, but somehow one has the idea that the ice-breaker did not arrive any too soon for E9’s comfort and progress. (But what happens in the Baltic when the ice-breaker does not arrive?)

That was in winter.  In summer quite the other way, E9 had to go to bed by day very often under the long-lasting northern light when the Baltic is as smooth as a carpet, and one cannot get within a mile and a half of anything with eyes in its head without being put down.  There was one time when E9, evidently on information received, took up “a certain position” and reported the sea “glassy.”  She had to suffer in silence, while three heavily laden German ships went by; for an attack would have given away her position.  Her reward came next day, when she sighted (the words run like Marryat’s) “enemy squadron coming up fast from eastward, proceeding inshore of us.”  They were two heavy battleships with an escort of destroyers, and E9 turned to attack.  She does not say how she crept up in that smooth sea within a quarter of a mile of the leading ship, “a three-funnel ship, of either the Deutschland or Braunschweig class,” but she managed it, and fired both bow torpedoes at her.

“No. 1 torpedo was seen and heard to strike her just before foremost funnel:  smoke and debris appeared to go as high as masthead.”  That much E9 saw before one of the guardian destroyers ran at her.  “So,” says she, “observing her I took my periscope off the battleship.”  This was excusable, as the destroyer was coming up with intent to kill and E9 had to flood her tanks and get down quickly.  Even so, the destroyer only just missed her, and she struck bottom in 43 feet.  “But,” says E9, who, if she could not see, kept her ears open, “at the correct interval (the 45 or 50 seconds mentioned in the previous case) the second torpedo was heard to explode, though not actually seen.”  E9 came up twenty minutes later to make sure.  The destroyer was waiting for her a couple of hundred yards away, and again E9 dipped for the life, but “just had time to see one large vessel approximately four or five miles away.”