“SIX HOURS OF BLIND DEATH”

This sentence, which might have come out of a French exercise book, is all Lieutenant-Commander Courtney-Boyle sees fit to tell, and that officer will never understand why one taxpayer at least demands his arrest after the war till he shall have given the full tale.  Did he sight the shadowy underline of the small steamboat green through the deadlights?  Or did she suddenly swim into his vision from behind, and obscure, without warning, his periscope with a single brown clutching hand?  Was she alone, or one of a mob of splashing, shouting small craft?  He may well have been too busy to note, for there were patrols all around him, a minefield of curious design and undefined area somewhere in front, and steam trawlers vigorously sweeping for him astern and ahead.  And when E14 had burrowed and bumped and scraped through six hours of blind death, she found the Sea of Marmara crawling with craft, and was kept down almost continuously and grew hot and stuffy in consequence.  Nor could she charge her batteries in peace, so at the end of another hectic, hunted day of starting them up and breaking off and diving—­which is bad for the temper—­she decided to quit those infested waters near the coast and charge up somewhere off the traffic routes.

This accomplished, after a long, hot run, which did the motors no good, she went back to her beat, where she picked up three destroyers convoying a couple of troopships.  But it was a glassy calm and the destroyers “came for me.”  She got off a long-range torpedo at one transport, and ducked before she could judge results.  She apologises for this on the grounds that one of her periscopes had been damaged—­not, as one would expect, by the gentleman leaning out of the little steamboat, but by some casual shot—­calibre not specified—­the day before.  “And so,” says E14, “I could not risk my remaining one being bent.”  However, she heard a thud, and the depth-gauges—­those great clock-hands on the white-faced circles—­“flicked,” which is another sign of dreadful certainty down under.  When she rose again she saw a destroyer convoying one burning transport to the nearest beach.  That afternoon she met a sister-boat (now gone to Valhalla), who told her that she was almost out of torpedoes, and they arranged a rendezvous for next day, but “before we could communicate we had to dive, and I did not see her again.”  There must be many such meetings in the Trade, under all skies—­boat rising beside boat at the point agreed upon for interchange of news and materials; the talk shouted aloud with the speakers’ eyes always on the horizon and all hands standing by to dive, even in the middle of a sentence.

ANNOYING PATROL SHIPS