“Simultaneously with the sinking of the vessel,” the E11 goes on, “smoke was observed to the eastward.”  It was a steamer who had seen the explosion and was running for Rodosto.  E11 chased her till she tied up to Rodosto pier, and then torpedoed her where she lay—­a heavily laden store-ship piled high with packing-cases.  The water was shallow here, and though E11 bumped along the bottom, which does not make for steadiness of aim, she was forced to show a good deal of her only periscope, and had it dented, but not damaged by rifle-fire from the beach.  As she moved out of Rodosto Bay she saw a paddle-boat loaded with barbed wire, which stopped on the hail, but “as we ranged alongside her, attempted to ram us, but failed owing to our superior speed.”  Then she ran for the beach “very skilfully,” keeping her stern to E11 till she drove ashore beneath some cliffs.  The demolition-squad were just getting to work when “a party of horsemen appeared on the cliffs above and opened a hot fire on the conning tower.”  E11 got out, but owing to the shoal water it was some time before she could get under enough to fire a torpedo.  The stern of a stranded paddle-boat is no great target and the thing exploded on the beach.  Then she “recharged batteries and proceeded slowly on the surface towards Constantinople.”  All this between the ordinary office hours of 10 A.M. and 4 P.M.

Her next day’s work opens, as no pallid writer of fiction dare begin, thus:  “Having dived unobserved into Constantinople, observed, etc.”  Her observations were rather hampered by cross-tides, mud, and currents, as well as the vagaries of one of her own torpedoes which turned upside down and ran about promiscuously.  It hit something at last, and so did another shot that she fired, but the waters by Constantinople Arsenal are not healthy to linger in after one has scared up the whole sea-front, so “turned to go out.”  Matters were a little better below, and E11 in her perilous passage might have been a lady of the harem tied up in a sack and thrown into the Bosporus.  She grounded heavily; she bounced up 30 feet, was headed down again by a manoeuvre easier to shudder over than to describe, and when she came to rest on the bottom found herself being swivelled right round the compass.  They watched the compass with much interest.  “It was concluded, therefore, that the vessel (E11 is one of the few who speaks of herself as a ‘vessel’ as well as a ‘boat’) was resting on the shoal under the Leander Tower, and was being turned round by the current.”  So they corrected her, started the motors, and “bumped gently down into 85 feet of water” with no more knowledge than the lady in the sack where the next bump would land them.

THE PREENING PERCH