and it submits meekly; but at no time is it meant to wear on a hydroplane.  They dared not come up to unhitch it, “owing to the batteries ashore,” so they pushed the dim shape ahead of them till they got outside Kum Kale.  They then went full astern, and emptied the after-tanks, which brought the bows down, and in this posture rose to the surface, when “the rush of water from the screws together with the sternway gathered allowed the mine to fall clear of the vessel.”

Now a fool, said Dr. Johnson, would have tried to describe that.

III

RAVAGES AND REPAIRS

Before we pick up the further adventures of H.M.  Submarine E14 and her partner E11, here is what you might call a cutting-out affair in the Sea of Marmara which E12 (Lieutenant-Commander K.M.  Bruce) put through quite on the old lines.

E12’s main motors gave trouble from the first, and she seems to have been a cripple for most of that trip.  She sighted two small steamers, one towing two, and the other three, sailing vessels; making seven keels in all.  She stopped the first steamer, noticed she carried a lot of stores, and, moreover, that her crew—­she had no boats—­were all on deck in life-belts.  Not seeing any gun, E12 ran up alongside and told the first lieutenant to board.  The steamer then threw a bomb at E12, which struck, but luckily did not explode, and opened fire on the boarding-party with rifles and a concealed 1-in. gun.  E12 answered with her six-pounder, and also with rifles.  The two sailing ships in tow, very properly, tried to foul E12’s propellers and “also opened fire with rifles.”

It was as Orientally mixed a fight as a man could wish:  The first lieutenant and the boarding-party engaged on the steamer, E12 foul of the steamer, and being fouled by the sailing ships; the six-pounder methodically perforating the steamer from bow to stern; the steamer’s 1-in. gun and the rifles from the sailing ships raking everything and everybody else; E12’s coxswain on the conning-tower passing up ammunition; and E12’s one workable motor developing “slight defects” at, of course, the moment when power to manoeuvre was vital.

The account is almost as difficult to disentangle as the actual mess must have been.  At any rate, the six-pounder caused an explosion in the steamer’s ammunition, whereby the steamer sank in a quarter of an hour, giving time—­and a hot time it must have been—­for E12 to get clear of her and to sink the two sailing ships.  She then chased the second steamer, who slipped her three tows and ran for the shore.  E12 knocked her about a good deal with gun-fire as she fled, saw her drive on the beach well alight, and then, since the beach opened fire with a gun at 1500 yards, went away to retinker her motors and write up her log.  She approved of her first lieutenant’s behaviour “under very trying circumstances” (this probably refers to the explosion of the ammunition by the six-pounder which, doubtless, jarred the boarding-party) and of the cox who acted as ammunition-hoist; and of the gun’s crew, who “all did very well” under rifle and small-gun fire “at a range of about ten yards.”  But she never says what she really said about her motors.