We boarded the submarine pointed out, and found it, of course, provided with everything necessary for an immediate departure, including provisions for a week.
“You understand the navigation of the Canal, I suppose?” I inquired of Orloff.
“I do, sir.”
“Very good. Take the boat through. And ascertain all that you can about another submarine which must have passed through yesterday. Wake me if you hear or see anything.”
I lay down in the captain’s berth and tried to sleep. But the excitement and, I may say, the romantic interest of the adventure proved too strong for me.
I rose again, and came to where my deputy was seated, carefully conning the boat out of the dockyard basin into the Baltic end of the great Canal.
We were already submerged, only the tip of our conning staff being out of the water. But by an ingenious system of tiny mirrors the steersman was able to see his way as plainly as if he had been on deck above the surface.
On approaching the lock by which the basin opened into the Canal, no signal appeared to be given. Silently, as if of their own accord, the huge sluices opened and shut, and we glided out into the great waterway which has made the German Navy independent of Danish good-will.
The voyage along the Kiel Canal in the silence of the night was deeply interesting, and were I not obliged to restrict myself severely to the naked outline of such facts as bear directly on the catastrophe, I should like to attempt a description of the weird and picturesque scene.