"You bet we did!" answered the captain, his keen, handsome face lighting at the memory. "You see," he continued in a practical spirit, "they would probably have pumped us full of holes if we hadn't."
And that is the way that the American submarines crossed the Atlantic to do their share for the Great Cause.
II
INTO THE DARK
I got to the Port of the Submarines just as an uncertain and rainy afternoon had finally decided to turn into a wild and disagreeable night. Short, drenching showers of rain fell one after the other like the strokes of a lash, a wind came up out of the sea, and one could hear the thunder of surf on the headlands. The mother ship lay moored in a wild, desolate and indescribably romantic bay; she floated in a sheltered pool a very oasis of modernity, a marvellous creature of another world and another time. There was just light enough for me to see that her lines were those of a giant yacht. Then a curtain of rain beat hissing down upon the sea, and the ship and the vague darkening landscape disappeared, disappeared as if it might have melted away in the shower. Presently the bulk of the vessel appeared again: gliding and tossing at once we drew alongside, and from that moment on, I was the guest of the vessel, recipient of a hospitality and courtesy for which I here make grateful acknowledgment to my friends and hosts.
The mother ship of the submarines was a combination of flag ship, supply station, repair shop and hotel. The officers of the submarines had rooms aboard her which they occupied when off patrol, and the crews off duty slung their hammocks 'tween decks. The boat was pretty well crowded, having more submarines to look after than she had been built to care for, but thanks to the skill of her officers, everything was going as smoothly as could be. The vessel had, so to speak, a submarine atmosphere. Everybody aboard lived, worked and would have died for the submarine. They believed in the submarine, believed in it with an enthusiasm which rested on pillars of practical fact. The Chief of Staff was the youngest captain in our Navy, a man of hard energy and keen insight, one to whom our submarine service owes a very genuine debt. His officers were specialists. The surgeon of the vessel had been for years engaged in studying the hygiene of submarines, and was constantly working to free the atmosphere of the vessels from deleterious gases and to improve the living conditions of the crews. I remember listening one night to a history of the submarine told by one of the officers of the staff, and for the first time in my life I came to appreciate at its full value the heroism of the men who risked their lives in the first cranky, clumsy, uncertain little vessels, and the imagination and the faith of the men who believed in the type. Ten years ago, a descent in a sub was an adventure to be prefaced by tears and making of wills; to-day submarines are chasing submarines hundreds of miles at sea, are crossing the ocean, and have grown from a tube of steel not much larger than a life boat to underwater cruisers which carry six-inch guns. Said an officer to me:
"The future of the submarine? Why, sir, the submarine is the only war vessel that's going to have a future!"
A flock of submarines and the "mother" ship in harbor