The boats may never come back.
I thought of that ominous phrase I had noted in the British records,—"failed to report,"—and I remembered the stolid British captain who had said to me, speaking of submarines, "Sometimes nobody knows just what happened. Out there in the deep water, whatever happens, happens in a hurry."
My guide and I went below to the officers' corridor. Now and then, through the quiet, a mandolin or guitar could be heard far off twanging some sentimental island ditty; and beneath these sweeter sounds lay a monotonous mechanical humming.
"What's that sound?" I asked.
"That's the Filipino mess-boys having a little festino in their quarters. The humming? Oh, that's the mother-ship's dynamos charging the batteries of Branch's boat. Saves running on the surface."
The captain of the patrol cheerful.
My guide knocked at a door. Within his tidy little room, the captain who was to go out on patrol was packing the personal belongings he needed on the trip.
"Hello!" he cried cheerily when he saw us; "come on in. I'm only doing a little packing up. What's it like outside?"
"Raining same as ever, but I don't think it's blowing up any harder."
Reading matter is in demand.