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wonderful display. One of his chunks swept the left aileron from the leader's machine, which banked vertically, almost rolled over, and began to spin. For two thousand feet the irregular drop continued, and the observer gave up hope. Luckily for him, the pilot was not of the same mind, and managed to check the spin by juggling with his rudder controls. The bus flew home, left wing well down, with the observer leaning far out to the right to restore equilibrium, while the icy rush of air boxed his ears.

We landed, wrote our reports, and took them to Headquarters. The day's work had been done, which was all that mattered to any extent, and a very able general told us it was "dom good." But many a day passed before any one sat in the seats left vacant by Uncle and Paddy.

And so to bed, until we were called for another early morning show.

SIMS'S CIRCUS1

HERMAN WHITAKER

[Herman Whitaker (1867– ) was born and educated in England. After serving in the British Army he spent several years in northern Canada and then removed to California. He has written several novels of frontier life. He has served as a war correspondent in Mexico and in France. This vivid sketch, which omits a number of paragraphs of the original, is an admirable example of popular descriptive writing of the war, and not only gives us a first-hand account of the capture of the first German submarine by the American forces, but also reproduces the atmosphere and spirit of the American navy in the World War.]

From the train window approaching the base I obtained my first view of "Sims's circus," as the flotilla has been named by the irreverent ensign. At least, I obtained my first astonished view of the minor portion thereof that chanced to be in port. For the base admiral is a most efficient man. His offices and house windows both overlook the water, and it's said by our skippers that his idea of heaven is "a harbor clear of ships and every destroyer at sea."

I may add from personal observation that never was there a man who did so much to make his idea of heaven obtain on earth. Nothing short of a "salty condenser" will procure from him a stay in port - which reminds me of a question put by a green ensign in our wardroom one day: "Is the water we drink pure enough to use in our boilers?"

To which was given in indignant chorus: "Of course not! What do you think you are?"

Returning again to the flotilla. A convoy was ready to sail, a dozen or so of our destroyers were to be seen nestling like speckled chickens under the wings of the mother repair ships.

1 From Independent, June 1 and 8, 1918. Also in Herman Whitaker's “Hunting the German Shark." Copyrighted 1918, by The Century Company. Reprinted by permission.

I said "speckled." It is, however, too weak a term for the "dazzle" paint with which they were bedaubed. No wonder the irreverent ensign dubbed them "brick-yards."

Barred, striped, blotched, smudged, ring-straked with vivid pinks, arsenic greens, blowsy reds, violent blues, they looked like like nothing in the world unless it be that most poisonous of drinks, a 'Frisco pousse-café. All of the giraffes, zebras, leopards, and tigers ever assembled in the "World's Greatest Aggregation" exhibit conventional patterns in comparison with this destroyer camouflage. The exception to this blazing color scheme, a recent arrival from home, looked in her dull lead paint like a Puritan maiden that had fallen by accident into a blowsy company of painted Jezebels.

The vessel I went out on had struck America's first blow in the war by attacking one of the submarines that opposed our transports in the Atlantic. The thought was hot in my mind when after boarding her my eyes wandered from the knifelike bows back over the shotted guns, grim torpedo tubes, along the low, rakish hull to the stern, where two depth mines hung poised for instant use.

Of all the enginery of destruction produced in the war, there is no weapon more terrible than these. The explosion of one lifts a column of water thirty yards wide fifty feet above the sea. One that was discharged nearly 200 yards away from a 30,000-ton ocean liner heaved her up six inches in the water. So terrible are they that destroyers only drop them when running at high speed to insure a "get-away," and even then the iron floor plates of the boiler room are often lifted by the concussion.

From the bridge I watched this slender arrow of a ship slip out through the harbor headlands, where a number of other destroyers were at work combing the offing for submarines before the convoy came out. They were beautiful to see, shooting like a school of rainbow flying fish over the long green seas; careening on swift turns, laying the white lace of their wakes over sixty square miles of sea. Among them,

graceful as a swallow, was the unfortunate vessel which, torpedoed two weeks later, now lies with sixty-four of our brave lads at the bottom of the sea. It is only necessary to record that she did not die unavenged.

Meanwhile there had been no let up in the combing of the offing for submarines. Here and there, back and forth, the destroyers swooped with birdlike circlings, and no words can describe the thoroughness of the watch upon the sea. From the bridge by officers and quartermasters, by the men in the crows' nests fore and aft, by the deck lookouts ahead, amidships, and astern, vigilant watch was maintained. Multiply this steady eye-searching by the number of destroyers and you can easily imagine that scarcely an inch of ocean remained for more than a minute unswept by human eye. And yet Fritz was there.

There? Why, for two days he had been there lying in wait for the convoy which was now poking cautiously out through the heads, and when he attacked it was like the leap of a lone wolf on a flock with the following rush of shepherd dogs at his throat. As he rose to take his sight at the leading steamer a destroyer almost ran him down. Indeed it was going full speed astern to avoid the collision when his periscope showed above

water.

It was only an instant, and the periscope was of the finger variety, an inch and a half in diameter. It was raised in that instant scarcely a foot above the water, but was still picked up by the sharp, young eyes of the lookout on the next destroyer. The submarine had submerged at once, but rushing along his wake the destroyer dropped a depth mine that wrecked the motors, damaged the oil leads, blew off the rudder, tipped the stern up, and sent the "sub" down on a headlong dive fully two hundred feet.

Afterward the commander said that he thought she would never stop. In a desperate effort to check her before she was crushed by deep-sea pressure he blew out all his four water ballast tanks and so came shooting back up with such velocity

that the "sub" leaped thirty feet out of the water like a beaching whale.

Instantly, the first destroyer, which had swung on a swift circle, charged and dropped a second depth mine as the submarine went down again. As the first cleared out of the way the second destroyer opened with her bow guns on the conning tower, which was now showing again.

Having no rudder the "sub" was "porpoising" along, now up, now down, and every time the conning tower showed the destroyer sent a shot whistling past it. They had fired three shots each before the hatch flew up and the crew came streaming out and ranged along the deck with hands up.

As the destroyers hove alongside, covering the crew with their guns, two of the men were seen to run back below. They were only gone a minute. But that was sufficient. Undoubtedly they had opened the sea cocks and scuttled the vessel, for she sank three minutes thereafter.

The crew jumped into the water and were hauled aboard the destroyer as fast as they could catch a line, all but one poor chap who could not swim and was nearly drowned before he was seen. Then in vivid contrast to the German practice under similar circumstances, two of our men leaped overboard and held him up till he could be hauled aboard.

All had happened in no more than ten minutes from the dropping of the first depth charge.

How I ached to talk to those prisoners! But discipline demanded that we keep our stations; neither is a large convoy to be held up while a correspondent chatters. We moved on, leaving one destroyer to take the prisoners back to the base.

But I heard a good deal more about them afterward. The bag consisted of one captain-lieutenant, one lieutenant, one ober-lieutenant, one ober-engineer, and thirty-six men. As the "sub" had been out from port about six days and had come straight to our base, it carried down with it a full complement of twelve torpedoes; a loss greater than that of the submarine.

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