It didn't take a great time to get under way; we
were ready, waiting for the word to go. The flotilla--mother-ship, tugs
and all--was out to sea long before the dawn. You would have liked the
picture: the immense stretch of the grayish, winter-stricken sea, the
little covey of submarines running awash, the gray mother-ship going
ahead, as casually as an excursion steamer, into the featureless dawn.
"The weather was wonderful for two days,--a touch of Indian summer on
December's ocean; then, on the night of the third day, we ran into a
blow, the worst I ever saw in my life. A storm--oh, boy!"
He paused for an instant. One could see memories living in the fine,
resolute eyes. The broken noises of the restaurant, which had seemingly
died away while he spoke, crept back again to one's ears. A waiter
dropped a clanging fork--
[Sidenote: A terrific storm comes on toward night.]
"A storm. Never remember anything like it. A perfect terror. Everybody
realized that any attempt to keep together would be hopeless. And night
was coming on. One by one the submarines disappeared into that fury of
wind and driving water, the mother-ship, because she was the largest
vessel in the flotilla, being the last we saw. We snatched her last
signal out of the teeth of the gale, and then she was gone, swallowed up
in the storm. So we were alone.
[Sidenote: Rough water the next day.]
"We got through the night somehow or other. The next morning the ocean
was a dirty brown-gray, and knots and wisps of cloud were tearing by
close over the water.
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