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!"
[Sidenote: The submarines are moved alongside.]
On the night of my arrival, once dinner was over, I went on deck and
looked down through the rain at the submarines moored alongside. They
lay close by, one beside the other, in a pool of radiance cast by a
number of electric lights hanging over each open hatchway. Beyond this
pool lay the rain and the dark; within it, their sides awash in the
clear green water of the bay, their gray bridges and rust-stained
superstructures shining in the rain, lay the strange, bulging,
crocodilian shapes of steel. There was something unearthly, something
not of this world or time, in the picture; I might have been looking at
invaders of the sleeping earth. The wind swept past in great booming
salvoes; rain fell in sloping, liquid rods through the brilliancy of
electric lamps burning with a steadiness that had something in it
strange, incomprehensible, and out of place in the motion of the storm.
And then a hand appeared on the topmost rung of the nearer ladder, and a
bulky sailor, a very human sailor in very human dungarees, poked his
head out of the aperture, surveyed the inhospitable night, and
disappeared.
[Sidenote: Submarines are going out to-night.]
"He's on Branch's boat. They're going out to-night," said the officer
who was guiding me about.
"To-night? How on earth will he ever find his way to the open sea?"
"Knows the bay like a book.
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