[Sidenote: The submarines disappear in the dark.]
Three minutes later all trace of the _Z-5_ had disappeared in the dark.
[Sidenote: Night and day are the same on a submarine.]
Captain Bill of the _Z-3_ was out on patrol. His vessel was running
submerged. The air within--they had but recently dived--was new and
sweet; and that raw cold which eats into submerged submarines had not
begun to take the joy out of life. It was the third day out; the time,
five o'clock in the afternoon. The outer world, however, did not
penetrate into the submarine. Night or day, on the surface or submerged,
only one time, a kind of motionless electric high noon, existed within
those concave walls of gleaming cream-white enamel.
Those of the crew not on watch were taking it easy. Like unto their
officers, submarine sailors are an unusual lot. They are _real_ sailors,
or machinist sailors--boys for whose quality the navy has a flattering,
picturesque, and quite unprintable adjective. A submarine man, mind you,
works harder than perhaps any other man of his grade in the navy,
because the vessel in which he lives is nothing but a tremendously
intricate machine.
[Sidenote: Life on board.]
In one of the compartments the phonograph, the eternal, ubiquitous
phonograph of the navy, was bawling its raucous rags and mechano-nasal
songs, and in the pauses between records, one could just hear the low
hum of the distant dynamos. A little group in blue dungarees held a
conversation in a corner; a petty officer, blue cap tilted back on his
head, was at work on a letter; the cook, whose genial art was
customarily under an interdict while the vessel was running submerged,
was reading an ancient paper from his own home town.
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