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When we see a periscope shoved over the enemy's parapet it is the custom for our sharpshooters to aim at it, and after lowering the aim to fire about six inches from the top of the German parapet. As their parapets are thin we invariably find we have scored a hit. Sometimes duels are indulged in between the German snipers and our sharpshooters.
At the outbreak of the war, he had been on another vessel going from London to New York and he recalled the unquiet nights, the days of anxious vigilance, searching the sea and the atmosphere, fearing from one moment to another the appearance of a periscope upon the waters, or the electric warning of a steamer torpedoed by the submarine.
Our excursion on this occasion lasted scarcely two hours. Towards noon, by means of the mysterious periscope, which, always invisible, floated on the surface and brought to the vessel below a reflection of all that passed up above, the captain showed us the Narval, which had just emerged with its two flags near the old battery Impregnable.
The periscope was merely a tube in which there were arranged mirrors so that anything reflected in the first mirror, the one above the surface of the water, was again reflected till it showed in a mirror at the bottom of the tube, within the hull of the vessel, where its commander could observe it safely.
Even when he is on the surface he is nearly awash, and when submerged only his periscope appears above the water. The submarine is not after animals of our breed destroyers and when he can he avoids them. We may go several weeks without putting an eye upon a single U-boat. When we do there is action, I can tell you.
It wabbled about in a most eccentric way, as though the submarine attached to it had risen just as the Kennebunk passed and had received the full force of her swell. "Jingo! that's a funny lookin' periscope," drawled one second-class seaman, a new recruit, craning his long neck to see over the heads of the group which Frenchy and Ikey had joined.
Kennedy folded the periscope up and we left our room, mounting the remaining flight of stairs. In fifty-nine we could hear the measured step of the footman. Craig knocked. The footsteps ceased. Then the door opened slowly and I could see a cold blue automatic. "Look out!" I cried. Michael in his fear had drawn a gun. "It's all right, Michael," reassured Craig calmly.
To the right of the foot of the conning-tower ladder stood the ballast-tank man; and when the captain from the foot of his periscope gave the word after first looking forward, aft, and to each side of him to see that all hands were at their proper stations it was the ballast-tank man who went violently at once into action.
At his right, when the skipper is facing the bows, is another officer, with his hand on the trigger of what looks like an upward-pointed pistol of brass and steel. This officer waits for the command to send off the torpedo. "Lower foremost periscope into the well," ordered the captain. This periscope was not in use and had not been above the surface.
His stolid face was working and moist with excitement. "Is it an English ship, Herr Kapitan?" The Oberleutnant made no answer, but reached out a hand to the wheel that adjusted the height of the periscope above the water and twisted it rapidly. For twenty minutes he remained thus, motionless save for the arm that controlled the periscope.
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