LUNCH ON A SUBMARINE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 112, 13 May 1911, Page 10

LUNCH ON A SUBMARINE.

■ * By Dromedary out of Whale— that' iB what the beast looked like, as, with her humped back and great tapering body, she lay alongside the jetty, both ends submerged under the waters of the dock. One of a flotilla of leviathans, she lay there, quite still as to her huge body, yet with symptoms of a whale-like " flurry " lifting the water astern of her into a column. I was " blowing in " — coming, going, or getting — to lunch aboard H.M. Submarine X 999, and my feelings were pretty much thoße of the lamb ambling to sacrifice at the altar of man. As tho local prese. speaking of the submarines, had it, "not a living soul (save her own crew) is ever admitted to view her multitudinous inner mysteries !" Along a lop-sided single plank, delightfully loose and unsteady, we airily waltzed from ■ tho quay down on to the creature's hump. What macks are men's faces ! As we waltzed the plank I was conscious that I smiled in a faintly amused manner, though in, reality my somewhat ancient heart was not unmoved. " Come along — we'll blow in," (juoth the skipper, as he proceeded to insert 'his rather short, "out-size" body into 'the street manhole-mam-sewer-looking'orifice which gave ingress to the, belly of the iron whale. * " Thank heavens, he'll stick !" 1 muttered to myself ; and the thought flashed through my brain that I might escape while the crew were freeing him from his impossible position. Horror 1 He was squeezing his rotund body steadily through tha hole and disappearing inch by inch. " Blow in I" he called onoe more ; his genial face was gone, and I was 1 alone on the brink. There were deeply interested loafers and email boys looking on from the quay. With my hande on the manhole sill I felt that, though clean, it was oily. "That's how it's done!" I muttered. Tho way into Jonah's whale was greased, and these acute sub-seamen have reckoned the mystery all out. I peeped down, into the entrails of the beast j the "shoot" was about a thousand feet d>sep — anyhow, it looked that depth. Now being, as I have explained, well oiled, the spout might, I felt, possibly fit my body, but, also! its whole interior was lined,' and_ doubly -lined, with all sorts of projecting contraptions. Talk about saints on unboiled peas, and fakirs on "Blow in, quick!" cam© that still insistent voice from th© depths. I blew into the spout. My ankle bones scraped the sill, and an ancient corti — my most faithful companion — knocked its head against a tiny metal step.' My head touched the ribs above, and contact for all parts of my body was there fot the asking; yet indeed I felt very small. Introductions were quickly done with — I was at home with the crew of X 99 9; at homo in a house to which my most fantastic dreams had never brought me, and the politeness of my host* was very real. On a shelf some thirty-six inches by eighteen inches and in other places the feast revoalod itself. It was no artistic array of food : it was a plethora of good things come in for use. Here was no room for ordered digplay : the courses were bulked on each other. " Whisky and soda, lager, Bass, port — what will you start on? There was lime-juice and soda for the ely dogs themselves.

The victuals got mixed, and their fin 4 disarray grew. All hands were hard atoking my heap. While the feast raged — and each wod was a sliout — 600 h.p. of thumping petrol engines pumped raucously, pumped th< wild electric fluid into great storag< batteries beneath our feet. Enougl fluid to electrocute an army was beinj hidebound within' touch of enough petrol lo burn a town. So the feast raged. " Have some port on your peaches?'' " Where the aeroplane is thai tongue?" The tongue wae lost— gone astray an<i lost in the obscurity below the tabl* level — and the hilarious search was fruit* less until some one trod upon the toothsome thing, and the tongue was returned to fulfil ite obligations. " A shy tongue needs finding 1" " Here, let me wipe your knife ! Mm* tard don't go well with melon." I was in real danger— a hungry hors* loosened into rye grass — and I blushed in my laughter and "Thank s ees",a4 I strove to fulfil the hospitable desiret of my hosts and ate furiously on. So the feast raged, and always at th< back of my mind grew the truth thai X 999 held 'more life than a. horse-doctoi could find in a whole 6chool of sperm whales. Nevertheless yet a bunch oJ nerves, nerves of steel that will not stretch nor break, it was hex 1 lot to wait on horrors. War may come quickly along} ih©M iron brutes will run sanely amok : deed« on deedsi will b© done, with only result! to tell. _ Mostly the striker will go with the skicken,; and at eight of the sun next day "home birds" will hug them* selves, and haply, feel greatly pwmd'ol the silent ones who, for nome and beauty, lie lost in tho deep furrows 'oi the sea.— Frederick Winder, in Sfc t James's Budget.