October ii, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
15 
flickering light I saw his face as he read thj message — Hostile 
Submarines in Sight. Course not Known. As he read 
iliese words aloud — and others — the match went out. He 
groped in the dark for a locker, detachable and weighted, 
and taking something therefrom he invited me to come 
below. Once down in our sleeping cabin he unrolled a 
mysterieus map under the oil-lamp, and putting his finger 
on one of the squares he said, " They're there." Then we went 
on deck. 
He took an electric signalHng-lamp and holding it up 
over the bulwarks he flashed a message to the distant motor 
launch. A sequence of flashes answered it. And once more 
we resumed our vigil. 
The night dragged on, the watch was relieved, the stars 
changed their stations as the earth rolled on through 
interstellar space. I Sat in the bows gazing into the 
mysterious night and hearing nothing but .the whispered 
soliloquy of the waters beneath me. The dark-grey silhouette 
of a transport crept by, deeply laden, for the sound of her 
propeller never reached me. Then a barque gUded past, 
but not a murmur escaped her, not a sail thrashed, not a block 
creaked. They might have been the ghosts of the miirdered 
ships that lay fathoms deep beneath us, deep in the sepulchral 
sea. Trom time to time dark objects floated by — a packing 
case, a hatch, an upturned boat, a derelict sleeper, the mute 
and plaintive witnesses to a sinister and implacable terror 
" more fell than hunger, anguish, or the sea." 1 gazed down 
at the waters in which the phosphorus glowed faintly like pale 
narigoldi, wondsring what tragic secrets their inscrutable 
L'pths concealed. There grew on my drowsy senses a feeling 
tliat the sea, as it heaved on its bed under the tidal moon, was 
talking in its sleep. Faint p^als of sound seemed to animate 
the watery depths as though the sea were a belfry in which 
tlie bell of every foundered ship was tolling the watches of 
the night. I heard a dull tapping on our stern — I went aft 
but could see nothing but the shadowy figure of one of t!ie 
deck hands. Then a hollow gasp like a cork drawn from 
a bottle came from our port bow. The next moment a 
^ deep Sepulchral cough echoed from amidships ; I looked down 
through the skylight and saw one of the crew turning un- 
easily in his sleep. By some strange acoustic illusion his 
coughing seemed to be coming from the depths of the sea. 
Each illusion was dispelled only to be succeeded by another. 
A block creaked, the cordage chafed, a chain rattled. And 
there grew on mq a masterful conviction that we were not 
alone. I lifted my eyes and they lighted suddenly upon a 
dark boat-shaped object gliding stealthily past in the current 
about two hundred yards away. The next moment the 
beacon flashed across the waters rending the veil of night 
and in one trenchant glimpse I saw that it was a ship's life- 
boat. Over the gunwale drooped the body of a man, the head 
downwards between the extended arms and the hands lapped 
by the himgiy waters. Across the stern another head rested 
with the pallid face turned upwards and gleaming in the cold 
searching light. I heaid a soft footfall behind me. and turning, 
saw the s.kipper gazing over my shoulder. The next 
moment the beacon went out. 
One by one the stars paled, diminished, and disappeared ; 
the surface of the waters turned from black to a leaden grey 
and, with the first flush of dawn, gleamed like mother-of- 
pearl. I looked around me. Far as the eye could reach I 
saw nothing but the salt, inhospitable, secret sea. 
Air Squadrons 
By Francis Stopford 
THE aeroplane for some reason has not yet caught 
firm hold of popular imagination. It still possesses 
an eerie fascination, so much so that even where 
aeroplanes are of common occurence, an effort of 
will is often necessary to prevent people from running out into 
the open to watch these mechanical dragon-flies droning 
across the sky. But the machine has not hitherto passed 
beyond this stage, it still occupies in the popular mind a 
place beside the bearded woman, the living skeleton or the 
two-headed calf of the country fair. Perhaps this is not un- 
natural, considering the comparatively few months that 
have elapsed since man conquered the empyrean with the 
spoils of earth — metal and wood, canvas and rock-oil. 
How many realise the length of years that have elapsed 
since this victory over the void was first pondered ? One 
has only to turn to the penultimate chapter of the Book of 
Proverbs to comprehend it. W hether it was really Solomon 
in his palace of cedar who wrote it, or a literary Alexandrine 
of the same acquisitive race but of a later date, signifies little. 
" Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended ? " he 
asks, and a few sentences lower down he confesses : " There 
be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea four 
which 1 know not." And the first of these three or four 
puzzles is " the way of an eagle in the air.' Already this 
question was troubling the human mind. Whether Diedalus 
came before or after, who can say, but it would be easy to 
demonstrate that the aeroplane is to-day the most striking 
symbol of human persistence and perseverance, of man's 
unconquerable nature. The thought has germinated for 
centuries ; the thing was bom but yesterday. Though we 
do not perhaps comprehend it we of this generation have 
witnessed the greatest mechanical prodigy which this 
l)lanet has yet prodliced. 
To a few it would sound blasphemous, to the many 
ludicrous, was it to be said that on that first Christmas Eve, 
the multitude of th» heavenly host that assembled above 
the shepherds in the field, saying, " Glory to God in the 
highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men," or if 
you would have the newer version, " on earth peace to men 
of goodwill," was in truth a vision of aeroplanes. Yet pause 
and consider, and the idea is not preposterous. The first 
condition of peace on earth has hitherto been the deter- 
mination of certain superficial excrescences or waterdeeps 
— i.e., mountains, rivers or seas— lx;tvveen the various jealous 
congeries of mankind. These natural divisions of the earth, 
as we have hitherto called them, have been abolished 
by the navigation of the air. Henceforth humanity is one 
through circumambient ether, and seeing that man is as 
impotent to build partitions in the sky as to bind the sweet 
inllucucesof the Pleiades, men of goodwill can never maintain 
peace on earth unless their mechanical contrivances pro- 
claim the glory of God in the highest. 
The aeroplane is of the twentieth century — not twenty 
years old. The principle it embodies is as fixed and certain 
as the principle which ages ago enabled man to overcome the 
limitations of rivers and seas or which in much naore modern 
times permitted him, through the power of controlled steam, 
to eliminate to a very large extent the delays and tedious 
processes of locomotion. Contrast Drake's Golden Hind or 
Humphrey Gilbert's Squirrel with Sir David Beatty's flag- 
ship or even with a new submarine. H that be too big a strain 
on the imagination stand in Darlington railway station, and as 
the Scotch express steams through, compare its engine with 
" Puffing Billy," silent on his triumphal platform at your 
elbow. It is obvious tliat the development of flying machines 
is in the future 4 logical sequence, a matter of mathematical 
progression. We are only at their very infancy. If already it is 
possible for warring nations to regard these machines, when 
employed for purposes of destruction, as weapons of victory, 
think what their powers must be fifty years or a century or 
three centuries hence- In further support of this point of 
view range the artillery of the present wai" against the 
batteries fired in Napoleon's battles. There is no reason to 
assume that the difference between fighting pjanes of this 
year of grace and of a hundred years hence will be less. 
So far from there being any cessation in the advance of 
mechanical weapons of war, everything points to the exact 
opposite, if war is to continue. If war should cease on earth, it 
can only be by universal consent. It is conceivable that once 
we have utterly destroyed Prussian militarism and have 
stamped completely out this final outspurt of barbarism, 
as many regard it, a new state of international comity may 
be inaugurated which will never consent to war. But this 
attitude towards life, should it occur, will be attained mainly 
through the world's aerial navies. Air squadrons that carry 
in their vitals blind death equally for men, women a,nd 
children, for armed camps and harmless cities, for marching 
battaUons and quiet hamlets may obviously in course of 
time become the most powerful instruments of peace. If 
they do not, human progress must be stayed; man by self- 
preservation will l^e forced to be again a troglodyte and to 
return to his ancient caves in the rocks or his burrows 
among the tree-roots. Is such a reversion conceivable ? 
The building of air squadrons is perhaps the most beauti- 
ful work on which the son* and daughters of Tubal-Cain, 
" the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron " have 
ever been engaged. Now Tubal 's first cousin was Jubal 
" the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ." 
And it needs no effort of imagination to assume that the children 
of those two descendants of Cain, the first murderer, work 
