The seas
are getting larger as we debouch into the Atlantic. This looks bad for
business.
* * * * *
At the moment we are practically hove to on the surface, with the port
engine just jogging to keep her head on to sea and the starboard
ticking round to give her a long, slow charge of 200 amps.
The wind is force 7-8 and a very big sea is running which makes it
entirely impossible to open the conning tower hatch; the engine is
getting its air through the special mushroom ventilator, which is
apparently not designed to supply both the boat's requirements and
those of the engine; the whole ventilator gets covered with sea every
now and then, during which period until the baffle drains get the water
away no air can get in, so the engine has a good suck at the air in the
boat, the result of all this being a slight vacuum in the boat. It is a
very unpleasant sensation, and made me very sick. This is really a form
of sickness due to the rarefied air.
I had a great surprise when I looked at the barograph this morning as
the needle had gone right off the paper at the bottom, and at first
glance I thought we had struck a tropical depression of the first
magnitude, which, flouting all the laws of meteorology, had somehow
found its way to the English Channel; but the engineer explained to me
that, as I have already stated, the low atmospheric pressure in the
boat was due to the conning-tower hatch being shut down.
[Illustration: "As the dim lights on the mole disappeared, the
ceaseless fountain of starshells mingling with the flashing of guns,
rose inland on our port beam.
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