When lying in bed in the middle of the night, having read the warning letter before retiring, I thought:--'Suppose one of these nasty things goes off and blows the flagship up at this moment.

How pleasant! What cowardly things these are; no fair fight, up you go, unshriven.

I have heard that a man who is hanged is likely to go to heaven; I wonder if the same chance would be given to him blown up by a torpedo ?' These sort of feelings came over me.

However, said I, 'Let us see if we can prevent their being realised;' so I went to work to try to do so.

As a sportsman I calculated that to fire at a dark object in the night, especially when that object had a background of high hills such as we had at Batoum, was most difficult, so the first order I gave was no lights, not even a cigarette light; utter darkness under severe penalties.