THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS
past, but the effect of it was still apparent in the monstrous seas that came charging out of the north-east. Once during the forenoon the sun had peered out for a brief moment from behind the wrack of leaden clouds, but now the world visible from the Q-4 was gray and somber slatey-green. The other ships were not in sight, for each had fought the gale in its own way and set its own course, but the wireless had picked up one of the destroyers the night before. She had had her bow bent by a sea and lost a funnel, but was keeping on about sixty miles north. Later the Q-4 got into communication with the flagship and with two submarines. Each reported having had a hard time of it. One of the smaller subs was believed to have been lost. (That, however, as they were to learn weeks later, was not so. She had submerged early in the trouble, but her batteries had been quickly exhausted and she had been forced to the surface again where for two days she had been tossed about and driven so far from her course that, engine trouble developing, she had limped in to Bermuda, by that time her nearest port!) The Q-4 was doing eleven knots and had been putting the miles behind her at that speed ever since coming up, and, with the barometer acting reasonably there seemed a fair chance
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