about midday
The worst mishap that can befall a boat is to bury its nose in the side of a sand-drift and be held there . Such an accident might have been the end of our boat , though with our Fleuss cylinders and electric lamps we should have found no difficulty in getting out at the air-lock and in walking ashore across the bed of the ocean . As it was , however , I was able , thanks to our excellent charts , to keep the channel and so to gain the open straits . There we rose about midday , but , observing a hydroplane at no great distance , we sank again for half an hour . When we came up for the second time , all was peaceful around us , and the English coast was lining the whole western horizon . We kept outside the Goodwins and straight down Channel until we saw a line of black dots in front of us , which I knew to be the Dover-Calais torpedo - boat cordon . When two miles distant we dived and came up again seven miles to the south-west , without one of them dreaming that we had been within thirty feet of their keels .