noon
`` Then , unless the Japs are near-sighted , I expect an easy time when I go out . '' But the admiral did not need to go out and fight . Those nine big battle-ships that Japan had struggled for years to obtain , and the auxiliary fleet of supply and repair ships to keep them in life and health away from home , caught on a lee shore in a hurricane against which the mighty _ Delaware _ could not steam to sea , piled up one by one on the sands below Fort Point ; and , each with a white flag replacing the reversed ensign , surrendered to the transport or collier sent out to take off the survivors . There are few facilities for cooking aboard submarine torpedo-boats , and that is why Lieutenant Ross ran his little submarine up alongside the flag-ship at noon , and made fast to the boat-boom -- the horizontal spar extending from warships , to which the boats ride when in the water . And , as familiarity breeds contempt , after the first , tentative , trial , he had been content to let her hang by one of the small , fixed painters depending from the boom ; for his boat was small , and the tide weak , bringing little strain on painter or boom . Besides , this plan was good , for it kept the submarine from bumping the side of the ship -- and paint below the water-line is as valuable to a warship as paint above . Thus moored , the little craft , with only her deck and conning-tower showing , rode lightly at the end of her tether , while Ross and his men -- all but one , to watch -- climbed aboard and ate their dinner .