I calculated that to put down torpedoes in a current such as was in the Danube would be a matter of time, and probably they would not succeed after all.

I had a plan in my head for passing the batteries, so as to render them harmless.

So in reality I was about to attempt no very impossible feat.
Three hours after dusk we sighted the lights of Ibraila.

The current was running quite five knots an hour; that, added to our speed of fifteen, made us to be going over the ground at about twenty knots.

It was pitch dark, and I think it would have puzzled the cleverest gunner to have hit us, though they might have done so by chance.