"Nerves," said the Lieutenant. "Their nerves are just putrid. There was another night once——" he talked quickly between spoonfuls of rice pudding. "In a fog … we were making a lightship off the Dutch coast to verify our position…. Approached submerged, steering by sound of their submarine bell, and then came to the surface to get a bearing. There must have been half a dozen Fritzes round that light, all lost and fluttering like moths round a candle. We bagged one, sitting, and blew him to hell…. The rest plopped under like a lot of seals and simply scattered. Fight? 'Not to-day, thank you.' They're only good for tackling unarmed merchantmen and leaving women in open boats." The speaker wiped his mouth with his napkin. "By God! I wouldn't be a Hun when the war's over. They're having a nice little drop of leave now to what they'll get if they ever dare put their noses outside their own filthy country."
"Amen," said Sir William.
The Captain of the boat rose from his seat, glancing at his watch. "Now then," he said to the Scientist, "Come to the periscope and let's have a look round. Gedge ought to be over the horizon by now."
The men moved quietly to their stations and the tanks were blown. Slowly the gauge needles crept back on their appointed paths. The Submarine Commander motioned his guest to the periscope and gave him a glimpse of flying spray and sun-kissed wave tops. A mile or so away lay the group of islands they had seen before lunch, and close inshore a mass of floating débris bobbed among the waves.
"Baskets, I think—jettison of sorts. I'm going to get amongst it and
go down with the tide, keeping the periscope hidden: it's an old dodge.
You can just see the smoke of Gedge's bus coming over the horizon.
We'll give him a little game of Peep-bo!"
Sir William drew his watch from his pocket and walked over to the compass. "In four minutes' time," he said, "I shall start making observations: according to our arrangements Gedge should start the experiment then."
"That's right," said the Lieutenant-Commander with his eyes pressed against the eye-piece of the periscope. "Oh, good! It's bales of hay floating, not baskets. Better still: no chance of damaging the periscope. There's Gedge——!"
"Ha! Ha! Ha! Hee! Hee! Hee!
I see you, but you can't see me!"
He slewed the periscope through a few points and back to the original position. "Hullo!" he said presently, "what's he up to? He's altered course…. Thinks he sees something, I suppose. You're wrong, my lad. We're not in that direction."
The minutes passed in silence. Forward in the bow compartment a man was softly whistling a tune to himself. The feet of the figure at the periscope moved with a shuffle on the steel plating.