"Any orders yet, Herr Leutnant?" asked the new-comer. He was a heavily built man with a bluish nose that bent birdlike from between protruding eyes. He worried continually with thumb and finger at a ragged grey moustache. He followed the lieutenant to a position in the centre of the bridge.
"We start directly," said the navigating lieutenant in a weary voice. "When the Herr Kapitän returns."
Both stared silently down at the roof of the conning-tower just below them, and at the two long guns which emerged from the turret in front of it. The open manhole in the conning-tower vitalised the familiar objects with a touch of grim expectation.
"Ach!" said the engineer at last gloomily. "It is perhaps better—I cannot sleep here—I cannot read."
"Sleep!" echoed the lieutenant. "I have not slept for a week. I see always those cursed destroyers slipping through the mist—I see them when I close my eyes—I see them when I am on duty—I know no longer whether I see them or not—and worse than the destroyers——" he broke off suddenly.
"Ach, ja," said the engineer, "you have had a bad time—but you can at least see the danger coming—sometimes, down there, I begin to imagine things—I have not let myself imagine, Herr Leutnant—I have read the sublime words of Zarathustra—I could always read them—but now I can, no longer. How long have we been here, Bielefeld?" he finished abruptly.
"Four days."
"Ach so! I thought it was a week—what days!"
"Jawohl!"
The two men fell silent again, staring at the sea. Once the lieutenant made a quick movement of alarm, whipped out his binoculars, and gazed into the grey distance. He put them back after some minutes without a word. On the whole ship was no other sound than the strident rasp of the escaping steam and the drone of the gale through the wind-tautened stays.