The captain’s instant diagnosis of a couple of muffled detonations which followed was entirely correct.
“That sea must have ‘jack-knifed’ the Flossie so sharply,” he said, “that the recoil took up the slack in the wires, releasing two ‘cans’ she seems to have had set and ready. It’s about the same thing as just happened to us, except that the tautened wire only rang the stand-by bell, the signal for the men to set the depth-charges. First thing I did after we came to the surface was to negative that supposed order. That was what I was doing when I waved to those boys who were clawing at
the ‘cans,’ with their heads under water. Lucky they weren’t carried away.”
NOW SHE WAS BACK AT BASE
It was a chastened Flossie which had gone floundering back to station a few minutes later, but somehow or other she had managed to carry on, and now she was back at Base. I won’t “give comfort to the enemy” by trying to describe her appearance, but some hint of it may be gleaned from the laconic comment of one of the Zip’s signalmen, as the “Flotilla’s Pride” was warping in to moor alongside the mother ship.
“Gee whiz!” he ejaculated. “See the old Vindictive limpin’ home from Zeebruggy! S’pose they’ll fill her up with concrete now an’ block a channel.”
The captain grinned as he overheard the remark where he waited by the starboard rail for the last of the mooring lines to be made fast. “It’s not quite so bad as that,” he said. “If need be, they’ll have her, and all the rest of us, right as trivets in three or four days, and quite ready to take the sea again when our turn comes. It’s all in the convoy game, anyhow, and not such bad fun after all, ’specially when it’s behind you, and you’ve got a bath, and a change, and a lunch at the Club, and an afternoon of tennis in immediate prospect. Come along.”