For some moments Lanyard could see nothing more.
The mirthless chuckle of the lieutenant sounded at his elbow.
"So the good Herr Doctor thought he had better come up for air, eh? My friend, the very dead might envy you the sincerity of your slumbers. We have been half an hour on the surface, with all this uproar—and you are only just wakened!"
"Half an hour?" Lanyard repeated thoughtfully. "Then we should be close in…."
"Give us ten minutes more … if we don't go aground in this accursed blackness!"
A broad-shouldered body passed between Lanyard and the binnacle, momentarily eclipsing its light. Down below in the operating room a bell shrilled, and of a sudden the Diesels were silenced.
The dead quiet that followed the sharp extinction of that hubbub was as startling as the detonation of high explosive had been.
Through this sudden stillness the submarine slipped stealthily, the hissing beneath her bows dying down to gentle sibilance.
From forward the calls of an invisible leadsman were audible. In response the commander uttered throaty orders to the helmsman at his elbow, and those unattached hands shifted the wheel minutely.
Lanyard started to speak, but a growl from the captain, and a touch of the lieutenant's hand on his sleeve cautioned him to silence.