There was no particular haste and no noise at all. Few of the crew, with the exception of the coxswain and one or two old campaigners who had been with Raymond up the Marmora, had ever made a serious attack before, but for all that there was no excitement: this was what they had been waiting and training for for years, and now it had come. Rather there was an atmosphere of pleasurable anticipation and quiet confidence that the captain would do the right thing. They knew their lives were in his hands. He was the only man who could see the enemy, and if he made a single mistake ... but then he wouldn’t make a mistake, and it was their job to carry out his orders and see that others did so. In two minutes the crew were at diving stations, the L.T.O.’s at the motor-boards, Seagrave and the T.I. at the tubes, the coxswains at the diving wheels, and the remainder at their various posts of Kingstons and vents. Forward a couple were whispering together about some previous experience, another man grinned sheepishly, and then Raymond’s voice broke the silence.
‘Destroyers. Three of them. German all right. Flood the tubes.’
The order was passed forward by Boyd and echoed by Seagrave from the electric lit recesses of the fore-end. They were in earnest now, and this was the real thing.
‘Up periscope,’ came Raymond’s voice again, and as the instrument slipped upwards he bent down and slowly straightened himself with his eye at the lens.
‘Boyd,’ he cried from the control room, ‘they’re steering nor’west and bearing 160 deg. Time 1.10 p.m.’
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ replied the navigator, notebook in hand.
With the air-manifold Hoskins was blowing water from the fore-trim into the tubes, and forward they were watching the gauges. A hiss and a spurt of water and the E.R.A. shut off the blow and mopped his brow with a piece of dirty waste.
‘Down periscope. Steer south-west,’ in the incisive tones of the captain.
‘Firing tanks charged, sir,’ came Seagrave’s voice from forward. ‘Tubes flooded.’
‘Ay, ay,’ called Raymond.