“What can that be?” March said, turning to Mac.
“Darned if I know,” the veteran said.
And then it came to March. He knew. With a smile he picked up the phone and announced to everybody, “It’s all over, folks. Those things you hear are bombs from airplanes—our airplanes chasing the destroyers away from us and blasting the daylights out of the convoy we’ve scattered.”
The cheer that went up was tired but came from the heart. All over, men relaxed their grips, lit cigarettes, strolled for a cup of coffee.
“We’ll just stay right here where it’s safe for quite a while longer,” March said. “Then we’ll move on slowly—toward home.”
Kamongo was limping when it came into port and tied up alongside the tender David. It had run submerged so long that its batteries were almost dead. But as they pulled into the little harbor the Skipper came to, first saying “Take her down! Take her down!” and then opening his eyes and looking around in a daze. He found plenty of story-tellers eager to tell him what he had slept through.
“It’s just as well,” he smiled weakly, when he had heard. “I never did like depth charge attacks.”
Scoot was up and about now, his arm in a sling. He would not believe that he had complained about the noise that disturbed his sleep during the depth-charge attack.
No one was completely happy, though, until they had full reports of the convoy battle from the Intelligence Officer at the tender. It was with pride that March Anson carried the complete news to Skipper Larry Gray as he lay in the small sick bay aboard the tender.