“Were you on the bridge, March?” Stan asked.
“Yes, if you’d known that,” March laughed, “you would have been twice as scared, wouldn’t you?”
“Wow, we went down in a big hurry, all right,” Stan said. “Did you have to—to miss it?”
“Guess so,” March said. “Anyway, they were unlimbering a gun the last thing I saw and would’ve been shooting at us if we’d still been in sight.”
“Yes, you did the right thing, all right,” Gray said. “And without much time to think about it.”
“But the crew was marvelous,” March said. “I got the call back that the ship was rigged almost before I got the order out of my mouth. It’s a good feeling to know a crew can act like that, isn’t it, Gray? Especially when a third of it is brand new.”
“Yes, mighty satisfying,” Larry agreed. “And just as satisfying to know the same thing about your new officers. I’m going to feel pretty confident when we suddenly have six Jap destroyers pouncing on us all of a sudden.”
“Say, I just thought of something,” Corvin said. “Those poor guys in that freighter are probably still looking frantically for signs of a periscope and sitting there biting their nails waiting for a torpedo to blast them to kingdom come.”
Gray looked at his watch. “They’re just about getting over that by now,” he said. “They’re just concluding that we are an American sub and not a German. And they’re thanking their lucky stars.”
“Just like us,” McFee added.