Read Online The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester - Free Book Online Page B

ship, so to speak, under the eyes of the battle-hardened crews of the Polish destroyer and the British and Canadian corvettes. They had fought a dozen actions and he had never fought one. They would be keenly interested in the standard of the performance the Yank would put up, especially as mere chance put them under his command, especially as he had called them off from one pursuit already. They might be amused, they might be contemptuous, they might be spiteful. Some temperaments might have given some consideration to this side of the matter. It is a fact that Krause gave it none.
    To analyse in this fashion all the tactical elements of the situation, and then the moral factors which led to Krause’s uttering the order for right rudder, would take a keen mind several minutes, and Krause’s decision had been reached in no more than one or two seconds without any conscious analysis at all, as the child running round the table suddenly reverses his course without stopping to think. A fencer’s parry changes into riposte in the tenth of a second, in the fiftieth of a second; that comparison might have additional force because (although it was not often remembered now) eighteen years before, and fourteen years before, Krause had been on the Olympic fencing team.
    Keeling wallowed as she made her turn, shipping green water.
    “Contact bearing indefinite,” said the caller.
    “Very well.”
    In the confusion of the water that was not to be wondered at. Keeling was coming round.
    “Ease the rudder. Meet her,” ordered Krause.
    Keeling had now completed her turn. McAlister repeated the order, and Keeling steadied herself.
    “Contact bearing port zero-two. Range eight hundred yards,” said the talker.
    “Very well.”
    The manoeuvre had met with success. Keeling’s turn had anticipated the U-boat’s. She had her enemy almost dead ahead of her now, and she had closed in by two hundred invaluable yards.
    “Steady as you go,” said Krause.
    The U-boat might still be turning, probably was; if so it was better to let her continue across Keeling’s bows, losing more distance.
    “Contact bearing dead ahead. Up Doppler,” said the talker.
    The U-boat had continued her turn, then, coming still closer into Keeling’s power. The Doppler effect indicated that she and Keeling were right in line, on the same course; in other words Keeling was on the U-boat’s tail and overhauling her at their difference in speed, six knots or so, and less than half a mile behind. Four minutes of this and they would be right over her. There was the temptation to let loose all Keeling’s forty thousand horsepower, so as to leap the intervening distance, but that temptation must be resisted because of the deafening effect any increase in speed would have on the sonar.
    “Contact bearing starboard zero-one. Range seven hundred. Up Doppler.”
    They were overhauling her rapidly. The Doppler effect and the smallness of the change in bearing indicated that she was not turning at the moment Ellis got the last echo. The U-boat captain down there, having swung his boat out of the circle, had had to wait to hear from his own echo-ranging apparatus; perhaps he had not trusted the first report; perhaps he was waiting to see if Keeling were turning farther still; perhaps he was taking a second or two to make up his mind as to what to do next, and he was losing time, time and distance. He had turned straight out of the circle, not completely reversing his course, and he must have been astonished to find his adversary’s bows pointed straight at him when he steadied on the course he hoped would carry him to safety. Now he must manoeuvre again; three more minutes steady on this course and he was lost. He could turn to starboard or he could turn to port. Anticipate him once more and he would be close overside. His last turn had been to starboard; were his reactions such that he would instinctively turn to port this time, or would he be more cunning and repeat