Free The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester

his previous turn? Krause had two seconds to think this all out, much longer than, when blade to blade, the fencer has to decide whether his adversary is going to lunge or feint.
    “Right standard rudder.”
    “Right standard rudder.”
    At the moment of the reply the talker reported. “Contact bearing starboard zero-two. Range six hundred yards.”
    Only six hundred yards between them; not too wide a turn, then.
    “Ease the rudder.”
    “Ease the rudder.”
    And this was the moment to catch the eye of Lieutenant Nourse, torpedo officer and assistant gunnery officer standing in the starboard after-corner of the wheel-house.
    “Stand by for medium pattern.” “Aye aye, sir.”
    Nourse spoke into his mouth-piece. Krause gulped with excitement. The moment might be very close. It was always true, handling ships at sea, that time seemed to move faster and faster as the crisis approached. Two minutes ago action seemed far off. Now Keeling might be dropping her depth-charges at any second.
    “Contact bearing port one-one. Range six hundred.”
    That change in bearing was due to Keeling s turn, uncompleted at the moment when Ellis got his echo. The next report would be the vital one. Nourse was standing tense, waiting. The crews of “K” guns and of the depth-charge racks would be crouching ready to go. As Krause looked back from Nourse to the talker his gaze met momentarily that of a strange pair of eyes, he looked back again. It was Dawson, communications officer, clip-board in hand, come up to the bridge from his station below. That meant that some message--which must be radio-- had come in too secret for anyone to see save Krause and Dawson. Secret and therefore important. But it could not be as important for the next few seconds as the business in hand. Krause waved Dawson aside as the talker spoke again.
    “Contact bearing port one-one. Range five hundred yards.”
    A constant bearing, and the range closing. He had anticipated the U-boat’s turn. Keeling and the U-boat were heading straight for a mutual rendezvous, a rendezvous where death might make a third. Another glance at Nourse; a clenching of hands.
    “Contact dead ahead. Range close! “
    The gnome-like talker’s equanimity was gone; his voice rose an octave and cracked.
    “Fire!” bellowed Krause, and he shot out his hand, index finger pointing at Nourse, and Nourse spoke the order into his mouth-piece. This was the second when Nourse and Krause were trying to kill fifty men.
    “Fire one.” Fire two! Fire three!’’
    The sudden alteration of bearing of the contact could mean nothing else than that the U-boat captain, finding himself headed off once more, finding the two vessels rushing together, had put his helm hard over again, turning straight for his antagonist, aiming to surprise him by passing on opposite courses and making the danger moment as brief as possible. That “range close” meant three hundred yards or so--the smallest range at which sonar could function. The U-boat might at this very time be passing right under the destroyer, right under Krause’s very feet. The depth-charges rumbling down off the racks, sinking ponderously through the opaque sea, might then be too late, would explode harmlessly astern of the U-boat. But the U-boat might still be just forward of Keeling, heading aft, and in that case the depth-charges would burst all about her if the depth setting were anything like correct, and would smash in her fragile hull. Yet she might not be passing directly below; she might be a hundred yards to port or to starboard. The double bark of the” “K” guns at that moment told how further depth-charges were being flung out on either side of the ship in anticipation of this possibility. They might catch her. One of the four depth-charges dropped might burst close enough. It was like firing a sawed-off shotgun into a pitch-dark room to try to hit a dodging man inside. It was as brutal.
    Krause strode out on to the wing of the