The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester

Author:C.S. Forester
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
Published: 2011-07-08T09:09:40+00:00

Thursday. Middle Watch--2400-0400

“You did a good job, McAlister,” said Krause as the helm was relieved. “Well done.” “Thank you, sir.”

With McAlister at the wheel Keeling had pointed herself straight up the U-boat’s wake, straight for the U-boat itself.

Carling saluted in the darkness and reported his relief. He went through the ceremonial sentences--ceremonial and yet every word important--with an apparent calm.

“Mr Nystrom has the deck, sir,” concluded Carling.

“Thank you, Mr Carling. Very well.”

The flat tone; essential that there should be no suggestion of anything unusual.

“Cap’n, please, sir, I got your coffee.”

It was rather a plaintive voice. The messenger had carried that tray up four ladders, with Keeling leaping on the waves and the ladders crowded with the changing watch, and now there was a crowded pilot-house and as always only the jealously-guarded chart-table on which to put the tray.

“On the table,” said Krause. “Quartermaster, make room for it. Thank you, messenger.”

Because he had chosen that particular moment to send for coffee the messenger had lost ten full minutes of his watch below. The fortune of war for the messenger, but Krause would have waited until the watch was changed if he had noticed the time. Krause pulled off his right-hand fur glove and wedged it in his left armpit; his hand was cold but he still had full use of it. He poured himself a cup of coffee, fumbling in the darkness, and sipped at it. Scalding hot, too hot to drink despite its long journey up from the wardroom. But the taste and the smell of it were sufficient to start his digestive processes working again. He longed for that coffee; he was accustomed to drinking eight big cups every day of his life and had always guiltily put aside the self-accusation that he was a coffee-hound dependent on a drug.

While the coffee cooled he bit into the sandwich. No onion, just bread and cold corned beef and mayonnaise, but he found himself in the darkness snapping at it like a wolf, biting and chewing frantically. During the last sixteen hours or so of ceaseless activity he had eaten half a sandwich. The present one vanished in a few bites, and Krause lingeringly licked the traces of mayonnaise from his fingers before addressing himself to the coffee. It was now exactly cool enough--just hotter than most people would care to drink it--and he emptied the cup without taking it from his lips and poured himself another in passionate anticipation. He sipped at it; Keeling was pitching very considerably and heeling a good deal, but he held the cup level in the darkness even when an unexpected lurch caused him to shift his footing. A towering pitch on Keeling’s part sent the coffee, when next he sipped, surging up his upper lip as far as his nose, and it ran down to drip from his chin, but he drank all the rest and felt in the darkness for the pot hoping there would be a third cupful in it. Of course

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