Resulting from this roller-coaster action many of us had queasy stomachs and were not very happy though it was heartening to see that all ranks were treated equally by the elements. As the days passed the seas became less turbulent but other ships in the convoy, merchant and naval alike could still be lost to sight as they wallowed in the troughs. At intervals of time our course would change and on the third day out our escorts began changing their positions; "whoop, whoop, whoop" went their hooters; depth charges were dropped What surprised me was the speed of sound in water, no sooner did we see a plume of water rise than a resounding boom bounced off our ship's hull. These antics went on for some time then later things returned to normal for a while; about four o'clock in the afternoon HMT Antenor started to make smoke and fall back in the formation; not to worry advised our intelligent ones, it's all part of the plan. We went below and had a bite to eat then came back on deck 30 minutes later. Where was the convoy? We looked around but all that could be seen were faint smoke smudges on the horizon and what's more we were now silent and stationary. Our intelligent ones were nonplussed and our amateur navigators determined that we were probably west of Brest off the west coast of France; that together with the knowledge of the U-boat action earlier in the day didn't improve our contentment. At six o'clock a lone plane appeared from the west, going east; it passed over us fairly low but none of us identified it. Our resident gunners took up their positions at our only gun, a four-inch, designed I imagine for naval engagements and probably unable to elevate sufficiently to engage an aircraft. We assumed the plane to be hostile and that it would report our position and static condition and we waited. Darkness came and we wallowed helplessly. I decided that I didn't feel like going to my deck below the water line waiting for a torpedo to come bursting through the side, I wanted to have a reasonable chance of getting off the ship if she were going down so I stacked out on the hatch cover of an intermediate deck and slept fitfully with my head upon my kapok pillow. Dawn came and we were still without engines; we were told that the storm's buffeting had unseated one of the boilers and that a similar event had caused our departure from Loch Long to be delayed by two weeks. In the forenoon the engines started to rumble, a most welcome sound and we limped into motion. We must have been very fortunate because we took a long three days to reach the relative safety of Glasgow at dusk, having made the return journey without seeing anything more than a couple of small fishing boats.