“Temperature went down—just about the time you hit that carrier, sir,” he reported. “He’s coming through all right, though they’ll have to take those slugs out of him pretty soon.” [Illustration: _Scoot Appeared in the Doorway_] “We’ll get him to a hospital,” March said, and then grabbed the door hard as he heard the click and then the hardest explosion of all. “They can’t hear anything,” he said to McFee. “Do you suppose they figure we’re lying quiet down here and are going to send them deeper and deeper?” “Might be,” Mac said. March knew that if such were the case it would be better to try to zigzag away. The next explosion was so close that it knocked over two men in the control room who thought they were holding on fast. The next one knocked out the lights, and March shouted for the emergency system. In a moment there was light again but March was worried, trying to make up his mind what to do. Suddenly he felt that he just could not make any more decisions. He wasn’t supposed to be a submarine Skipper yet, anyway. Why decide? “Well,” he said to himself, “if the next one’s any closer I’ll try moving away from here.” He waited tensely. The next explosion would decide the matter for him. He still waited. It didn’t come. He looked at the sound man, puzzled. “Destroyers moving away, sir,” the sound man reported. Then they heard another explosion. But this was different. It was near the surface, far away, and it was not like a depth charge. Then came another and another. “What can that be?” March said, turning to Mac. “Darned if I know,” the veteran said. And then it came to March. He knew. With a smile he picked up the phone and announced to everybody, “It’s all over, folks. Those things you hear are bombs from airplanes—our airplanes chasing the destroyers away from us and blasting the daylights out of the convoy we’ve scattered.” The cheer that went up was tired but came from the heart. All over, men relaxed their grips, lit cigarettes, strolled for a cup of coffee. “We’ll just stay right here where it’s safe for quite a while longer,” March said. “Then we’ll move on slowly—toward home.” * * * * * _Kamongo_ was limping when it came into port and tied up alongside the tender _David_. It had run submerged so long that its batteries were almost dead. But as they pulled into the little harbor the Skipper came to, first saying “Take her down! Take her down!” and then opening his eyes and looking around in a daze. He found plenty of story-tellers eager to tell him what he had slept through. “It’s just as well,” he smiled weakly, when he had heard. “I never did like depth charge attacks.” Scoot was up and about now, his arm in a sling. He would not believe that he had complained about the noise that disturbed his sleep during the depth-charge attack.