‘Yes, all right,’ he answered, and stepped through into the control room where the coxswain watched him with curious eyes as he peered through the lens. Presently he lowered the instrument. ‘Keep her at eighteen feet,’ was all he said as he rejoined Seagrave in the ward room. ‘Do you think it’s anything, sir?’ the latter asked eagerly. ‘Yes, I think it is. Call Boyd.’ Together they pored over the chart, and the situation was explained to the navigator, who did mysterious things with parallel rulers, and finally announced that they must be coming from ‘there,’ which was a well-known German base. Raymond nodded, and went back to the periscope, where he remained silent for several moments. Away on his port bow the rim of the horizon was broken by three tiny smudges of smoke, one behind the other, which were coming towards him over the glassy calm sea, and would eventually cross his bows. He took a careful bearing, and noted that the shapes of slender hulls were forming below the smoke blurs before he lowered the periscope again. ‘Diving stations,’ he ordered. ‘Diving stations,’ repeated Seagrave, tingling with anticipation, and ‘diving stations’ echoed the coxswain, springing to life from a heavy slumber in the after battery compartment. There was no particular haste and no noise at all. Few of the crew, with the exception of the coxswain and one or two old campaigners who had been with Raymond up the Marmora, had ever made a serious attack before, but for all that there was no excitement: this was what they had been waiting and training for for years, and now it had come. Rather there was an atmosphere of pleasurable anticipation and quiet confidence that the captain would do the right thing. They knew their lives were in his hands. He was the only man who could see the enemy, and if he made a single mistake ... but then he wouldn’t make a mistake, and it was their job to carry out his orders and see that others did so. In two minutes the crew were at diving stations, the L.T.O.’s at the motor-boards, Seagrave and the T.I. at the tubes, the coxswains at the diving wheels, and the remainder at their various posts of Kingstons and vents. Forward a couple were whispering together about some previous experience, another man grinned sheepishly, and then Raymond’s voice broke the silence. ‘Destroyers. Three of them. German all right. Flood the tubes.’ The order was passed forward by Boyd and echoed by Seagrave from the electric lit recesses of the fore-end. They were in earnest now, and this was the real thing. ‘Up periscope,’ came Raymond’s voice again, and as the instrument slipped upwards he bent down and slowly straightened himself with his eye at the lens. ‘Boyd,’ he cried from the control room, ‘they’re steering nor’west and bearing 160 deg. Time 1.10 p.m.’ ‘Ay, ay, sir,’ replied the navigator, notebook in hand.