MACGREGOR MUTTERED, half to himself, ‘Well, now we know... ’ He looked up at the electric clock. ‘Olsen, you’re on watch at ten thirty; d’you mind going up now? I want to talk to Number One about all this.’
‘Sir.’ Olsen squeezed out past the engineer.
Olsen told the helmsman, ‘Ask permission, please, for me to relieve officer of the watch.’ The man looked surprised, and glanced at the clock before he yelled the request up the voicepipe. There was a pause, no doubt a repetition of the surprise; then the answer came. ‘Yes.’ Olsen grabbed the sides of the ladder and struggled up hard against the rush of air.
(A couple of hours ago, when they’d surfaced, the air-rush had been in the opposite direction. With the high pressure in the submarine after firing six torpedoes, MacGregor’d had a man
