The Waiting Game

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GREY CLOUD RIBBED THE sky like the underside of a tattered awning; Setter rode the long, flat swell easily, the sea hissing back in foam swirling along her saddle-tanks, spreading white from her gently heaving bow as it lanced the smooth, grey-green surface.

It was mid-morning, and Olsen had the watch, keeping a lookout that was tense, urgent in its concentration, more so even than usual, because a light mist restricted visibility. It was like straining your eyes to see through a wet handkerchief: Olsen was very much aware that if he saw anything, it wouldn’t be far away. And these were enemy waters.

The two seamen lookouts were up on the small platforms which projected from the tops of the periscope standards. In normal conditions, the extra ten or twelve feet in eye-level gave a longer range of horizon; now, in fog, it put the men’s eyes above the worst of it. The Seamanship Manual was quite clear on the point that in such conditions lookouts should be stationed high up or low down, to see either over or under the fog. So there they were; but there was one serious disadvantage in it. If you had to dive the boat in a hurry - the operation which films and newspapers invariably called Crash Diving - it would take just that two or three seconds longer for the lookouts to get down and through the hatch.

But you couldn’t have your cake and eat it.

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