13
‘STEER NORTH.’
The helmsman let the wheel slip round through his fingers to take the twenty degrees of port rudder off, and he opened his mouth to acknowledge the order: before he could speak, the charges exploded.
They were loud enough, and if the earlier attacks had not been so much closer they might have been alarming; but the trawler hadn’t made a good shot, this time. One charge went off astern of Setter, and the rest of them on her starboard quarter: if she hadn’t been turned by that time onto the new course they’d have been on her starboard side, the whole pattern of them, which meant that the enemy had overshot the submarine’s track to start with and that the turn and the increased speed had thrown them even farther out.
They were deep explosions, too, so obviously the enemy
