The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester

out. Even now he was not properly clad; sweater, gloves, and scarf were all missing.
    He mastered the chattering of his teeth and hugged the coat to him in the comparative warmth of the pilothouse so as to make the chilly contact as brief as possible, for warmth to creep back from his revivifying body into the thick woollen underclothing against his skin. He would send for the rest of his clothes in a moment. The voice-tube summoned him.
    “Two miles, sir.”
    “Very well.” He swung round, too cold to use the full formula. “Standard speed.”
    “Standard speed,” repeated the hand at the annunciator. “Engine-room answers ‘Standard speed.’ “
    That was self-evident at once. The churning vibration died away magically, to be replaced by a more measured beat that seemed by contrast almost gentle, and Keeling ceased to crash, shatteringly, into the waves that met her bow. She had time to lift and to incline to them, to heave herself up the long grey slopes and to corkscrew herself over them, so that again by contrast her motion seemed almost moderate.
    “Get the sonar going,” ordered Krause, and the words were hardly out of his mouth before the first ping made itself heard through the ship, succeeded before it had died away by another ping, and by another after that, and another, so that the ear, already long accustomed to the monotonous sound, would soon have omitted to record it, were it not that on this occasion everyone in the pilothouse was listening to it intently, wondering if it would reveal an enemy. That monotonous ping, each ping an impulse, feeling out through the dark water in search of a foe creeping along in the depths; it searched slowly to the left, and slowly to the right, searching and searching. This was the hearing ear of Proverbs Twelve, taking over the task of radar’s seeing eye.
    Did the last ping sound different? Apparently not, for there was no report from sonar. Down below was Radioman First Class Tom Ellis. He was a graduate of the Key West Sound School and had been in the ship since the outbreak of war; presumably efficient when he came, he had spent the intervening months listening to pings, eternally listening, from watch to watch during all the time Keeling had been at sea. That was not to say he was more efficient than when he left the Sound School; it might mean the reverse. At Key West he had gone through a few hurried exercises. He had listened to the echo from a friendly submarine, had noted the variations of pitch as the submarine altered course under water, had taken the bearing and estimated the range; he had been hurried through a couple of lessons on enemy counter measures, and then he had been sent off to sea to listen to echoes. And never since had he heard one; the vibrations he had sent out had never bounced back to his listening ear from a submarine, friendly or hostile; he had no refresher exercise, and most certainly he had never played the deadly game of hide and seek with an enemy. It was humanly possible that now he would not recognize an echo if he heard one; it was certainly likely that he would not draw the instant deductions from the nature of the echo that were necessary if an attack were to be successful. A depth-charge dropped within ten yards of its target meant a probable victory; a depth-charge dropped twenty yards away meant a certain failure. The difference between ten and twenty yards could be accounted for by the difference between the prompt reactions of a practised operator and the tardy reactions of an unpractised one.
    And that still left out of consideration the question of nerve; there was no way of knowing as yet whether Ellis was nervous or cool, which was not the same thing as being cowardly or brave. A man could grow flustered merely at the thought of failure, without even thinking as far as the possible censure of his division officer or his captain. Fingers became thumbs, quick wits became slow, in certain men, merely because much