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if there were, and if James and Viktor were recalled, it would be some minutes before the U-boat would venture to surface; she would be doubtful as to the bearing of the convoy which would be heading directly away from her; she would certainly not make more than sixteen knots on the surface in this sea and probably less. The risk involved in leaving her to her own devices had been considerably diminished by those few minutes of pursuit. There was the matter of the effect such a decision would have on his British and Polish subordinates; they might resent being called off from a promising hunt, and sulk on a later occasion--but that reply to his last question had not been enthusiastic, even allowing for British lack of emphasis.
    “You’d better call it off, Harry,” said Krause in his flat, impersonal voice.
    “Aye aye, sir.” The reply was in a tone that echoed his own.
    “Eagle, Harry, rejoin the convoy and take up your previous stations.”
    “Aye aye, sir.”
    There was no guessing whether the decision had caused resentment or not.
    “Commodore’s signalling for the change of course, sir,” reported Carling.
    “Very well.”
    This slow convoy did not zigzag in the fashion of fast convoys; the passage would be prolonged inordinately if it did. The alterations of course were made at long intervals, so long that it was impossible for merchant captains to maintain station on the difficult lines of bearing involved in the fast convoy system--it was hard enough for them to maintain simple column and line. Consequently every change of course meant a ponderous wheel to left or to right, only a matter of ten or fifteen degrees, but that was a major operation. One wing had to maintain speed while the other reduced speed. Leaders had to put their helms over gently, and it seemed as if the ships following would never learn the simple lesson that to follow their leaders round in a wheel to starboard it was necessary to wait and then to turn exactly where the ship ahead turned; to turn too soon meant that one found oneself on the starboard side of the leader, and threatening the ships in the column to starboard; to turn too late meant heading straight for the ships in the column to port. In either event there would be need to jockey oneself back into one’s proper place in the column; not too easily.
    Moreover, in this wheeling movement of the whole mass, it was necessary for the ships in the outer flank to move faster than those in the inner flank, which actually meant--seeing that those on the outer flank were already steaming as hard as they could go--that the ships in the starboard column must reduce speed. The large mimeographed booklet of instructions issued to every captain laid down standard proportionate reductions in speed for every column, but to comply with those instructions meant leafing hurriedly through the booklet and doing a rapid calculation when the right place was found. And if the correct figure were ascertained there was still the difficulty of getting an unpractised engine-room staff to make an exact reduction in speed; and there was always the difficulty that every ship responded to the rudder in a different way, with a different turning circle.
    Every wheel the convoy made was in consequence followed by a period of confusion. Lines and columns tended to open out, vastly increasing the area the escort had to guard, and there were always likely to be stragglers, and experience had long proved that a ship straggling from the formation would almost certainly be sent to the bottom. Krause went out on to the starboard wing of the bridge and levelled his binoculars at the convoy. He saw the string of flags at the Commodore’s halyards come down.
    “Execute, sir,” reported Carling. “Very well.”
    It was Carling’s duty to report that hauling down even though Krause was aware of it; it was the executive moment, the signal that the wheel was to begin. Krause heard Carling give the order for the new