The Good Shepherd

by C.S. Forester

The thirsty man in the desert pays no heed to his pocketful of bank notes.

Yet these were matters of primary importance, for in war the character and personality of the leader is decisive of events much more than minor questions of material.

There was a new German device for leaving a big bubble behind, producing a transient sonar effect baffling to the sonar operator.

Plain cowardice was far rarer than idiocy, just as plain courage was more common than nerve.

It was always true of handling ships at sea that time seemed to move faster and faster as the crisis approached.

Keeling and the U-boat were heading straight for a mutual rendezvous, a rendezvous where death might take a third.

Speak every man truth with his neighbor. Far better to be honest than to pretend to knowledge one did not have.

Save them himself? In the name of Christian charity? There was no Christian charity in the North Atlantic.

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

“Order, counter order, disorder”; at more than one lecture at Annapolis he had heard that quotation, and during twenty years of service he had seen its truth demonstrated scores of times. He would let the routine continue.

It was the same speeding up of time. Leisure at first, and then events moving more and more rapidly, space contracting and time hurrying.