The Good Shepherd

by C.S. Forester

The range had decreased by a mile in one minute and sixteen seconds. As Charlie said, she must be heading nearly straight towards Keeling, coming to meet her. Hell from beneath is moved for Thee to meet Thee at Thy coming. In five more miles, in seven minutes—less than seven minutes now—she would be within range of the five-inch.

Those U-boats on the surface must be waiting for darkness to attack. The pestilence that walketh in darkness.

If he sat down he went to sleep, and if he stood—if he stood, as he was doing now, it was unbearable. Feet and muscles and joints all cried out with agony. Unbearable? He had to bear it. There was nothing else to be said about the matter. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.

Now there were thirty; seven had been lost. Heavy losses, no doubt, but convoys had known even heavier than that. He had brought thirty ships through. Out of his escort force he had lost a destroyer; a very grave loss indeed. But he had sunk two probables and a possible. Thou art weighed in the balance—in the balance—He came to himself with a start.

It was the PBY back again. Krause watched it alter course, patrolling in long leisurely zigzags far out on either side of the convoy’s course. Oh that I had wings like a dove.

He had loved her so madly, so frantically. He had known an intoxication, an active happiness quite unlike any other experience, and it had been so overwhelming that it had stilled completely the doubts he might have felt regarding his unworthiness of so much happiness and his uneasy feeling that no man should be so deficient in self-control.