"You've slept like
the dead man I took you for at first, my friend--a solid fourteen hours, my
word for it! Feeling better now?"
Lanyard's essays to reply began and ended in a croak for water. The
Prussian nodded, disappeared, returned with an aluminium cup of stale cold
water mixed with a little brandy.
"Champagne if you like," he offered, as Lanyard, painfully propping himself
up on an elbow, gulped like an animal from the vessel held to his lips. "We
are holding a little celebration, you know."
Lanyard dropped back to the pillow, the question in his eyes.
"Celebrating our success," the Prussian responded. "We got her, and that
means much honour and a long furlough to boot, when we get home, just as
failure would have spelled--I don't like to think what. I shouldn't care to
fill the shoes of those poor devils who let the _Assyrian_ escape them off
Ireland, I can tell you."
Something very much like true fear flickered in his small eyes as he
pondered the punishment meted out to those who failed.
So the U-boat was homeward bound! Strange one noticed no motion of her
progress, heard no noise of machinery.
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