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clearly. Andthen it disappeared altogether. Shoot! Now I couldn’t see what the vessels were. I didn’t want to dive and sleep without knowing what was in the neighbourhood.
    Back inside, the two beeps on the radar became three, and then … four! Wow! They couldn’t have been fishing boats; we were too far from shore. I stared at the radar screen. They were coming slowly towards us. What to do? This was the first time I couldn’t race for a cove or settle on the bottom and hide. Five hundred feet was too deep; we might spring a leak. We had two choices: change course and try to get out of the way, or wait and see what was coming. Considering we were legal, I decided to wait.
    I cut the engine. We coasted to a drift. I carried Hollie out for a breath of fresh air. Clouds of fog were rolling in faster than the vessels were approaching. They weren’t sailing side by side but were about half a mile apart. Maybe they were naval ships. If they were, I would signal a friendly greeting. I could invoke the Law of the Sea Treaty if they questioned our presence.
    As the fog thickened to pea soup I couldn’t see past the bow. The ships were going to pass unseen. When they were five miles away there were two more beeps on the radar. I climbed inside. Two more vessels were coming from the opposite direction, and they were coming fast! Unbelievably, I watched as the strangest chase scene took place on the radar screen.
    The four approaching vessels had obviously becomeaware of the two speedy ships because they stopped, turned around one hundred and eighty degrees and cranked up their speed, all four of them together. They were running away! Their pursuers simply ignored us and altered their course to follow the four. And they were
fast
! What was going on? Were the pursuers pirates? That seemed unlikely. In the first place, nobody could see anybody else. Everyone was relying on radar. And yet the pursuing ships must have known about the four ships even before they were within radar range because they had known where to look for them in the first place. They must have had other information, which made me think that maybe the pursuers were the navy or the coastguard.
    As much as I was dying to know what was really going on I knew the smartest thing to do was to change course and leave their radar range while we had the chance. And so I did. I turned completely around, headed back the way we had come and made a wide, sweeping arc. I planned to continue our course ten miles south. As we were leaving their radar range, I climbed the portal with the binoculars for one last look. Between pockets of fog on the horizon I thought I caught a glimpse of a red and white ship. The coastguard! Now I probably knew who the pursuers were. But who were they chasing?
    That answer came about an hour later when I was again preparing to dive and catch some sleep. The chase jumped back onto the radar screen like a handful of green bugs. Firstcame the four fleeing vessels, travelling much closer together now, and then their pursuers, who had narrowed the gap to less than four miles. Unless I cranked up the engine and took off, both parties would roughly cross our path. I decided to stay, but made ready to dive if necessary.
    I cut the engine, climbed the portal with the binoculars and strained to see through the fog. The wind was picking up. It blew holes in the fog here and there. I caught a glimpse of a couple of small ships once or twice, then nothing. The real story was unfolding on the radar screen, but I was hoping to identify the approaching vessels before submerging and letting them pass over us.
    It was a strange game of cat and mouse. I kept running inside to check the radar, then climbing the portal and scanning the fog with the binoculars, ready at any moment to dive out of the way.
    The fleeing vessels came close, about a mile east of the sub, but not close enough to spot the portal of a small submarine in the fog. They could detect us by radar,