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involuntary harshness - he realized the tenseness to which he had been screwed up, and he wondered vaguely for a moment what his blood pressure was.
    But this was no time for mental digressions. The second division was heading back through the minefield, and the first division was following them, with the Apache covering the rear.
    It was more nervous work going out round the turns of the channel even than coming in, for now they were under the fire of the shore batteries. The silence, now that the Apache ’s guns had ceased firing, was almost oppressive, but Crowe looked with pride round the ship and saw the anti-aircraft guns’ crews motionless at their posts, the lookouts sweeping the skies with their glasses, and Rowles’ quiet voice giving orders to the quartermaster. The shells rumbled overhead, and enormous jets of water were springing up from the sea, first on this side of the flotilla and then on that. One shell, as it pitched, called up a tremendous upheaval of water, which rocked the Apache , an echoing explosion, and a pillar of black smoke.
    ‘Shell touched off a mine,’ said Crowe to Nickleby. ‘Interesting, that.’
    Extremely interesting, for the mine must have been near the surface for the shell to have exploded it - near enough to the surface to damage a shallow-draft destroyer as well as a deep-draft battleship. Crowe had suspected that possibility.
    They were through the labyrinth of mines now and the Apache ’s pulses were beating quicker as Rowles called for full speed to take them out of danger. The bursting of a shell in their wake close astern told them how the sudden acceleration had saved them once again. And then it happened, the shell that struck right between the aftermost pair of guns and burst there. The wounded Apache reeled at the rending crash of the explosion, so that Crowe retained his footing with difficulty.
    He walked to the end of the bridge and looked aft, but the funnels were between him and the point where the shell had struck, and there was no obvious damage to be seen; only the first-aid and emergency parties doubling aft, the hoses being unrolled and the trail of heavy black smoke which the Apache was now leaving behind her. But the beat of the screws had not changed, so that the ship’s motive power was uninjured.
    He felt the Apache heel as Hammett began zigzagging to throw off the aim of the Italian gunlayers. A whole cluster of jets of water sprang up from the point they had just left - some of the spray even splashed round him on the bridge - and the Apache heeled again under full helm on a fresh zigzag; it was nervous work waiting for the next salvo, and the next, and the next, while the reports were coming to the bridge of the damage - the aftermost guns completely out of action, the ammunition hoist wrecked, along with the after fire-control station.
    It was the price of victory, and a cheap enough price at that. It was not merely the damage done to the Italians - the blazing oil whose thick smoke was making a wide smudge over the now-distant shore, or the shattered MAS, or the wrecked wireless station. The success of the raid meant that in hundreds of little places up and down their coast the Italians would have to re-double their precautions, mount guns and sow minefields, station troops and maintain a constant guard, everything draining fresh strength from an already exhausted country.
    ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ said Crowe, as his staff turned to him when the last salvo had fallen far astern. They were a good lot of fellows who knew their jobs thoroughly. A little academic, perhaps, but that was a fault on the right side. Perhaps in the end they would master the finer points of their profession and acquire the art of putting themselves in the enemy’s position and thinking like him.
    At that appalling moment when they had found themselves some ten miles from where they expected to be, they had only thought about the enemy academically. They had not realized