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time of his father's departure, yet it seemed
    he had heard all this before, then. Yet, to go, to see places about which he could only dream here, to have a major
    ship beneath and about him ... His eyes sought the
    distant warship, at the Hoch-und-Deutschmeister pier,
    where she had been waiting all his life.

    "Do you really believe that, Heinrich?" Kurt jerked around. Karen had come in quietly, unasked. "Or are you as cynical a liar as Beck? I hope, for your sake, that
    you've been honestly taken in."

    "Karen!" Kurt was shocked. This was no way to speak to a close and long-time friend.

    "Karen," said Haber, gently, "I do hope you'll not talk that way in public. Even a lazy old man like Karl Wiedermann would have to do something—especially with a
    ranking Political Officer here. Beck would probably gun
    you down with that ugly pistol he always carries."

    "I don't care!" Kurt's wonder grew. This was the first time he had seen her angry—and he still had no slightest
    notion why. Surely, not because of his reaction to break-

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    fast. "I want you to leave," she said. "We don't want your phony patriotism."

    "Karen!"

    "Oh, shut up, Kurt. You don't know what's going on.
    You'll let yourself get talked into something you'll regret."

    He was angered by her implying he was incapable of
    rational decision. So, to prove something, he made an
    irrational one. "I'll go." He meant to say he would think about going, but it did not come out so, and, afterward,
    Karen forever turned deaf ears to his explanations.

    "Kurt!" she wailed, "why? Haven't our families been hurt enough?"

    Then the argument began, their first. As each angry
    word took birth and flew, Kurt grew more determined he
    would not let Karen think for him. He was by nature a
    drifter, a follower, easily manipulated, yet, when accused
    of it, became stubborn in proving to himself he was
    not—sometimes in support of the stupidest things. ... He
    committed himself to Jager so clumsily there was no way
    he could withdraw without tremendous loss of face. He
    won a sad victory over Karen, and slept that night alone.

    "Ranke!" It seemed sleep had just come, but here was the messenger of the watch, shaking his rack, stirring him
    forth from the muzzy depths of memory. "Time to relieve the watch."

    "Goddammit," he muttered, "I just got off."

    "It's three-thirty," the messenger said defensively.

    "I'm coming, I'm coming." Then he chuckled. The
    engineers were standing watch and watch, six hours on
    and six off. He consoled himself by thinking of those with
    a worse lot. "Go on. Get out of here," he told the messenger. "I'm up."

    "Just making sure." The man hurried off to his next victim.

    The Norwegian coast was a vague black line when Kurt
    reached the bridge. He relieved Milch, made the log
    entries necessary for a new watch, then stepped outside to
    stare at the shadowed land. Hans joined him shortly.

    "Think we could see the mountains from here?" he
    asked.

    "No. Maybe when we get upriver."

    "When're we going in?"

    "When there's enough light." Kurt looked eastward, astern. The false dawn had begun painting the foaming
    wake. Then he saw Beck on the maindeck, amidships,
    near an open porthole. "Look. Beck. Hope he doesn't
    hang the cooks. They're bad, but they're all we've got."

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    Hans considered Beck at the galley, chuckled. "Pray it's Kellerman if he does." Kellerman was the officers' cook, unpopular, considered a lickspittle.

    They moved forward where Beck could not see them.
    Musingly, Hans said, "It'd be a pity if something hap-
    pened to him, wouldn't it? Suppose a tree fell on him?
    Anything could happen while we're cutting firewood."

    Kurt frowned. There was something wrong about Hans,
    something different. He was altogether too friendly, and
    the way he was talking, too, was unlike the Hans Kurt
    thought he knew. ...

    "Captain's on the bridge!"

    Kurt's train of thought died as he hurried into the
    pilothouse, to the chart table, where he