[Bosje]

He plans to do another hydrophone check at 10:00 but at 9:45 a shout from the sailor standing to his right on the crowded bridge. Ship spotted! Big basterd at 60 degrees. His arm points to a patch of horizon just right of the sun which has just cleared the horizon. He squints against the light as he tries to keep the sunrays out of his zeiss special binoculars. There it is, a huge big bastard indeed. Definately a tanker, big smokestack on the back. Possibly a converted whale factory ship. Fat target. He tries to judge the light conditions and, more importantly, the light conditions as they will be in an hour's time. The tanker is still ahead of them, it's going to be quite a hunt, but worth the effort for what looks to be over 10.000 tons. They start taking estimates of her range, speed and course.

13 knots, 15 km, east by northeast. She is going steady on the very edge of their visibility. Which means they get to spend the rest of the day outflanking her to get into attack position. That's fine.

11:30, they are now ahead of the huge tanker. Slowly but steadily getting into position for attack. Bauer had his eyes glued to the tanker when the same young lookout to his right shouts it out: Another ship on the horizon! Another big bastard, too!
Commander Bauer cannot believe his luck when he gets the second ship in his sights. He recognises the profile immediately. Large merchant 10.000 tons. Heading almost on a collision course. Also on the edge of visibility. A few minutes later they worked it out. 10 or 11 knots, they plot its course so they can intercept it after dealing with the big tanker. It also means commander Bauer is getting in a hurry to do so, before the other big prize gets out of range. They stumbled right onto this month's path for fastrunning loners, it seems. He grins in his stubby beard.