WAR AT SEA I I I 



little survey ship she joined the circus with the other two 

 corvettes while Starwort disembarked her survivors. 



With the survivors out of the ship a great weight seemed to 

 have been shaken off. Challenger no longer seemed to those on- 

 board to be the No. i target. It was absurd, of course, but 

 everyone felt that the enemy would know that Challenger had 

 snatched these survivors from their grasp and that every U-boat 

 in the North Atlantic would be closing in on her. But, as always 

 in the war at sea, the passing of one worry is soon replaced by 

 another; fuel now became the important factor. With the delay 

 and much extra steaming necessitated by the sinking of the troop- 

 ship the corvettes and Challenger needed fuel, for who knew how 

 many more diversions and emergencies might overtake the little 

 convoy before they sighted the shores of Africa? Distances were 

 measured on the charts, calculations of fuel consumption made, 

 and a decision reached to fuel in the neutral Azores. So while 

 Cathay steamed on to FreetowTi, Challenger made for Punta 

 Delgada in the island of San Miguel, where the ships could fuel 

 two at a time while the other pair patrolled outside the three- 

 mile limit. 



The lights shining from the neutral towns and villages and 

 from the isolated homesteads high on the mountainsides seemed 

 lit to welcome the sailors from the horrors of life on the Atlantic, 

 which now seemed neutral no longer but hostile and bristling 

 with death. Foolish jokes brought easy laughter — the tension 

 which had existed onboard was broken in a moment. The ship 

 would be in harbour for only 24 hours, there was no chance of 

 going ashore, and rumour had it that a U-boat was fuelling at the 

 nearby island port of Horta; but all were living in the present. 

 The green hills, with here and there the red soil of the ploughed 

 land, reminded the men of the West Country at home ; the white, 

 yellow and even pink houses scattered on the sunny hillsides gave 

 the country an exciting look and remained long afterwards in 

 the memory of many as a heaven that was reached but which 

 it was forbidden to enter. 



For three at least of Challenger's crew there was no time to 

 lie on deck and drink in the sunlit scene. Lieutenant J. M. 

 Sharpey-Schafer, the ship's Electrical Artificer and the Leading 



