Fencing imagery

Fencing imagery is a recurring model for tactical thought in the novel, turning encounters at sea into contests of timing, perception, and controlled movement. It clarifies how Krause acts under pressure: not by force alone, but by reading an opponent, withholding a move when necessary, and choosing a response in the brief interval before danger becomes unavoidable. The image also joins separate episodes, from a rescue maneuver to a torpedo attack, in a single vocabulary of feint and counterstroke.

Reflex, Training, and the First Move

When Krause decides to turn Keeling back toward people who may need rescuing, the order comes with the speed of a fencer answering a disengage and lunge. The comparison gives the decision a bodily immediacy: there is no time for prolonged calculation once the opportunity and danger are recognized. Yet the response is not presented as pure instinct. A hundred peacetime man-overboard exercises have already taught Krause how difficult such an undertaking is and how quickly it must begin. Habit supplies the readiness that makes decisive action possible.

The orders that follow make the image concrete in ship-handling terms. Krause calls for right full rudder, asks for a course that will bring Keeling back to the scene, and then orders one-third speed, setting turns for six knots. The sequence moves from rapid commitment to controlled execution. In this episode, the fencing analogy illuminates a kind of command that must be immediate without becoming indiscriminate: the first movement opens the response, while the subsequent orders regulate its risks.

The Advantage of Waiting

During another encounter, Krause faces a U-boat heading east on approximately course 085. He orders Keeling smartly onto course 010, but does not authorize gunfire. The choice is tactical restraint: a first salvo would warn the submarine and might cause it to submerge, while in the pitch-black night Keeling may be able to approach without being seen. The fencing comparison here is less about speed than about denying an opponent information. Krause wants to close the distance before making the move that would reveal his position and intention.

This is not hesitation for its own sake. The scene makes waiting an active choice within a contest of reactions. Opening fire could bring immediate action, but it could also surrender the advantage of surprise. The image of a bout helps express the calculation: the combatants are not merely exchanging blows; each is trying to control when the other must respond. Krause’s restraint preserves the possibility of a closer approach, even though the darkness and the submarine’s location leave the outcome uncertain.

Two Ships in the Dark

When Keeling and Viktor pursue a submarine together, the fencing image expands from a contest between two opponents into a problem of coordinated movement. The submarine might complete a circle or double back in an S-shaped turn. The two ships must either intercept it or drive it back toward Viktor, while avoiding collision and preventing interference with one another’s instruments. Their task is therefore not simply to catch a target. Each ship’s movement changes the opportunities and constraints facing the other.

The exchange over the radio makes this shared bout audible: after Krause says he will hold his course, the Canadian voice announces an attack. The image of two ships setting themselves as partners in the dark emphasizes both cooperation and separation. They must act in relation to one another without crowding one another’s maneuver or disrupting the equipment on which the pursuit depends. Fencing imagery gives this coordination a precise shape: pressure on the submarine must be applied through complementary positions, not through uncontrolled convergence.

Reading the Opponent, Answering the Torpedoes

In a later pursuit, Krause is almost on a collision course with a submarine. Taking the conn, he assesses its captain as a fencer might assess a new opponent: by the exposure of the periscope and the submarine’s unsuitable underwater course, and by comparison with the opponent who had shaken off Keeling and Viktor earlier that day. The new captain seems to have less finesse and caution; inexperience, over-boldness, and fatigue remain possibilities rather than established facts. The metaphor makes that distinction important. Krause has to form a judgment from signs, but he cannot mistake a tactical impression for certainty.

His restraint at this stage is measured too. Sonar reports a distant contact bearing 161, and the bearing has altered so little that no helm order is yet needed. Krause waits. The scene presents observation as part of the contest: a fencer cannot read an opponent’s reactions without allowing the exchange to develop, and a commander cannot improve a position by issuing a movement merely to appear decisive.

The sharpest version of the metaphor comes when the talker reports torpedoes fired. Krause has one second to judge the geometry. The submarine’s stern points toward Keeling’s port beam; its bows appear to point somewhat away from Dodge, which is farther off, while Keeling is close. Krause reasons that the submarine must know Keeling is nearby and probably does not know of Dodge’s approach. The image of blade pressed against blade gives form to that compressed calculation: there is scarcely an interval in which to think, yet the direction of the next move matters decisively.

Krause orders right full rudder and course 170. The turn is not quite a right angle; allowing for Keeling’s advance, it is intended to bring the ship as nearly parallel to the torpedo tracks as he can judge. Here the fencing motif connects perceptual judgment directly to consequence. Across these episodes, command resembles a bout not because the sea is a sporting arena, but because every movement must be read in relation to an opponent’s position, intention, and possible reply. Its governing skill is disciplined timing: acting quickly when delay would be dangerous, and holding back when the premature stroke would give the enemy the advantage.