H.M.S. Ulysses Part 10

"Better not let old Bowden hear you say that," Marshall advised.

"Thinks radar is the only step forward the human race has taken since the first man came down from the trees." He shivered uncontrollably and turned his back on the driving wind. "Anyway, I wish to G.o.d I had his job," he added feelingly. "This is worse than winter in Alberta!"

"Nonsense, my boy, stuff and nonsense!" the Commander roared.

"Decadent, that's the trouble with you youngsters nowadays. This is the only life for a self-respecting human being." He sniffed the icy air appreciatively and turned to Carrington. "Who's on with you tonight, Number One?"

A dark figure detached itself from the binnacle and approached him.

"Ah, there you are. Well, well, 'pon my soul, if it Isn't our navigating officer, the Honourable Carpenter, lost as usual and dressed to kill in his natty gent's suiting. Do you know, Pilot, in that outfit you look like a cross between a deep-sea diver and that advert for Michelin tyres?"

"Ha!" said the Kapok Kid aggrievedly. "Sniff and scoff while you may, sir." He patted his quilted chest affectionately. "Just wait tUl we're all down there in the drink together, everybody else dragged down or frozen to death, me drifting by warm and dry and comfortable, maybe smoking the odd cigarette------"

"Enough. Be off. Course, Number One?"

"Three-twenty, sir. Fifteen knots."

"And the Captain?"

"In the shelter." Carrington jerked his head towards the reinforced steel circular casing at the after end of the bridge. This supported the Director Tower, the control circuits to which ran through a central shaft in the casing. A sea bunk, a spartan, bare settee, was kept there for the Captain's use. "Sleeping, I hope," he added, "but I very much doubt it. Gave orders to be called at midnight."

"Why?" Turner demanded.

"Oh, I don't know. Routine, I suppose. Wants to see how things are."

"Cancel the order," Turner said briefly. "Captain's got to learn to obey orders like anybody else-especially doctor's orders. I'll take full responsibility. Good night, Number One."

The gate clanged shut and Marshall turned uncertainly towards the Commander.

"The Captain, sir. Oh, I know it's none of my business, but", he hesitated "well, is he all right?"

Turner looked quickly around him. His voice was unusually quiet.

"If Brooks had his way, the old man would be in hospital." He was silent for a moment, then added soberly. "Even then, it might be too late."

Marshall said nothing. He moved restlessly around, then went aft to the port searchlight control position. For five minutes, an intermittent rumble of voices drifted up to the Commander. He glanced up curiously on Marshall's return.

"That's Ralston, sir," the Torpedo Officer explained. "If he'd talk to anybody, I think he'd talk to me."

"And does he?"

"Sure, but only what he wants to talk about. As for the rest, no dice.

You can almost see the big notice round his neck, 'Private-Keep Off.'

Very civil, very courteous and completely unapproachable. I don't know what the h.e.l.l to do about him."

"Leave him be," Turner advised. "There's nothing anyone can do." He shook his head. "My G.o.d, what a lousy break life's given that boy!"

Silence fell again. The snow was lifting now, but the wind still strengthening. It howled eerily through masts and rigging, blending with a wild and eldritch harmony into the haunting pinging of the Asdic.

Weird sounds both, weird and elemental and foreboding, that rasped across the nerves and stirred up nameless, atavistic dreads of a thousand ages past, long buried under the press of civilisation. An unholy orchestra, and, over years, men grew to hate it with a deadly hatred.

Half-past twelve came, one o'clock, then half-past one. Turner's thought turned fondly towards coffee and cocoa. Coffee or cocoa? Cocoa, he decided, a steaming potent brew, thick with melted chocolate and sugar.

He turned to Chrysler, the bridge messenger, young brother of the Leading Asdic Operator.

"W.T., Bridge. W.T., Bridge." The loudspeaker above the Asdic cabinet crackled urgently, the voice hurried, insistent. Turner jumped for the hand transmitter, barked an acknowledgment.

"Signal from Sirrus. Echoes, port bow, 300, strong, closing. Repeat, echoes, port bow, strong, closing."

"Echoes, W.T.? Did you say 'echoes'?"

"Echoes, sir. I repeat, echoes."

Even as he spoke, Turner's hand cut down on the gleaming phosph.o.r.escence of the Emergency Action Stations switch.

Of all sounds in this earth, there is none so likely to stay with a man to the end of his days as the E.A.S. There is no other sound even remotely like it. There is nothing n.o.ble or martial or blood-stirring about it. It is simply a whistle, pitched near the upper limit of audio-frequency, alternating, piercing, atonic, alive with a desperate urgency and sense of danger: knife-like, it sears through the most sleep-drugged brain and has a man, no matter how exhausted, how weak, how deeply sunk in oblivion, on his feet in seconds, the pulse-rate already accelerating to meet the latest unknown, the adrenalin already pumping into his blood-stream.

Inside two minutes, the Ulysses was closed up to Action Stations. The Commander had moved aft to the After Director Tower, Vallery and Tyndall were on the bridge.

The Sirrus, two miles away to port, remained in contact for half an hour. The Viking was detached to help her, and, below-deck in the Ulysses, the peculiar, tinny clanging of depth-charging was clearly heard at irregular intervals. Finally, the Sirrus reported. "No success: contact lost: trust you have not been disturbed." Tyndall ordered the recall of the two destroyers, and the bugle blew the stand-down.

Back on the bridge, again, the Commander sent for his long overdue cocoa. Chrysler departed to the seaman's for'ard galley, the Commander would have no truck with the wishy-washy liquid concocted for the officers' mess, and returned with a steaming jug and a string of heavy mugs, their handles threaded on a bent wire. Turner watched with approval the reluctance with which the heavy, viscous liquid poured glutinously over the lip of the jug, and nodded in satisfaction after a preliminary taste. He smacked his lips and sighed contentedly.

"Excellent, young Chrysler, excellent! You have the gift. Torps., an eye on the ship, if you please. Must see where we are."

He retired to the chart-room on the port side, just aft of the compa.s.s platform, and closed the black-out door. Relaxed in his chair, he put his mug on the chart-table and his feet beside it, drew the first deep inhalation of cigarette smoke into his lungs. Then he was on his feet, cursing: the crackle of the W.T. loudspeaker was unmistakable.

This time it was the Portpatrick. For one reason and another, her reports were generally treated with a good deal of reserve, but this time she was particularly emphatic. Commander Turner had no option; again he reached for the E.A.S. switch.

Twenty minutes later the stand-down sounded again, but the Commander was to have no cocoa that night. Three times more during the hours of darkness all hands closed up to Action Stations, and only minutes, it seemed, after the last stand-down, the bugle went for dawn stations.

There was no dawn as we know it. There was a vague, imperceptible lightening in the sky, a bleak, chill greyness, as the men dragged themselves wearily back to their action stations. This, then, was war in the northern seas. No death and glory heroics, no roaring guns and spitting OerKkons, no exaltation of the spirit, no glorious defiance of the enemy: just worn-out sleepless men, numbed with cold and sodden duffels, grey and drawn and stumbling on their feet with weakness and hunger and lack of rest, carrying with them the memories, the tensions, the c.u.mulative physical exhaustion of a hundred such endless nights.

Vallery, as always, was on the bridge. Courteous, kind and considerate as ever, he looked ghastly. His face was haggard, the colour of putty, his bloodshot eyes deep-sunk in hollowed sockets, his lips bloodless.

The severe haemorrhage of the previous night and the sleepless night just gone had taken terrible toll of his slender strength.

In the half-light, the squadron came gradually into view. Miraculously, most of them were still in position. The frigate and minesweeper were together and far ahead of the fleet, during the night they had been understandably reluctant to have their tails tramped on by a heavy cruiser or a carrier. Tyndall appreciated this and said nothing. The Invader had lost position during the night, and lay outside the screen on the port quarter. She received a very testy signal indeed, and came steaming up to resume station, corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g violently in the heavy cross seas.

Stand-down came at 0800. At 0810 the port watch was below, making tea, washing, queueing up at the galley for H.U. breakfast trays, when a m.u.f.fled explosion shook the Ulysses. Towels, soap, cups, plates and trays went flying or where left where they were: blasphemous and bitter, the men were on their way before Vallery's hand closed on the Emergency switch.

Less than half a mile away the Invader was slewing round in a violent half-circle, her flight-deck tilted over at a crazy angle. It was snowing heavily again now, but not heavily enough to obscure the great gouts of black oily smoke belching up for'ard of the Invader's bridge.

Even as the crew of the Ulysses watched, she came to rest, wallowing dangerously in the troughs between the great waves.

"The fools, the crazy fools!" Tyndall was terribly bitter, unreasonably so; even to Vallery, he would not admit how much he was now feeling the burden, the strain of command that sparked off his now almost chronic irritability. "This is what happens, Captain, when a ship loses station! And it's as much my fault as theirs-should have sent a destroyer to escort her back." He peered through his binoculars, turned to Vallery. "Make a signal please:' Estimate of damage, please inform.'... That d.a.m.ned U-boat must have trailed her from first light, waiting for a line-up."