H.M.S. Ulysses Part 21

In the circ.u.mstances, the attack was highly suspicious. Circ.u.mspect Charlie might normally be on reconnaissance, but on the rare occasions that he chose to attack he generally did so with courage and determination. The recent sally was just too timorous, the tactics too obviously hopeless. Possibly, of course, recent entrants to the Luftwaffe were given to a discretion so signally lacking in their predecessors, or perhaps they were under strict orders not to risk their valuable craft. But probably, almost certainly, it was thought, that futile attack was only diversionary and the main danger lay elsewhere.

The watch over and under the sea was intensified.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes pa.s.sed and nothing had happened. Radar and Asdic screens remained obstinately clear. Tyndall finally decided that there was no justification for keeping the entire ship's company, so desperately in need of rest, at Action Stations for a moment longer and ordered the stand-down to be sounded.

Normal Defence Stations were resumed. All forenoon work had been cancelled, and officers and ratings off watch, almost to a man, went to s.n.a.t.c.h what brief sleep they could. But not all. Brooks and Nicholls had their patients to attend to: the Navigator returned to the chart-house: Marshall and his Commissioned Gunner, Mr. Peters, resumed their interrupted routine rounds: and Etherton, nervous, anxious, over-sensitive and desperately eager to redeem himself for his share in the Carslake-Ralston episode, remained huddled and watchful in the cold, lonely eyrie of the Director Tower.

The sharp, urgent call from the deck outside came to Marshall and Peters as they were talking to the Leading Wireman in charge of No. 2 Electrical Shop. The shop was on the port side of the fo'c'sle deck cross-pa.s.sage which ran athwartships for'ard of the wardroom, curving aft round the trunking of 'B' turret. Four quick steps had them out of the shop, through the screen door and peering over the side through the freshly falling snow, following the gesticulating finger of an excited marine. Marshall glanced at the man, recognised him immediately: it was Charteris, the only ranker known personally to every officer in the ship-in port, he doubled as wardroom barman.

"What is it, Charteris?" he demanded. "What are you seeing? Quickly, man!"

"There, sir! Look! Out there, no, a bit more to your right! It's, it's a sub, sir, a U-boat!"

"What? What's that? A U-boat?" Marshall half-turned as the Rev. Winthrop, the padre, squeezed to the rail between himself and Charteris.

"Where? Where is it? Show me, show me!"

"Straight ahead, padre. I can see it now, but it's a d.a.m.ned funny shape for a U-boat-if you'll excuse the language," Marshall added hastily. He caught the war-like, un-Christian gleam in Winthrop's eyes, smothered a laugh and peered through the snow at the strange squat shape which had now drifted almost abreast of them.

High up in the Tower, Etherton's restless, hunting eyes had already seen it, even before Charteris. Like Charteris, he immediately thought it was a U-boat caught surfacing in a snow storm, the pay-off of the attack by the Condors: the thought that Asdic or radar would certainly have picked it up never occurred to him. Time, speed, that was the essence, before it vanished. Unthinkingly, he grabbed the phone to the for'ard multiple pom-pom.

"Director-pom-pom!" he barked urgently. "U-boat, port 60. Range 100 yards, moving aft. Repeat, port 60. Can you see it?... No, no, port 60-70 now!" he shouted desperately. "Oh, good, good! Commence tracking."

"On target, sir," the receiver crackled in his ear.

"Open fire-continuous!"

"Sir-but, sir, Kingston's not here. He went------"

"Never mind Kingston!" Etherton shouted furiously. Kingston, he knew, was Captain of the Gun. "Open fire, you fools, now! I'll take full responsibility." He thrust the phone back on the rest, moved across to the observation panel... Then realisation, sickening, shocking, fear seared through his mind and he lunged desperately for the phone.

"Belay the last order!" he shouted wildly. "Cease fire! Cease fire! Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d, my G.o.d!" Through the receiver came the staccato, angry bark of the two-pounder. The receiver dropped from his hand, crashed against the bulkhead. It was too late.

It was too late because he had committed the cardinal sin, he had forgotten to order the removal of the muzzle-covers, the metal plates that sealed off the flash-covers of the guns when not in use. And the sh.e.l.ls were fused to explode on contact...

The first sh.e.l.l exploded inside its barrel, killing the trainer and seriously wounding the communication number: the other three smashed through their flimsy covers and exploded within a second of each other, a few feet from the faces of the four watchers on the fo'c'sle deck.

All four were untouched, miraculously untouched by the flying, screaming metal. It flew outwards and downwards, a red-hot iron hail sizzling into the sea. But the blast of the explosion was backwards, and the power of even a few pounds of high explosive detonating at arm's length is lethal.

The padre died instantly, Peters and Charteris within seconds, and all from the same cause-telescoped occiputs. The blast hurled them backwards off their feet, as if flung by a giant hand, the backs of their heads smashing to an eggsh.e.l.l pulp against the bulkhead. The blood seeped darkly into the snow, was obliterated in a moment.

Marshall was lucky, fantastically so. The explosion, he said afterwards that it was like getting in the way of the driving piston of the Coronation Scot-flung him through the open door behind him, ripped off the heels of both shoes as they caught on the storm-sill: he braked violently in mid-air, described a complete somersault, slithered along the pa.s.sage and smashed squarely into the trunking of 'B' turret, his back framed by the four big spikes of the b.u.t.terfly nuts securing an inspection hatch. Had he been standing a foot to the right or the left, had his heels been two inches higher as he catapulted through the doorway, had he hit the turret a hair's-breadth to the left or right, Lieutenant Marshall had no right to be alive. The laws of chance said so, overwhelmingly. As it was, Marshall was now sitting up in the Sick Bay, strapped, broken ribs making breathing painful, but otherwise unharmed.

The upturned lifeboat, mute token of some earlier tragedy on the Russian Convoys, had long since vanished into the white twilight.

Captain Vallery's voice, low and husky, died softly away. He stepped back, closing the Prayer Book, and the forlorn notes of the bugle echoed briefly over the p.o.o.p and died in the blanketing snow. Men stood silently, unmovingly, as, one by one, the thirteen figures shrouded in weighted canvas slid down the tipped plank, down from under the Union Flag, splashed heavily into the Arctic and were gone. For long seconds, no one moved. The unreal, hypnotic effect of that ghostly ritual of burial held tired, sluggish minds in unwilling thrall, held men oblivious to cold and discomfort. Even when Etherton half-stepped forward, sighed, crumpled down quietly, unspectacularly in the snow, the trance-like hiatus continued. Some ignored him, others glanced his way, incuriously. It seemed absurd, but it struck Nicholls, standing in the background, that they might have stayed there indefinitely, the minds and the blood of men slowing up, coagulating, freezing, while they turned to pillars of ice. Then suddenly, with exacerbating abruptness, the spell was shattered: the strident scream of the Emergency Stations whistle seared through the gathering gloom.

It took Vallery about three minutes to reach the bridge. He rested often, pausing on every second or third step of the four ladders that reached up to the bridge: even so, the climb drained the last reserves of his frail strength. Brooks had to half-carry him through the gate.

Vallery clung to the binnacle, fighting for breath through foam-flecked lips; but his eyes were alive, alert as always, probing through the swirling snow.

"Contact closing, closing: steady on course, interception course: speed unchanged." The radar loudspeaker was m.u.f.fled, impersonal; but the calm precise tones of Lieutenant Bowden were unmistakable.

"Good, good! We'll fox him yet!" Tyndall, his tired, sagging face lit up in almost beaming antic.i.p.ation, turned to the Captain. The prospect of action always delighted Tyndall.

"Something coming up from the SSW., Captain. Good G.o.d above, man, what are you doing here?" He was shocked at Vallery's appearance. "Brooks !"

Why in heaven's name "Suppose you try talking to him?" Brooks growled wrathfully. He slammed the gate shut behind him, stalked stiffly off the bridge.

"What's the matter with him?" Tyndall asked of no one in particular.

"What the h.e.l.l am I supposed to have done?"

"Nothing, sir," Vallery pacified him. "It's all my fault, disobeying doctor's orders and what have you. You were saying, ?"

"Ah, yes. Trouble, I'm afraid, Captain." Vallery smiled secretly as he saw the satisfaction, the pleased antic.i.p.ation creep back into the Admiral's face. "Radar reports a surface vessel approaching, big, fast, more or less on interception course for us.".

"And not ours, of course?" Vallery murmured. He looked up suddenly.

"By jove, sir, it couldn't be, ?"

"The Tirpitz!" Tyndall finished for him. He shook his head in decision. "My first thought, too, but no. Admiralty and Air Force are watching her like a broody hen over her eggs. If she moves a foot, we'll know... Probably some heavy cruiser."

"Closing. Closing. Course unaltered." Bowden's voice, clipped, easy, was vaguely reminiscent of a cricket commentator's. "Estimated speed 24, repeat 24 knots."

His voice crackled into silence as the W.T. speaker came to life.

"W.T., bridge. W.T., bridge. Signal from convoy: Stirling, Admiral. Understood. Wilco. Out."

"Excellent, excellent! From Jeffries," Tyndall explained. "I sent him a signal ordering the convoy to alter course to NNW. That should take 'em well clear of our approaching friend."

Vallery nodded. "How far ahead is the convoy, sir?"

"Pilot!" Tyndall called and leaned back expectantly.

"Six, six and a half miles." The Kapok Kid's face was expressionless.

"He's slipping," Tyndall said mournfully. "The strain's telling. A couple of days ago he'd have given us the distance to the nearest yard.

Six miles, far enough, Captain. He'll never pick 'em up. Bowden says he hasn't even picked us up yet, that the intersection of courses must be pure coincidence... I gather Lieutenant Bowden has a poor opinion of German radar."

"I know. I hope he's right. For the first time the question is of rather more than academic interest." Vallery gazed to the South, his binoculars to his eyes: there was only the sea, the thinning snow.

"Anyway, this came at a good time."

Tyndall arched a bushy eyebrow.

"It was strange, down there on the p.o.o.p." Vallery was hesitant. "There was something weird, uncanny in the air. I didn't like it, sir. It was desperately, well, almost frightening. The snow, the silence, the dead men, thirteen dead men, I can only guess how the men felt, about Etherton, about anything. But it wasn't good, don't know how it would have ended-----"