H.M.S. Ulysses Part 23

Two ships took the full force of the explosion. A huge ma.s.s of metal-it might have been a winch-pa.s.sed clear through the superstructure of the Sinus, a cable-length away on the starboard: it completely wrecked the radar office. What happened to the other ship immediately astern, the impossibly-named Tennessee Adventurer, was not clear, but almost certainly her wheelhouse and bridge had been severely damaged: she had lost steering control, was not under command.

Tragically, this was not at first understood, simply because it was not apparent. Tyndall, recovering fast from the sheer physical shock of the explosion, broke out the signal for an emergency turn to port. The wolf-pack, obviously, lay on the port hand, and the only action to take to minimise further losses, to counter the enemy strategy, was to head straight towards them. He was reasonably sure that the U-boats would be bunched-generally, they strung out only for the slow convoys. Besides, he had adopted this tactic several times in the past with a high degree of success. Finally, it cut the U-boats' target to an impossible tenth, forcing on them the alternative of diving or the risk of being trampled under.

With the immaculate precision and co-ordination of Olympic equestrians, the convoy heeled steadily over to starboard, slewed majestically round, trailing curved, white wakes phos-ph.o.r.escently alive in the near-darkness that still clung to the surface of the sea. Too late, it was seen that the Tennessee Adventurer was not under command. Slowly, then with dis-, maying speed, she came round to the east, angling directly for another merchantman, the Tobacco Planter. There was barely time to think, to appreciate the inevitable: frantically, the Planter's helm went hard over in an attempt to clear the other astern, but the wildly swinging Adventurer, obviously completely out of control, matched the Planter's tightening circle, foot by inexorable foot, blind malice at the helm.

She struck the Planter with sickening violence just for'ard of the bridge. The Adventurer's bows, crumpling as they went, bit deeply into her side, fifteen, twenty feet in a chaos of tearing, rending metal: the stopping power of 10,000 tons deadweight travelling at 15 knots is fantastic. The wound was mortal, and the Planter's own momentum, carrying her past, wrenched her free from the lethal bows, opening the wound to the hungry sea and hastened her own end..Almost at once she began to fill, to list heavily to starboard. Aboard the Adventurer, someone must have taken over command: her engine stopped, she lay almost motionless alongside the sinking ship, slightly down by the head.

The rest of the convoy cleared the drifting vessels, steadied west by north. Far out on the starboard hand, Commander Orr, in the Sirrus, clawed his damaged destroyer round in a violent turn, headed back towards the crippled freighters. He had gone less than half a mile when he was recalled by a vicious signal from the flagship. Tyndall was under no illusions. The Adventurer, he knew, might remain there all day, unharmed-it was obvious that the Planter would be gone in a matter of minutes-but that would be a guarantee neither of the absence of U-boats nor of the sudden access of misguided enemy chivalry: the enemy would be there, would wait to the last possible second before dark in the hope that some rescue destroyer would heave to alongside the Adventurer.

In that respect, Tyndall was right. The Adventurer was torpedoed just before sunset. Three-quarters of the ship's company escaped in lifeboats, along with twenty survivors picked up from the Planter. A month later the frigate Esher found them, in three lifeboats tied line ahead, off the bitter, iron coast of Bear Island, heading steadily north. The Captain, alert and upright, was still sitting in the stern-sheets, empty eye-sockets searching for some lost horizon, a withered claw locked to the tiller. The rest were sitting or lying about the boats, one actually standing, his arm cradled around the mast, and all with shrunken sun-blackened lips drawn back in hideous mirth. The log-book lay beside the Captain, empty: all had frozen to death on that first night. The young frigate commander had cast them adrift, watched them disappear over the northern rim of the world, steering for the Barrier. And the Barrier is the region of the great silence, the seas of incredible peace, so peaceful, so calm, so cold that they may be there yet, the dead who cannot rest. A mean and shabby end for the temple of the spirit.... It is not known whether the Admiralty approved the action of the captain of the frigate.

But in the major respect, that of antic.i.p.ating enemy disposition, the Admiral was utterly wrong. The wolf-pack commander had outguessed him and it was arguable that Tyndall should have foreseen this. His tactic of swinging an fast, highly manoeuvrable, impeccably handled, bobbed and weaved their way to safety with almost contemptuous ease, straightened up and headed south under maximum power.

The merchant ships, big, clumsy, relatively slow, were less fortunate.

Two ships in the port line, a tanker and a freighter, were struck: miraculously, both just staggered under the numbing shock, then kept on coming. Not so the big freighter immediately behind them, her holds crammed with tanks, her decks lined with them. She was torpedoed three times in three seconds: there was no smoke, no fire, no spectacular after-explosion: sieved and ripped from stern to stem, she sank quickly, quietly, still on even keel, dragged down by the sheer weight of metal.

No one below decks had even the slightest chance of escaping.

A merchantman in the centre line, the Belle Me, was torpedoed amidships. There were two separate explosions, probably she had been struck twice-and she was instantly on fire. Within seconds, the list to port was p.r.o.nounced, increasing momentarily: gradually her rails dipped under, the outslung lifeboats almost touching the surface of the sea. A dozen, fifteen men were seen to be slipping, sliding down the sheering decks and hatch covers, already half-submerged, towards the nearest lifeboat. Desperately they hacked at belly-band securing ropes, piled into the lifeboat in grotesquely comical haste, pushed it clear of the dipping davits, seized the oars and pulled frantically away. From beginning to end, hardly a minute had elapsed.

Half a dozen powerful strokes had them clear beyond their ship's counter: two more took them straight under the swinging bows of the Walter A. Baddeley, her companion tank-carrier in the starboard line.

The consummate seamanship that had saved the Baddeley could do nothing to save the lifeboat: the little boat crumpled and splintered like a matchwood toy, catapulting screaming men into the icy sea.

As the big, grey hull of the Baddeley slid swiftly by them, they struck out with insane strength that made nothing of their heavy Arctic clothing. At such times, reason vanishes: the thought that if, by some G.o.d-given miracle, they were to escape the guillotine of the Baddeley''s single great screw, they would do so only to die minutes later in the glacial cold of the Arctic, never occurred to them. But, as it happened, death came by neither metal nor cold. They were still struggling, almost abreast the p.o.o.p, vainly trying to clear the rushing, sucking vortex of water, when the torpedoes struck the Baddeley, close together and simultaneously, just for'ard of the rudder.

For swimming men who have been in the close vicinity of an underwater high explosion there can be no shadow of hope: the effect is inhuman, revolting, shocking beyond conception: in such cases, experienced doctors, pathologists even, can with difficulty bring themselves to look upon what were once human beings... But for these men, as so often in the Arctic, death was kind, for they died unknowing.

The Walter A. Baddeley's stern had been almost completely blown off.

Hundreds of tons of water were already rushing in the great, gaping hole below the counter, racing through cross-bulkheads fractured by the explosion, smashing open engine-boiler room watertight doors buckled by the blast, pulling her down by the stern, steadily, relentlessly, till her taffrail dipped salute to the waiting Arctic. For a moment, she hung there. Then, in quick succession from deep inside the hull, came a m.u.f.fled explosion, the ear-shattering, frightening roar of escaping high-pressure steam and the thunderous crash of ma.s.sive boilers rending away from their stools as the ship upended. Almost immediately the shattered stern lurched heavily, sunk lower and lower till the p.o.o.p was completely gone, till the dripping forefoot was tilted high above the sea. Foot by foot the angle of tilt increased, the stern plunged a hundred, two hundred feet under the surface of the sea, the bows rearing almost as high against the blue of the sky, buoyed up by half a million cubic feet of trapped air.

The ship was exactly four degrees off the vertical when the end came. It was possible to establish this angle precisely, for it was just at that second, half a mile away aboard the Ulysses, that the shutter clicked, the shutter of the camera in Lieutenant Nicholls's gauntleted hands.

A camera that captured an unforgettable picture-a stark, simple picture of a sinking ship almost vertically upright against a pale-blue sky. A picture with a strange lack of detail, with the exception only of two squat shapes, improbably suspended in mid-air: these were 30-ton tanks, broken loose from their foredeck lashings, caught in midnight as they smashed down on the bridge structure, awash in the sea. In the background was the stern of the Belle Isle, the screw out of the water, the Red Duster trailing idly in the peaceful sea.

Bare seconds after the camera had clicked, the camera was blown from Nicholls's hands, the case crumpling against a bulkhead, the lens shattering but the film still intact. Panic-stricken the seamen in the lifeboat may have been, but it wasn't unreasoning panic: in No. 2 hold, just for'ard of the fire, the Belle Isle had been carrying over 1,000 tons of tank ammunition.... Broken cleanly in two, she was gone inside a minute: the Baddeley's bows, riddled by the explosion, slid gently down behind her.

The echoes of the explosion were still rolling out over the sea in ululating diminuendo when they were caught up and flung back by a series of m.u.f.fled reports from the South. Less than two miles away, the Sirrus, Vectra and Viking, dazzling white in the morning sun, were weaving a crazily intricate pattern over the sea, depth-charges cascading from either side of their p.o.o.p-decks. From time to time, one or other almost disappeared behind towering mushrooms of erupting water and spray, reappearing magically as the white columns fell back into the sea.

To join in the hunt, to satisfy the flaming, primitive l.u.s.t for revenge-that was Tyndall's first impulse. The Kapok Kid looked at him furtively and wondered, wondered at the hunched rigidity, the compressed lipless mouth, the face contorted in white and bitter rage-a bitterness directed not least against himself. Tyndall twisted suddenly in his seat.

"Bentley! Signal the Stirling-ascertain damage." The Stirling was more than a mile astern now, but coming round fast, her speed at least twenty knots.

"Making water after engine-room," Bentley read eventually. "Store-rooms flooded, but hull damage slight. Under control. Steering gear jammed. On emergency steering. Am all right."

"Thank G.o.d for that! Signal,' Take over: proceed east.' Come on, Captain, let's give Orr a hand to deal with these murdering hounds!"

The Kapok Kid looked at him in sudden dismay.

"Sir!"

"Yes, yes, Pilot! What is it?" Tyndall was curt, impatient.

"How about that first U-boat?" Carpenter ventured. "Can't be much more than a mile to the south, sir. Shouldn't we-----?"

"G.o.d Almighty!" Tyndall swore. His face was suffused with anger. "Are you trying to tell me... ?" He broke off abruptly, stared at Carpenter for a long moment. "What did you say, Pilot?"

"The boat that sunk the tanker, sir," the Kapok Kid said carefully.

"She could have reloaded by now and she's in a perfect position------"

"Of course, of course," Tyndall muttered. He pa.s.sed a hand across his eyes, flickered a glance at Vallery. The Captain had his head averted.

Again the hand pa.s.sed across the tired eyes. "You're quite right, Pilot, quite right." He paused, then smiled. "As usual, d.a.m.n you!"

The Ulysses found nothing to the north. The U-boat that had sunk the Coch.e.l.la and sprung the trap had wisely decamped. While they were quartering the area, they heard the sound of gunfire, saw the smoke erupting from the Sinus's 4.7s.

"Ask him what all the b.l.o.o.d.y fuss is about," Tyndall demanded irritably.

The Kapok Kid smiled secretly: the old man had life in him yet.

"Vectra and Viking damaged, probably destroyed U-boat," the message read. "Vectra and self sunk surfaced boat. How about you?"

"How about you!" Tyndall exploded. "d.a.m.n his confounded insolence! How about you? He'll have the oldest, b.l.o.o.d.y minesweeper in Scapa for his next command... This is all your fault, Pilot!"

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Maybe he's only asking in a spirit of-ah-anxious concern."

"How would you like to be his Navigator in his next command?" said Tyndall dangerously. The Kapok Kid retired to his charthouse.

"Carrington!"

"Sir?" The First Lieutenant was his invariable self, clear-eyed, freshly shaven, competent, alert. The sallow skin, hall-mark of all men who have spent too many years under tropical suns-was unshadowed by fatigue. He hadn't slept for three days.

"What do you make of that?" He pointed to the northwest. Curiously woolly grey clouds were blotting out the horizon; before them the sea dusked to indigo under wandering catspaws from the north.

"Hard to say, sir," Carrington said slowly. "Not heavy weather, that's certain... I've seen this before, sir, low, twisting cloud blowing up on a fine morning with a temperature rise. Very common in the Aleutians and the Bering Sea, sir, and there it means fog, heavy mist."

"And you, Captain?"

"No idea, sir." Vallery shook his head decisively. The plasma transfusion seemed to have helped him. "New to me, never seen it before."

"Thought not," Tyndall granted. "Neither have I, that's why I asked Number One first... If you think it's fog that's coming up, Number One, let me know, will you? Can't afford to have convoy and escorts scattered over half the Arctic if the weather closes down. Although, mind you," he added bitterly, "I think they'd be a d.a.m.ned sight safer without us!"

"I can tell you now, sir." Carrington had that rare gift, the ability to make a confident, quietly unarguable a.s.sertion without giving the slightest offence. "It's fog."

"Fair enough." Tyndall never doubted him. "Let's get the h.e.l.l out of it. Bentley-signal the destroyers: Break off engagement. Rejoin convoy. And Bentley, add the word 'Immediate.'" He turned to Vallery. "For Commander Orr's benefit."