H.M.S. Ulysses Part 29

Brooks nodded. "I know, Johnny, I know. I've seen it myself."

"Nothing mutinous, nothing sullen about them any more."

Nicholls was puzzled, seeking tiredly to reduce nebulous, scattered impressions to a h.o.m.ogeneous coherence. "They've neither the energy nor the initiative left for a mutiny now, anyway, I suppose, but it's not that. Kept muttering to themselves in the F.D.R.: 'Lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d.' 'He died easy', things like that. Or 'Old Giles-off his bleedin' rocker.'

And you can imagine the shake of the head. But no humour, none, not even the grisly variety you usually..." He shook his own head. "I just don't know, sir. Apathetic, indifferent, hopeless, call 'em what you like. I'd call 'em lost."

Brooks looked at him a long moment, then added gently:

"Would you now?" He mused. "And do you know, Johnny, I think you'd be right... Anyway," he continued briskly, "get up there. Captain's going to make a tour of the ship."

"What!" Nicholls was astounded. "During action stations? Leave the bridge?"

"Just that."

"But, but he can't, sir. It's, it's unprecedented!"

"So's Captain Vallery. That's what I've been trying to tell you all evening."

"But he'll kill himself!" Nicholls protested wildly.

"That's what I said," Brooks agreed wryly. "Clinically, he's dying. He should be dead. What keeps him going G.o.d only knows-literally. It certainly isn't plasma or drugs... Once in a while, Johnny, it's salutary for us to appreciate the limits of medicine. Anyway, I talked him into taking you with him... Better not keep him waiting."

For Lieutenant Nicholls, the next two hours were borrowed from purgatory. Two hours, the Captain took to his inspection, two hours of constant walking, of climbing over storm-sills and tangled wreckage of steel, of squeezing and twisting through impossibly narrow apertures, of climbing and descending a hundred ladders, two hours of exhausting torture in the bitter, heart-sapping cold of a sub-zero temperature. But it was a memory that was to stay with him always, that was never to return without filling him with warmth, with a strange and wonderful grat.i.tude.

They started on the p.o.o.p-Vallery, Nicholls and Chief Petty Officer Hartley-Vallery would have none of Hastings, the Master-At-Arms, who usually accompanied the Captain on his rounds. There was something oddly rea.s.suring about the big, competent Chief. He worked like a Trojan that night, opening and shutting dozens of watertight doors, lifting and lowering countless heavy hatches, knocking off and securing the thousand clips that held these doors and hatches in place, and before ten minutes had pa.s.sed, lending a protesting Vallery the support of his powerful arm.

They climbed down the long, vertical ladder to 'Y' magazine, a dim and gloomy dungeon thinly lit with pinpoints of garish light. Here were the butchers, bakers and candlestick makers-the non-specialists in the purely offensive branches. 'Hostilities only' ratings, almost to a man, in charge of a trained gunner, they had a cold, dirty and unglamorous job, strangely neglected and forgotten, strangely, because so terribly dangerous. The four-inch armour encasing them offered about as much protection as a sheet of newspaper to an eight-inch armour-piercing sh.e.l.l or a torpedo...

The magazine walls-walls of sh.e.l.ls and cartridge cases, were soaking wet, dripping constantly visibly, with icy condensation. Half the crew were leaning or lying against the racks, blue, pinched, shivering with cold, their breath hanging heavily in the chill air: the others were trudging heavily round and round the hoist, feet splashing in pools of water, lurching, stumbling with sheer exhaustion, gloved hands buried in their pockets, drawn, exhausted faces sunk on their chests. Zombies, Nicholls thought wonderingly, just living zombies. Why don't they lie down?

Gradually, everyone became aware of Vallery's presence, stopped walking or struggling painfully erect, eyes too tired, minds too spent for either wonder or surprise.

"As you were, as you were," Vallery said quickly. "Who's in charge here?"

"I am, sir." A stocky, overalled figure walked slowly forward, halted in front of Vallery.

"Ah, yes. Gardiner, isn't it?" He gestured to the men circling the hoist.' What in the world is all this for, Gardiner?"

"Ice," said Gardiner succinctly. "We have to keep the water moving or it'll freeze in a couple of minutes. We can't have ice on the magazine floor, sir."

"No, no, of course not! But-but the pumps, the drain-c.o.c.ks?"

"Solid!"

"But surely-this doesn't go on all the time?"

"In flat weather-all the time, sir."

"Good G.o.d!" Vallery shook his head incredulously, splashed his way to the centre of the group, where a slight, boyish figure was coughing cruelly into a corner of an enormous green and white m.u.f.fler. Vallery placed a concerned arm across the shaking shoulders.

"Are you all right, boy?"

"Yes, sir. 'Course Ah am!" He lifted a thin white face racked with pain.

"Ah'm fine," he said indignantly.

"What's your name?"

"McQuater, sir."

"And what's your job, McQuater?"

"a.s.sistant cook, sir."

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen, sir." Merciful heavens, Vallery thought, this isn't a cruiser I'm running-it's a nursery!

"From Glasgow, eh?" He smiled.

"Yes, sir." Defensively.

"I see." He looked down at the deck, at McQuater's boots half-covered in water. "Why aren't you wearing your sea-boots?" he asked abruptly.

"We don't get issued with them, sir."

"But your feet, man! They must be soaking!"

"Ah don't know, sir. Ah think so. Anyway," McQuater said simply, "it doesna matter. Ah canna feel them."

Vallery winced. Nicholls, looking at the Captain, wondered if he realised the distressing, pathetic picture he himself presented with his sunken, bloodless face, red, inflamed eyes, his mouth and nose daubed with crimson, the inevitable dark and sodden hand-towel clutched in his left glove. Suddenly unaccountably, Nicholls felt ashamed of himself:

that thought, he knew, could never occur to this man.

Vallery smiled down at McQuater.

"Tell me son, honestly-are you tired?"

"Ah am that-Ah mean, aye, aye, sir."

"Me too," Vallery confessed. "But, you can carry on a bit longer?"

He felt the frail shoulders straighten under his arm.

"'Course Ah can, sir!" The tone was injured, almost truculent.

"'Course Ah can!"