H.M.S. Ulysses Part 9

The Sick Bay clock, unnaturally loud, ticked away one minute, maybe two.

With a heavy sigh, it seemed ages since he had breathed last, Nicholls softly pulled to the sliding door behind the curtains and switched on the light. He looked round at Brooks, looked away again.

"Well, Johnny?" The voice was soft, almost bantering.

"I just don't know, sir, I don't know at all." Nicholls shook his head.

"At first I thought he was going to, well, make a hash of it. You know, scare the lights out of 'em. And good G.o.d!" he went on wonderingly, "that's exactly what he did do. Piled it on, gales, Tirpitz, hordes of subs., and yet..." His voice trailed off.

"And yet?" Brooks echoed mockingly. "That's just it. Too much intelligence, that's the trouble with the young doctors today. I saw you-sitting there like a bogus psychiatrist, a.n.a.lysing away for all you were worth at the probable effect of the speech on the minds of the wounded warriors without, and never giving it a chance to let it register on yourself." He paused and went on quietly.

"It was beautifully done, Johnny. No, that's the wrong word-there was nothing premeditated about it. But don't you see? As black a picture as man could paint: points out that this is just a complicated way of committing suicide: no silver lining, no promises, even Alex, thrown in as a casual afterthought. Builds 'em up, then lets 'em down. No inducements, no hope, no appeal, and yet the appeal was tremendous... What was it, Johnny?"

"I don't know." Nicholls was troubled. He lifted his head abruptly, then smiled faintly. "Maybe there was no appeal. Listen."

Noiselessly, he slid the door back, flicked off the lights. The rumble of Riley's harsh voice, low and intense, was unmistakable.

"Just a lot of b.l.o.o.d.y clap-trap. Alex.? The Med.? Not on your -----, life, mate. You'll never see it. You'll never even see Scapa again. Captain Richard Vallery, D.S.O.l Know what that old b.a.s.t.a.r.d wants, boys? Another bar to his D.S.O. Maybe even a V.C. Well, by Christ's, he's not going to have it! Not at my expense. Not if I can -----, well help it. 'I know you won't let me down,'" he mimicked, his voice high-pitched. "Whining old b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" He paused a moment, then rushed on.

"The Tirpitz! Christ Almighty! The Tirpitz! We're going to stop it, us! This b.l.o.o.d.y toy ship! Bait, he says, bait!" His voice rose. "I tell you, mates, n.o.body gives a d.a.m.n about us. Direct for the North Cape! They're throwing us to the b.l.o.o.d.y wolves! And that old b.a.s.t.a.r.d up top ------"

"Shaddap!" It was Petersen who spoke, his voice a whisper, low and fierce. His hand stretched out, and Brooks and Nicholls in the surgery winced as they heard Riley's wrist-bones crack under the tremendous pressure of the giant's hand. "Often I wonder about you, Riley,"

Petersen went on I slowly. "But not now, not any more. You make me sick!" He flung Riley's hand down and turned away.

Riley rubbed his wrist in agony, and turned to Burgess.

"For G.o.d's sake, what's the matter with him? What the h.e.l.l..." He broke off abruptly. Burgess was looking at him steadily, kept looking for a long time. Slowly, deliberately, he eased himself down in bed, pulled the blankets up to his neck and turned his back on Riley.

Brooks rose quickly to his feet, closed the door and pressed the light switch.

"Act I, Scene I. Cut! Lights!" he murmured. "See what I mean, Johnny?"

"Yes, sir." Nicholls nodded slowly. "At least, I think so."

"Mind you, my boy, it won't last. At least, not at that intensity." He grinned. "But maybe it'll take us the length of Murmansk. You never know."

"I hope so, sir. Thanks for the show." Nicholls reached up for his duffel-coat. "Well, I suppose I'd better make my way aft."

"Off you go, then. And, oh-Johnny------"

"Sir?"

"That scarlet-fever notice-board of yours. On your way aft you might consign it to the deep. I don't think we'll be needing it any more."

Nicholls grinned and closed the door softly behind him.

CHAPTER FOUR.

MONDAY NIGHT.

DUSK ACTION STATIONS dragged out its interminable hour and was gone. That night, as on a hundred other nights, it was just another nagging irritation, a pointless precaution that did not even justify its existence, far less its meticulous thoroughness. Or so it seemed. For although at dawn enemy attacks were routine, at sunset they were all but unknown. It was not always so with other ships, indeed it was rarely so, but then, the Ulysses was a lucky ship. Everyone knew that. Even Vallery knew it, but he also knew why. Vigilance was the first article of his sailor's creed.

Soon after the Captain's broadcast, radar had reported a contact, closing. That it was an enemy plane was certain: Commander Westcliffe, Senior Air Arm Officer, had before him in the Fighter Direction Room a wall map showing the operational routes of all Coastal and Ferry Command planes, and this was a clear area. But no one paid the slightest attention to the report, other than Tyndall's order for a 45 course alteration. This was as routine as dusk Action Stations themselves. It was their old friend Charlie coming to pay his respects again.

"Charlie", usually a four-engine Focke-Wulf Condor, was an inst.i.tution on the Russian Convoys. He had become to the seamen on the Murmansk run very much what the albatross had been the previous century to sailing men, far south in the Roaring Forties: a bird of ill-omen, half feared but almost amicably accepted, and immune from destruction, though with Charlie, for a different reason. In the early days, before the advent of cam-ships and escort carriers, Charlie frequently spent the entire day, from first light to last, circling a convoy and radioing to base pin-point reports of its position. 'Exchanges of signals between British ships and German' reconnaissance planes were not unknown, and apocryphal stories were legion. An exchange of pleasantries about the weather was almost commonplace. On several occasions Charlie had plaintively asked for his position and been given highly-detailed lat.i.tude and longitude bearings which usually placed him somewhere in the South Pacific; and, of course, dozen ships claimed the authorship of the story wherein the convoy Commodore sent the signal,"

Please fly the other way a round. You are making us dizzy," and Charlie had courteously acknowledged and turned in his tracks.

Latterly, however, amiability had been markedly absent, and Charlie, grown circ.u.mspect with the pa.s.sing of the months and the appearance of ship-borne fighters, rarely appeared except at dusk. His usual practice was to make a single circle of the convoy at a prudent distance and then disappear into the darkness.

That night was no exception. Men caught only fleeting glimpses of the Condor in the driving snow, then quickly lost it in the gathering gloom.

Charlie would report the strength, nature and course of the Squadron, although Tyndall had; little hope that the German Intelligence would be deceived as to their course. A naval squadron, near the sixty-second degree of lat.i.tude, just east of the Faroes, and heading NNE., Cam-ships were merchant ships with specially strengthened fo'c'sles.

On these were fitted fore-and-aft angled ramps from which fighter planes, such as modified Hurricanes, were catapulted for convoy defence. After breaking off action, the pilot had either to bale out or land in the sea. "Hazardous" is rather an inadequate word to describe the duties of this handful of very gallant pilots: the chances of survival were not high.

It wouldn't make sense to use them, especially as they almost certainly knew of the departure of the convoy from Halifax. Two and two, far too obviously totted up to four.

No attempt was made to fly off Seafires-the only plane with a chance to overhaul the Condor before it disappeared into the night. To locate the carrier again in almost total darkness, even on a radio beam, was difficult: to land at night, extremely dangerous; and to land, by guess and by G.o.d, in the snow and blackness on a pitching, heaving deck, a suicidal impossibility. The least miscalculation, the slightest error of judgment and you had not only a lost plane but a drowned pilot. A ditched Seafire, with its slender, torpedo-shaped fuselage and the tremendous weight of the great Rolls-Royce Merlin in its nose, was a literal death-trap. When it went down into the sea, it just kept on going.

Back on to course again, the Ulysses pushed blindly into the gathering storm. Hands fell out from Action Stations, and resumed normal Defence Stations-watch and watch, four on, four off. Not a killing routine, one would think: twelve hours on, twelve hours off a day-a man could stand that. And so he could, were that all. But the crew also spent three hours a day at routine Action Stations, every second morning-the forenoon watch-at work (this when they were off-watch) and G.o.d only knew how many hours at Action Stations. Beyond all this, all meals-when there were meals, were eaten in their off-duty time. A total of three to four hours' sleep a day was reckoned unusual: forty-eight hours without sleep hardly called for comment.

Step by step, fraction by menacing fraction, mercury and barograph crept down in a deadly dualism. The waves were higher now, their troughs deeper, their shoulders steeper, and the bone chilling wind lashed the snow into a blinding curtain. A bad night, a sleepless night, both above deck and below, on watch and off.

On the bridge, the First Lieutenant, the Kapok Kid, signalmen, the Searchlight L.T.O., look-outs and messengers peered out miserably into the white night and wondered what it would be like to be warm again.

Jerseys, coats, overcoats, duffels, oilskins, scarves, balaclavas, helmets-they wore them all, completely m.u.f.fled except for a narrow eye-slit in the woollen coc.o.o.n, and still they shivered. They wrapped arms and forearms round, and rested their feet on the steam pipes which circled the bridge, and froze. Pom-pom crews huddled miserably in the shelter of their multiple guns, stamped their feet, swung their arms and swore incessantly. And the lonely Oerlikon gunners, each jammed in his lonely c.o.c.kpit, leaned against the built-in "black" heaters and fought off the Oerlikon gunner's most insidious enemy-sleep.

The starboard watch, in the mess-decks below, were little happier. There were no bunks for the crew of the Ulysses, only hammocks, and these were never slung except in harbour. There were good and sufficient reasons for this. Standards of hygiene on a naval warship are high, compared even to the average civilian home: the average matelot would never consider climbing into his hammock fully dressed-and no one in his senses would have dreamed of undressing on the Russian Convoys. Again, to an exhausted man, the prospect and the actual labour of slinging and then lashing a hammock were alike appalling. And the extra seconds it took to climb out of a hammock in an emergency could re-present the margin between life and death, while the very existence of a slung hammock was a danger to all, in that it impeded quick movement. And finally, as on that night of a heavy head sea, there could be no more uncomfortable place than a hammock slung fore and aft.

And so the crew slept where it could, fully clothed even to duffel coats and gloves. On tables and under tables, on narrow nine-inch stools, on the floor, in hammock racks, anywhere. The most popular place on the ship was on the warm steel deck-plates in the alleyway outside the galley, at night-time a weird and spectral tunnel, lit only by a garish red light. A popular sleeping billet, made doubly so by the fact that only a screen separated it from the upper-deck, a scant ten feet away. The fear of being trapped below decks in a sinking ship was always there, always in the back of men's minds.

Even below decks, it was bitterly cold. The hot-air systems operated efficiently only on 'B' and 'C' mess-decks, and even there the temperature barely cleared freezing point. Deckheads dripped constantly and the condensation on the bulkheads sent a thousand little rivulets to pool on the corticene floor. The atmosphere was dank and airless and terribly chill-the ideal breeding ground for the T.B., so feared by Surgeon-Commander Brooks. Such conditions, allied with the constant pitching of the ship and the sudden jarring vibrations which were beginning to develop every time the bows crashed down, made sleep almost impossible, at best a fitful, restless unease. Almost to a man, the crew slept, or tried to sleep, with heads pillowed on inflated lifebelts. Blown up, bent double then tied with tape, these lifebelts made very tolerable pillows. For this purpose, and for this alone, were these lifebelts employed, although standing orders stated explicitly that lifebelts were to be worn at all times during action and in known enemy waters. These orders were completely ignored, not least of all by those Divisional Officers whose duty it was to enforce them.

There was enough air trapped in the voluminous and bulky garments worn in these lat.i.tudes to keep a man afloat for at least three minutes. If he wasn't picked up in that time, he was dead anyway. It was shock that killed, the tremendous shock of a body at 96 F. being suddenly plunged into a liquid temperature some 70 lower, for in the Arctic waters, the sea temperature often falls below normal freezing point. Worse still, the sub-zero wind lanced like a thousand stilettos through the saturated clothing of a man who had been submerged in the sea, and the heart, faced with an almost instantaneous 100 change in body temperature, just stopped beating. But it was a quick death, men said, quick and kind and merciful.

At ten minutes to midnight the Commander and Marshall made their way to the bridge. Even at this late hour and in the wicked weather, the Commander was his usual self, imperturbable and cheerful, lean and piratical, a throw-back to the Elizabethan buccaneers, if ever there was one. He had an unflagging zest for life. The duffel hood, as always, lay over his shoulders, the braided peak of his cap was tilted at a magnificent angle. He groped for the handle of the bridge gate, pa.s.sed through, stood for a minute accustoming his eyes to the dark, located the First Lieutenant and thumped him resoundingly on the back.

"Well, watchman, and what of the night?" he boomed cheerfully.

"Bracing, yes, decidedly so. Situation completely out of control as usual, I suppose? Where are all our chickens this lovely evening?" He peered out into the snow, scanned the horizon briefly, then gave up.

"All gone to h.e.l.l and beyond, I suppose."

"Not too bad," Carrington grinned. An R.N.R. officer and an ex-Merchant Navy captain in whom Vallery reposed complete confidence, Lieutenant-Commander Carrington was normally a taciturn man, grave and unsmiling. But a particular bond lay between him and Turner, the professional bond of respect which two exceptional seamen have for each other. "We can see the carriers now and then. Anyway, Bowden and his backroom boys have "em all pinned to an inch. At least, that's what they say."