H. M. S. Ulysses (20 page)

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 poop 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 muffled, 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 anticipation, turned to the Captain. The prospect of action always delighted Tyndall.

‘Something coming up from the SSW, Captain. Good God 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 hell 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 anticipation 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. ‘Estimates speed 24, repeat 24 knots.'

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

‘WT—bridge. WT—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 poop.' 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—' ‘Five miles,' the loudspeaker cut in. ‘Repeat, five miles. Course, speed, constant.'

‘Five miles,' Tyndall repeated in relief. Intangibles bothered him. ‘Time to trail our coats a little, Captain. We'll soon be in what Bowden reckons is his radar range. Due east, I think—it'll look as if we're covering the tail of the convoy and heading for the North Cape.'

‘Starboard 10,' Vallery ordered. The cruiser came gradually round, met, settled on her new course: engine revolutions were cut down till the
Ulysses
was cruising along at 26 knots.

One minute, five passed, then the loudspeaker blared again.

‘Radar—bridge. Constant distance, altering on interception course.'

‘Excellent! Really excellent!' The Admiral was almost purring. ‘We have him, gentlemen. He's missed the convoy . . . Commence firing by radar!'

Vallery reached for the Director handset.

‘Director? Ah, it's you, Courtney . . . good, good . . . you just do that.'

Vallery replaced the set, looked across at Tyndall.

‘Smart as a whip, that boy. He's had “X” and “Y” lined up, tracking for the past ten minutes. Just a matter of pressing a button, he says.'

‘Sounds uncommon like our friends here.' Tyndall jerked his head in the direction of the Kapok Kid, then looked up in surprise. ‘Courtney? Did you say “Courtney”? Where's Guns?'

‘In his cabin, as far as I know. Collapsed on the poop. Anyway, he's in no fit state to do his job . . . Thank God I'm not in that boy's shoes. I can imagine . . . '

The
Ulysses
shuddered, and the whip-like crash of ‘X' turret drowned Vallery's voice as the 5.25 shells screamed away into the twilight. Seconds later, the ship shook again as the guns of ‘Y' turret joined in. Thereafter the guns fired alternately, one shell at a time, every half-minute: there was no point in wasting ammunition when the fall of shot could not be observed; but it was probably the bare minimum necessary to infuriate the enemy and distract his attention from everything except the ship ahead.

The snow had thinned away now to a filmy curtain of gauze that blurred, rather than obscured the horizon. To the west, the clouds were lifting, the sky lightening in sunset. Vallery ordered ‘X' turret to cease fire, to load with star-shell.

Abruptly, the snow was gone and the enemy was there, big and menacing, a black featureless silhouette with the sudden flush of sunset striking incongruous golden gleams from the water creaming high at her bows.

‘Starboard 30!' Vallery snapped. ‘Full ahead. Smokescreen!' Tyndall nodded compliance. It was no part of his plan to become embroiled with a German heavy cruiser or pocket battleship . . . especially at an almost point-blank range of four miles.

On the bridge, half a dozen pairs of binoculars peered aft, trying to identify the enemy. But the fore-and-aft silhouette against the reddening sky was difficult to analyse, exasperatingly vague and ambiguous. Suddenly, as they watched, white gouts of flame lanced out from the heart of the silhouette: simultaneously, the starshell burst high up in the air, directly above the enemy, bathing him in an intense, merciless white glare, so that he appeared strangely naked and defenceless.

An illusory appearance. Everyone ducked low, in reflex instinct, as the shells whistled just over their heads and plunged into the sea ahead. Everyone, that is, except the Kapok Kid. He bent an impassive eye on the Admiral as the latter slowly straightened up.

‘Hipper Class, sir,' he announced. ‘10,000 tons, 8-inch guns, carries aircraft.'

Tyndall looked at his unsmiling face in long suspicion. He cast around in his mind for a suitably crushing reply, caught sight of the German cruiser's turrets belching smoke in the sinking glare of the starshell.

‘My oath!' he exclaimed. ‘Not wasting much time, are they? And damned good shooting!' he added in professional admiration as the shells hissed into the sea through the
Ulysses's
boiling wake, about 150 feet astern. ‘Bracketed in the first two salvoes. They'll straddle us next time.'

The
Ulysses
was still heeling round, the black smoke beginning to pour from the after funnel, when Vallery straightened, clapped his binoculars to his eyes. Heavy clouds of smoke were mushrooming from the enemy's starboard deck, just for'ard of the bridge.

‘Oh, well done, young Courtney!' he burst out. ‘Well done indeed!'

‘Well done indeed!' Tyndall echoed. ‘A beauty! Still, I don't think we'll stop to argue the point with me . . . Ah! Just in time, gentlemen! Gad, that was close!' The stern of the
Ulysses
, swinging round now almost to the north, disappeared from sight as a salvo crashed into the sea, dead astern, one of the shells exploding in a great eruption of water.

The next salvo—obviously the hit on the enemy cruiser hadn't affected her fire-power—fell a cable length's astern. The German was now firing blind. Engineer Commander Dodson was making smoke with a vengeance, the oily, black smoke flattening down on the surface of the sea, rolling, thick, impenetrable. Vallery doubled back on course, then headed east at high speed.

For the next two hours, in the dusk and darkness, they played cat and mouse with the ‘Hipper' class cruiser, firing occasionally, appearing briefly, tantalizingly, then disappearing behind a smokescreen, hardly needed now in the coming night. All the time, radar was their eyes and their ears and never played them false. Finally, satisfied that all danger to the convoy was gone, Tyndall laid a double screen in a great curving ‘U', and vanished to the southwest, firing a few final shells, not so much in token of farewell as to indicate direction of depature.

Ninety minutes later, at the end of a giant halfcircle to port, the
Ulysses
was sitting far to the north, while Bowden and his men tracked the progress of the enemy. He was reported as moving steadily east, then, just before contact was lost, as altering course to the south-east.

Tyndall climbed down from his chair, numbed and stiff. He stretched himself luxuriantly.

‘Not a bad night's work, Captain, not bad at all. What do you bet our friend spends the night circling to the south and east at high speed, hoping to come up ahead of the convoy in the morning?' Tyndall felt almost jubilant, in spite of his exhaustion. ‘And by that time FR77 should be 200 miles to the north of him . . . I suppose, Pilot, you have worked out intersection courses for rejoining the convoy at all speeds up to a hundred knots?'

‘I think we should be able to regain contact without much difficulty,' said the Kapok Kid politely.

‘It's when he is at his most modest,' Tyndall announced, ‘that he sickens me most . . . Heavens above, I'm froze to death . . . Oh, damn! Not more trouble, I hope?'

The communication rating behind the compass platform picked up the jangling phone, listened briefly.

‘For you, sir,' he said to Vallery. ‘The Surgeon Lieutenant.'

‘Just take the message, Chrysler.'

‘Sorry, sir. Insists on speaking to you himself.' Chrysler handed the receiver into the bridge. Vallery smothered an exclamation of annoyance, lifted the receiver to his ear.

‘Captain, here. Yes, what is it? . . . What? . . .
What
? Oh, God, no! . . . Why wasn't I told? . . . Oh, I see. Thank you, thank you.'

Vallery handed the receiver back, turned heavily to Tyndall. In the darkness, the Admiral felt, rather than saw the sudden weariness; the hunched defeat of the shoulders.

‘That was Nicholls.' Vallery's voice was flat, colourless. ‘Lieutenant Etherton shot himself in his cabin, five minutes ago.'

At four o'clock in the morning, in heavy snow, but in a calm sea, the
Ulysses
rejoined the convoy.

By mid-morning of that next day, a bare six hours later Admiral Tyndall had become an old weary man, haggard, haunted by remorse and bitter self-criticism, close, very close, to despair. Miraculously, in a matter of hours, the chubby cheeks had collapsed in shrunken flaccidity, draining blood had left the florid cheeks a parchment grey, the sunken eyes had dulled in blood and exhaustion. The extent and speed of the change wrought in that tough and jovial sailor, a sailor seemingly impervious to the most deadly vicissitudes of war, was incredible: incredible and disturbing in itself, but infinitely more so in its wholly demoralising effect on the men. To every arch there is but one keystone . . . or so any man must inevitably think.