HMS Ulysses

CHAPTER ELEVEN FRIDAY EVENING

BENT ALMOST double, Captain Vallery clutched the handrail of the port ladder leading up to the fo'c'sle deck. Desperately, he tried to look out over the darkened water, but he could see nothing. A mist, a dark and swirling and roaring mist flecked with blood, a mist shot through with dazzling light swam before his eyes and he was blind. His breath came in great whoopings gasps that racked his tortured lungs: his lower ribs were clamped in giant pincers, pincers that were surely crushing him. That stumbling, lurching run from the forepeak, he dimly realised, had all but killed him. Close, too damn' close, he thought. I must be more careful In future....

Slowly his vision cleared, but the brilliant light remained. Heavens above, Vallery thought, a blind man could have seen all there was to see here. For there was nothing to be seen but the tenebrous silhouette, so faint as to be almost imagined, of a tanker deep, deep in the water-and a great column of flame, hundreds of feet in height, streaking upwards from the heart of the dense mushroom of smoke that obscured the bows of the torpedoed ship. Even at the distance of half a mile, the roaring of the flames was almost intolerable. Vallery watched appalled. Behind him he could hear Nicholls swearing, softly, bitterly, continuously.

Vallery felt Petersen's hand on his arm. "Does the Captain wish to go up to the bridge?"

"In a moment, Petersen, in a moment. Just hang on." His mind was functioning again, his eyes, conditioned by forty years' training, automatically sweeping the horizon. Funny, he thought, you can hardly see the tanker-the Vytura, it must be-she's shielded by that thick pall of smoke, probably; but the other ships in the convoy, white, ghost-like, sharply etched against the indigo blue of the sky, were bathed in that deadly glare. Even the stars had died.

He became aware that Nicholls was no longer swearing in repetitious monotony, that he was talking to him.

"A tanker, isn't it, sir? Hadn't we better take shelter? Remember what happened to that other one!"

"What one?" Vallery was hardly listening.

"The Cochella. A few days ago, I think it was. Good God, no! It was only this morning!"

"When tankers go up, they go up, Nicholls." Vallery seemed curiously far away. "If they just burn, they may last long enough. Tankers die hard, terribly hard, my boy: they live where any other ship would sink."

"But-but she must have a hole the size of a house in her side!"

Nicholls protested.

"No odds," Vallery replied. He seemed to be waiting, watching for something. "Tremendous reserve buoyancy in these ships. Maybe 27 sealed tanks, not to mention cofferdams, pump-rooms, engine-rooms... Never heard of the Nelson device for pumping compressed air into a tanker's oil tanks to give it buoyancy, to keep it afloat? Never heard of Captain Dudley Mason and the Ohiot Never heard of..." He broke off suddenly, and when he spoke again, the dreaming lethargy of the voice was gone.

"I thought so!" he exclaimed, his voice sharp with excitement. "I thought so! The Vytura's still under way, still under command! Good God, she must still be doing almost 15 knots! The bridge, quick!"

Vallery's feet left the deck, barely touched it again till Petersen set him down carefully on the duckboards in front of the startled Commander.

Vallery grinned faintly at Turner's astonishment, at the bushy eyebrows lifting over the dark, lean buccaneer's face, leaner, more recklessly chiselled than ever in the glare of the blazing tanker. If ever a man was born 400 years too late, Vallery thought inconsequentially ; but what a man to have around!

"It's all right, Commander." He laughed shortly. "Brooks thought I needed a Man Friday. That's Stoker Petersen. Over-enthusiastic, maybe a trifle apt to take orders too literally... But he was a Godsend to me tonight... But never mind me." He jerked his thumb towards the tanker, blazing even more whitely now, difficult to look at, almost, as the noonday sun. "How about him?"

"Makes a bloody fine lighthouse for any German ship or plane that happens to be looking for us," Turner growled. "Might as well send a signal to Trondheim giving our lat. and long."

"Exactly," Vallery nodded. "Besides setting up some beautiful targets for the sub that got the Vytura just now. A dangerous fellow, Commander. That was a brilliant piece of work-in almost total darkness, too."

"Probably a scuttle somebody forgot to shut. We haven't the ships to keep checking them all the time. And it wasn't so damned brilliant, at least not for him. The Viking's in contact right now, sitting over the top of him.... I sent her right away."

"Good man!" Vallery said warmly. He turned to look at the burning tanker, looked back at Turner, his face set. "She'll have to go, Commander."

Turner nodded slowly. "She'll have to go," he echoed.

"It is the Vytura, isn't it?"

"That's her. Same one that caught it this morning."

"Who's the master?"

"Haven't the foggiest," Turner confessed. "Number One, Pilot? Any idea where the sailing list is?"

"No, sir." The Kapok Kid was hesitant, oddly unsure of himself.

"Admiral had them, I know. Probably gone, now."

"What makes you think that?" Vallery asked sharply.

"Spicer, his pantry steward, was almost choked with smoke this afternoon, found him making a whacking great fire in his bath," the Kapok Kid said miserably. "Said he was burning vital documents that must not fall into enemy hands. Old newspapers, mostly, but I think the list must have been among them. It's nowhere else."

"Poor old..." Turner remembered just in time that he was speaking of the Admiral, broke off, shook bis head in compassionate wonder. "Shall I send a signal to Fletcher on the Cape Hatterasl"

"Never mind." Vallery was impatient. "There's no time. Bentley-to the master, Vytura:' Please abandon ship immediately : we are going to sink you.'"

Suddenly Vallery stumbled, caught hold of Turner's arm.

"Sorry," he apologised. "I'm afraid my legs are going. Gone, rather."

He smiled up wryly at the anxious faces. "No good pretending any longer, is there? Not when your legs start a mutiny on their own. Oh, dear God, I'm done!"

"And no bloody wonder!" Turner swore. "I wouldn't treat a mad dog the way you treat yourself! Come on, sir. Admiral's chair for you-now. If you don't, I'll get Petersen to you," he threatened, as Vallery made to protest. The protest died in a smile, and Vallery meekly allowed himself to be helped into a chair. He sighed deeply, relaxed into the God-sent support of the back and arms of the chair. He felt ghastly, powerless, his wasted body a wide sea of pain, and deadly cold; all these things, but also proud and grateful, Turner had never even suggested that he go below.

He heard the gate crash behind him, the murmur of voices, then Turner was at his side.

"The Master-at-Arms, sir. Did you send for him?"

"I certainly did." Vallery twisted in his chair, his face grim.

"Come"here, Hastings!"

The Master-at-Arms stood at attention before him. As always, his face was a mask, inscrutable, expressionless, almost inhuman in that fierce light.

"Listen carefully." Vallery had to raise his voice above the roar of the flames: the effort even to speak was exhausting. "I have no time to talk to you now. I will see you in the morning. Meantime, you will release Leading Seaman Ralston immediately. You will then hand over your duties, your papers and your keys to Regulating Petty Officer Perrat.

Twice, now, you have overstepped the limits of your authority: that is insolence, but it can be overlooked. But you have also kept a man locked in cells during Action Stations. The prisoner would have died like a rat in a trap. You are no longer Master-At-Arms of the Ulysses. That is all."

For a couple of seconds Hastings stood rigidly in shocked unbelieving silence, then the iron discipline snapped. He stepped forward, arms raised in appeal, the mask collapsed in contorted bewilderment.

"Relieved of my duties? Relieved of my duties! But, sir, you can't do that! You can't..."

His voice broke off in a gasp of pain as Turner's iron grip closed over his elbow.

"Don't say' can't' to the Captain," he whispered silkily in his ear.

"You heard him? Get off the bridge!"

The gate clicked behind him. Carrington said, conversationally : "Somebody's using his head aboard the Vytura, fitted a red filter to his Aldis. Couldn't see it otherwise."

Immediately the tension eased. All eyes were on the winking red light, a hundred feet aft of the flames, and even then barely distinguishable.

Suddenly it stopped.

"What does he say, Bentley?" Vallery asked quickly.

Bentley coughed apologetically. "Message reads:' Are you hell. Try it and I will ram you. Engine intact. We can make it.'"

Vallery closed his eyes for a moment. He was beginning to appreciate how old Giles must have felt. When he looked up again, he had made his decision.

"Signal: 'You are endangering entire convoy. Abandon ship at once. Repeat, at once.'" He turned to the Commander, his mouth bitter. "I take off my hat to him. How would you like to sit on top of enough fuel to blow you to Kingdom Come... Must be oil in some of his tanks... God, how I hate to have to threaten a man like that!"

"I know, sir," Turner murmured. "I know how it is.... Wonder what the Viking's doing out there? Should be hearing from her now?"

"Send a signal," Vallery ordered. "Ask for information." He peered aft, searched briefly for the Torpedo Lieutenant. "Where's Marshall?"

"Marshall?" Turner was surprised. "In the Sick Bay, of course. Still on the injured list, remember-four ribs gone?"

"Of course, of course!" Vallery shook his head tiredly, angry with himself. "And the Chief Torpedo Gunner's Mate-Noyes, isn't it?-he was killed yesterday in Number 3. How about Vickers?"

"He was in the F.D.R."

"In the F.D.R.," Vallery repeated slowly. He wondered why his heart didn't stop beating. He was long past the stage of chilled bone and coagulating blood. His whole body was a great block of ice... He had never known that such cold could exist. It was very strange, he thought, that he was no longer shivering...

"I'll do it myself, sir," Turner interrupted his wandering. "I'll take over the bridge Torpedo Control-used to be the worst Torps. officer on the China Station." He smiled faintly. "Perhaps the hand has not lost what little cunning it ever possessed!"

"Thank you." Vallery was grateful.. "You just do that."

"We'll have to take him from starboard," Turner reminded him. "Port control was smashed this morning-foremast didn't do it any good.... Ill go check the Dumaresq[2]... Good God!" His hand gripped Vallery's shoulder with a strength that made him wince. "It's the Admiral, sir! He's coming on the bridge!"

Incredulously, Vallery twisted round in his chair. Turner was right.

Tyndall was coming through the gate, heading purposefully towards him. In the deep shadow cast by the side of the bridge, he seemed disembodied. The bare head, sparsely covered with thin, straggling wisps of white, the grey, pitifully-shrunken face, the suddenly stooped shoulders, unaccountably thin under black oilskins, all these were thrown into harsh relief by the flames. Below, nothing was visible. Silently, Tyndall padded his way across the bridge, stood waiting at Vallery's side.

Slowly, leaning on Turner's ready arm, Vallery climbed down. Unsmiling, Tyndall looked at him, nodded gravely, hoisted himself into his seat. He picked up the binoculars from the ledge before him, slowly quartered the horizon.

It was Turner who noticed it first.

"Sir! You've no gloves on, sir I"

"What? What did you say?" Tyndall replaced the glasses, looked incredulously at his blood-stained, bandaged hands. "Ah! Do you know, I knew I had forgotten something. That's the second time. Thank you, Commander." He smiled courteously, picked up the binoculars again, resumed Hs quartering of the horizon. All at once Vallery felt another, deadlier chill pass through him, and it had nothing to do with the bitter chill of the Arctic night.

Turner hesitated helplessly for a second, then turned quickly to the Kapok Kid.

"Pilot! Haven't I seen gauntlets hanging in your chart-house?"

"Yes, sir. Right away!" The Kapok Kid hurried off the bridge.

Turner looked up at the Admiral again.

"Your head, sir-you've nothing on. Wouldn't you like a duffel coat, a hood, sir?"

"A hood?" Tyndall was amused. "What in the world for? I'm not cold.... If you'll excuse me, Commander?" He turned the binoculars full into the glare of the blazing Vytura. Turner looked at him again, looked at Vallery, hesitated, then walked aft.

Carpenter was on his way back with the gloves when the W.T. loudspeaker clicked on.

"W.T.-bridge. W.T.-bridge. Signal from Viking; 'Lost contact. Am continuing search."

"Lost contact!" Vallery exclaimed. Lost contact-the worst possible thing that could have happened! A U-boat out there, loose, unmarked, and the whole of FR77 lit up like a fairground. A fairground, he thought bitterly, clay pipes in a shooting gallery and with about as much chance of hitting back once contact had been lost. Any second now...

He wheeled round, clutched at the binnacle for support. He had forgotten how weak he was, how the tilting of the shattered bridge affected balance.

"Bentley! No reply from the Vytura yet?"

"No, sir," Bentley was as concerned as the Captain, as aware of the desperate need for speed. "Maybe his power's gone-no, no, no, there he is now, sir!"

"Captain, sir."

Vallery looked round. "Yes, Commander, what is it? Not more bad news, I hope?"

"'Fraid so, sir. Starboard tubes won't train-jammed solid."

"Won't train," Vallery snapped irritably. "That's nothing new, surely.

Ice, frozen snow. Chip it off, use boiling water, blowlamps, any old------"

"Sorry, sir." Turner shook his head regretfully. "Not that. Rack and turntable buckled. Must have been either the shell that got the bosun's store or Number 3 Low Power Room-immediately below. Anyway-kaput!"

"Very well, then!" Vallery was impatient. "It'll have to be the port tubes."

"No bridge control left, sir," Turner objected. "Unless we fire by local control?"

"No reason why not, is there?" Vallery demanded. "After all, that's what torpedo crews are trained for. Get on to the port tubes-I assume the communication line there is still intact-tell them to stand by."

"Yes, sir."

"And Turner?"

"Sir?"

"I'm sorry." He smiled crookedly. "As old Giles used to say of himself, I'm just a crusty old curmudgeon. Bear with me, will you?"

Turner grinned sympathetically, then sobered quickly. He jerked his head forward.

"How is he, sir?"

Vallery looked at the Commander for a long second, shook his head, almost imperceptibly. Turner nodded heavily and was gone.

"Well, Bentley? What does he say?"

"Bit confused, sir," Bentley apologised. "Couldn't get it all. Says he's going to leave the convoy, proceed on his own. Something like that, sir."

Proceed on his own! That was no solution, Vallery knew. He might still burn for hours, a dead give-away, even on a different course. But to proceed on his own! An unprotected crippled, blazing tanker-and a thousand miles to Murmansk, the worst thousand miles in all the world!

Vallery closed his eyes. He felt sick to his heart. A man like that, and a ship like that-and he had to destroy them both!

Suddenly Tyndall spoke.

"Port 30!" he ordered. His voice was loud, authoritative. Vallery stiffened in dismay. Port 30! They'd turn into the Vytura.

There was a couple of seconds' silence, then Carrington, Officer of the Watch, bent over the speaking-tube, repeated: "Port 30." Vallery started forward, stopped short as he saw Carrington gesturing at the speaking-tube. He'd stuffed a gauntlet down the mouthpiece.

"Midships!"

"Midships, sir!"

"Steady! Captain?"

"Sir?"

"That light hurts my eyes," Tyndall complained. "Can't we put that fire out?"

"We'll try, sir." Vallery walked across, spoke softly. "You look tired, sir. Wouldn't you like to go below?"

"What? Go below! Me!"

"Yes, sir. We'll send for you if we need you," he added persuasively.

Tyndall considered this for a moment, shook his head grimly.

"Won't do, Dick. Not fair to you..." His voice trailed away and he muttered something that sounded like' Admiral Tyndall," but Vallery couldn't be sure.

"Sir? I didn't catch------"

"Nothing!" Tyndall was very abrupt. He looked away towards the Vytura, exclaimed in sudden pain, flung up an arm to protect his eyes. Vallery, too, started back, eyes screwed up to shut out the sudden blinding flash of flame from the Vytura.

The explosion crashed in their ears almost simultaneously, the blast of the pressure wave sent them reeling. The Vytura had been torpedoed again, right aft, close to her engine-room, and was heavily on fire there. Only the bridge island, amidships, was miraculously free from smoke and flames. Even in the moment of shock, Vallery thought, "She must go now. She can't last much longer." But he knew he was deluding himself, trying to avoid the inevitable, the decision he must take. Tankers, as he'd told Nicholls, died hard, terribly hard. Poor old Giles, he thought unaccountably, poor old Giles.

He moved aft to the port gate. Turner was shouting angrily into the telephone.

"You'll damn' well do what you're told, do you hear? Get them out immediately! Yes, I said 'immediately'!"

Vallery touched his arm in surprise. "What's the matter, Commander?"

"Of all the bloody insolence I" Turner snorted. "Telling me what to do!"

"Who?"

"The L.T.O. on the tubes. Your friend Ralston!" said Turner wrathfully.

"Ralston! Of course!" Vallery remembered now. "He told me that was his night Action Stations. What's wrong?"

"What's wrong: Says he doesn't think he can do it. Doesn't like to, doesn't wish to do it, if you please. Blasted insubordination!" Turner fumed.

Vallery blinked at him. "Ralston, are you sure? But of course you are... I wonder... That boy's been through a very private hell, Turner.

Do you think------"

"I don't know what to think!" Turner lifted the phone again. "Tubes nine-oh? At last!... What? What did you say?... Why don't we...

Gunfire! Gunfire!" He hung up the receiver with a crash, swung round on Vallery.

"Asks me, pleads with me, for gunfire instead of torpedoes! He's mad, he must be! But mad or not, I'm going down there to knock some sense into that mutinous young devil!" Turner was angrier than Vallery had ever seen him. "Can you get Carrington to man this phone, sir?"

"Yes, yes, of course!" Vallery himself had caught up some of Turner's anger. "Whatever his sentiments, this is no time to express them!" he snapped. "Straighten him up... Maybe I've been too lenient, too easy, perhaps he thinks we're in his debt, at some psychological disadvantage, for the shabby treatment he's received... All right, all right, Commander!" Turner's mounting impatience was all too evident. "OS you go. Going in to attack in three or four minutes." He turned abruptly, passed in to the compass platform.

"Bentley!"

"Sir?"

"Last signal------"

"Better have a look, sir," Carrington interrupted. "He's slowing up."

Vallery stepped forward, peered over the windscreen. The Vytura, a roaring mass of flames was falling rapidly astern.

"Clearing the davits, sir!" the Kapok Kid reported excitedly. "I think-yes, yes, I can see the boat coming down!"

"Thank God for that!" Vallery whispered. He felt as though he had been granted a new lease of life. Head bowed, he clutched the screen with both hands-reaction had left him desperately weak. After a few seconds he looked up.

"W.T. code signal to Sirrus" he ordered quietly. "' Circle well astern. Pick up survivors from the Vytura's lifeboat.'"

He caught Carrington's quick look and shrugged. "It's a better than even risk, Number One, so to hell with Admiralty orders. God," he added with sudden bitterness, "wouldn't I love to see a boatload of the 'no-survivors-will-be-picked-up' Whitehall warriors drifting about in the Barents Sea!" He turned away, caught sight of Nicholls and Petersen.

"Still here, are you, Nicholls? Hadn't you better get below?"

"If you wish, sir." Nicholls hesitated, nodded forward towards Tyndall.

"I thought, perhaps------"

"Perhaps you're right, perhaps you're right." Vallery shook his head in weary perplexity. "We'll see. Just wait a bit, will you?" He raised his voice. "Pilot!"

"Sir?"

"Slow ahead both!"

"Slow ahead both, sir!"

Gradually, then more quickly, way fell off the Ulysses and she dropped slowly astern of the convoy. Soon, even the last ships in the lines were ahead of her, thrashing their way to the north-east. The snow was falling more thickly now, but still the ships were bathed in that savage glare, frighteningly vulnerable in their naked helplessness.

Seething with anger, Turner brought up short at the port torpedoes. The tubes were out, their evil, gaping mouths, high-lighted by the great flames, pointing out over the intermittent refulgence of the rolling swell. Ralston, perched high on the unprotected control position above the central tube, caught hi's eye at once.

"Ralston!" Turner's voice was harsh, imperious. "I want to speak to you!"

Ralston turned round quickly, rose, jumped on to the deck. He stood facing the Commander. They were of a height, their eyes on a level, Ralston's still, blue, troubled, Turner's dark and stormy with anger.

"What the hell's the matter with you, Ralston?" Turner ground out.

"Refusing to obey orders, is that it?"

"No, sir." Ralston's voice was quiet, curiously strained. "That's not true."

"Not true!" Turner's eyes were narrowed, his fury barely in check.

"Then what's all this bloody claptrap about not wanting to man the tubes? Are you thinking of emulating Stoker Riley? Or have you just taken leave of your senses, if any?"

Ralston said nothing.

The silence, a silence all too easily interpreted as dumb insolence, infuriated Turner. His powerful hands reached out, grasped Ralston's duffel coat. He pulled the rating towards him, thrust his face close to the other's.

"I asked a question, Ralston," he said softly. "I haven't had an answer. I'm waiting. What is all this?"

"Nothing, sir." Distress in his eyes, perhaps, but no fear. "I-I just don't want to, sir. I hate to do it-to send one of our own ships to the bottom!" The voice was pleading now, blurred with overtones of desperation: Turner was deaf to them. "Why does she have to go, sir I" he cried. "Why? Why? Why?"

"None of your bloody business-but as it so happens she's endangering the entire convoy!" Turner's face was still within inches of Ralston's.

"You've got a job to do, orders to obey. Just get up there and obey them! Go on!" he roared, as Ralston hesitated. "Get up there I He fairly spat the words out.

Ralston didn't move.

"There are other L.T.O.s, sir!" His arms lifted high in appeal, something in the voice cut through Turner's blind anger: he realised, almost with shock, that this boy was desperate. "Couldn't they------?"

"Let someone else do the dirty work, eh? That's what you mean, isn't it?" Turner was bitingly contemptuous. "Get them to do what you won't do yourself, you-you contemptible young bastard! Communications Number?

Give me your set. I'll take over from the bridge." He took the phone, watched Ralston climb slowly back up and sit hunched forward, head bent over the Dumaresq.

"Number One? Commander speaking. All set here. Captain there?"

"Yes, sir. I'll call him." Carrington put down the phone, walked through the gate.

"Captain, sir. Commander's on the------"

"Just a moment!" The upraised hand, the tenseness of the voice stopped him. "Have a look, No. I. What do you think?" Vallery pointed towards the Vytura, past the oil-skinned figure of the Admiral. Tyndall's head was sunk on his chest, and he was muttering incoherently to himself.

Carrington followed the pointing finger. The lifeboat, dimly visible through the thickening snow, had slipped her falls while the Vytura was still under way. Crammed with men, she was dropping quickly astern under the great twisting column of flame-dropping far too quickly astern as the First Lieutenant suddenly realised. He turned round, found Vallery's eyes, bleak and tired and old, on his own. Carrington nodded slowly.

"She's picking up, sir. Under way, under command... What are you going to do, sir?"

"God help me, I've no choice. Nothing from the Viking, nothing from the Sirrus, nothing from our Asdic-and that U-boat's still out there.... Tell Turner what's happened. Bentley!"

"Sir?"

"Signal the Vytura." The mouth, whitely compressed, belied the eyes-eyes dark and filled with pain. "' Abandon ship. Torpedoing you in three minutes. Last signal.' Port 20, Pilot!"

"Port 20 it is, sir."

The Vytura was breaking off tangentially, heading north. Slowly, the Ulysses came round, almost paralleling her course, now a little astern of her.

"Half-ahead, Pilot!"

"Half-ahead it is, sir."

"Pilot!"

"Sir?"

"What's Admiral Tyndall saying? Can you make it out?"

Carpenter bent forward, listened, shook his head. Little flurries of snow fell off his fur helmet.

"Sorry, sir. Can't make him out, too much noise from the Vytura... I think he's humming, sir."

"Oh, God!" Vallery bent his head, looked up again, slowly, painfully.

Even so slight an effort was labour intolerable.

He looked across to the Vytura, stiffened to attention. The red Aldis was winking again. He tried to read it, but it was too fast: or perhaps his eyes were just too old, or tired: or perhaps he just couldn't think any more... There was something weirdly hypnotic about that tiny crimson light flickering between these fantastic curtains of flame, curtains sweeping slowly, ominously together, majestic in their inevitability. And then the little red light had died, so unexpectedly, so abruptly, that Bentley's voice reached him before the realisation.

"Signal from the Vytura, sir."

Vallery tightened his grip on the binnacle. Bentley guessed the nod, rather than saw it.

"Message reads:' Why don't you------off. Nuts to the Senior Service. Tell him I send all my love.'" The voice died softly away, and there was only the roaring of the flames, the lost pinging of the Asdic.

"All my love." Vallery shook his head in silent wonderment. "All my love! He's crazy! He must be. 'All my love,' and I'm going to destroy him... Number One!"

"Sir?"

"Tell the Commander to stand by!"

Turner repeated the message from the bridge, turned to Ralston.

"Stand by, L.T.O.!" He looked out over the side, saw that the Vytura was slightly ahead now, that the Ulysses was still angling in on an interception course. "About two minutes now, I should say." He felt the vibration beneath his feet dying away, knew the Ulysses was slowing down. Any second now, and she'd start slewing away to starboard. The receiver crackled again in his ear, the sound barely audible above the roaring of the flames. He listened, looked up. "'X' and 'Y' only. Medium settings. Target 11 knots." He spoke into the phone. "How long?"

"How long, sir?" Carrington repeated.

"Ninety seconds," Vallery said huskily. "Pilot-starboard 10." He jumped, startled, as he heard the crash of falling binoculars, saw the Admiral slump forward, face and neck striking cruelly on the edge of the windscreen, the arms dangling loosely from the shoulders.

"Pilot!"

But the Kapok Kid was already there. He slipped an arm under Tyndall, took most of the dead weight off the biting edge of the screen.

"What's the matter, sir?" His voice was urgent, blurred with anxiety.

"What's wrong?"

Tyndall stirred slightly, his cheek lying along the edge of the screen.

"Cold, cold, cold," he intoned. The quavering tones were those of an old, a very old man.

"What? What did you say, sir?" the Kapok Kid begged.

"Cold. I'm cold. I'm terribly cold! My feet, my feet!" The old voice wandered away, and the body slipped into a corner of the bridge, the grey face upturned to the falling snow.

Intuition, an intuition amounting to a sudden sick certainty, sent the Kapok Kid plunging to his knees. Vallery heard the muffled exclamation, saw him straighten up and swing round, his face blank with horror.

"He's-he's got nothing on, sir," he said unsteadily. "He's barefoot!

They're frozen-frozen solid!"

"Barefoot?" Vallery repeated unbelievingly. "Barefoot! It's not possible!"

"And pyjamas, sir! That's all he's wearing!"

Vallery lurched forward, peeling off his gloves. He reached down, felt his stomach turn over in shocked nausea as his fingers closed on ice-chilled skin. Bare feet! And pyjamas! Bare feet-no wonder he'd padded so silently across the duckboards! Numbly, he remembered that the last temperature reading had shown 35ø of frost. And Tyndall, feet caked in frozen snow and slush, had been sitting there for almost five minutes!... He felt great hands under his armpits, felt himself rising effortlessly to his feet. Petersen. It could only be Petersen, of course. And Nicholls behind him.

"Leave this to me, sir. Right, Petersen, take him below." Nicholls's brisk, assured voice, the voice of a man competent in his own element, steadied Vallery, brought him back to the present, and the demands of the present, more surely than anything else could have done. He became aware of Carrington's clipped, measured voice, reeling off course, speed, directions, saw the Vytura 50ø off the port bow, dropping slowly, steadily aft. Even at that distance, the blast of heat was barely tolerable-what in the name of heaven was it like on the bridge of the Vytural "Set course, Number One," he called. "Local control."

"Set course, local control." Carrington might have been on a peace-time exercise in the Solent.

"Local control," Turner repeated. He hung up the set, looked round.

"You're on your own, Ralston," he said softly.

There was no reply. The crouched figure on the control position, immobile as graved stone, gave no sign that he had heard.

"Thirty seconds!" Turner said sharply. "All lined up?"

"Yes, sir." The figure stirred. "All lined up." Suddenly, he swung round, in desperate, final appeal. "For God's sake, sir! Is there no other-----"

"Twenty seconds!" Turner said viciously. "Do you want a thousand lives on your lily-livered conscience? And if you miss..."

Ralston swung slowly back. For a mere breath of time, his face was caught full in the harsh glare of the Vytura: with sudden shock, Turner saw that the eyes were masked with tears. Then he saw the lips move. "Don't worry, sir. I won't miss." The voice was quite toneless, heavy with nameless defeat.

Perplexed, now, rather than angry, and quite uncomprehending, Turner saw the left sleeve come up to brush the eyes, saw the right hand stretch forward, close round the grip of 'X' firing lever. Incongruously, there sprang to Turner's mind the famous line of Chaucer, "In goon the spears full sadly in arrest." In the closing of that hand there was the same heart-stopping decision, the same irrevocable finality.

Suddenly, so suddenly that Turner started in spite of himself, the hand jerked convulsively back. He heard the click of the tripping lever, the muffled roar in the explosion chamber, the hiss of compressed air, and the torpedo was gone, its evil sleekness gleaming fractionally in the light of the flames before it crashed below the surface of the sea. It was hardly gone before the tubes shuddered again and the second torpedo was on its way.

For five, ten seconds Turner stared out, fascinated, watching the arrowing wakes of bubbles vanish in the distance. A total of 1,500 Ibs. of Amatol in these warheads-God help the poor bastards aboard the Vytura... The deck 'speaker clicked on.

"Do you hear there? Do you hear there? Take cover immediately! Take cover immediately!" Turner stirred, tore his eyes away from the sea, looked up, saw that Ralston was still crouched in his seat.

"Come down out of there, you young fool!" he shouted. "Want to be riddled when the Vytura goes up? Do you hear me?"

Silence. No word, no movement, only the roaring of the flames.

"Ralston!"

"I'm all right, sir." Ralston's voice was muffled: he did not even trouble to turn his head.

Turner swore, leapt up on the tubes, dragged Ralston from hiis seat, pulled him down to the deck and into shelter. Ralston offered no resistance: he seemed sunk in a vast apathy, an uncaring indifference.

Both torpedoes struck home. The end was swift, curiously unspectacular.

Listeners-there were no watchers-on the Ulysses tensed themselves for the shattering detonation, but the detonation never came. Broken-backed and tired of fighting, the Vytura simply collapsed in on her stricken mid-ships, lay gradually, wearily over on her side and was gone.

Three minutes later, Turner opened the door of the Captain's shelter, pushed Ralston in before him.

"Here you are, sir," he said grimly. "Thought you might like to see what a conscientious objecter looks like!"

"I certainly do!" Vallery laid down the log-book, turned a cold eye on the torpedoman, looked him slowly up and down. "A fine job, Ralston, but it doesn't excuse your conduct. Just a minute, Commander."

He turned back to the Kapok Kid. "Yes, that seems all right, Pilot.

It'll make good reading for their lordships," he added bitterly. "The ones the Germans don't get, we finish off for them... Remember to signal the Hatteras in the morning, ask for the name of the master of the Vytura."

"He's dead... You needn't trouble yourself!" said Ralston bitterly, then staggered as the Commander's open hand smashed across his face.

Turner was breathing heavily, his eyes dark with anger.

"You insolent young devil!" he said softly. "That was just a little too much from you."

Ralston's hand came up slowly, fingering the reddening weal on his cheek.

"You misunderstand me, sir." There was no anger, the voice was a fading murmur, they had to strain to catch his words. "The master of the Vytura, I can tell you his name. It's Ralston. Captain Michael Ralston. He was my father."