HMS Ulysses

CHAPTER FIFTEEN SATURDAY EVENING II

MESSAGES WERE pouring in to the bridge now, messages from the merchant ships, messages of dismayed unbelief asking for confirmation of the Tirpitz breakout: from the Stirling, replying that the superstructure fire was now under control and that the engine room watertight bulkheads were holding; and one from Orr of the Sirrus, saying that his ship was making water to the capacity of the pumps, he had been in heavy collision with the sinking merchantman, that they had taken off forty-four survivors, that the Sirrus had already done her share and couldn't she go home? The signal had arrived after the Sirrus's receipt of the bad news. Turner grinned to himself: no inducement on earth, he knew, could have persuaded Orr to leave now.

The messages kept pouring in, by visual signal or W.T. There was no point in maintaining radio silence to outwit enemy monitor positions; the enemy knew Where they were to a mile. Nor was there any need to prohibit light signalling, not with the Stirling still burning furiously enough to illuminate the sea for a mile around. And so the messages kept on coming-messages of fear and dismay and anxiety. But, for Turner, the most disquieting message came neither by lamp nor by radio.

Fully quarter of an hour had elapsed since the end of the attack and the Ulysses was rearing and pitching through the head seas on her new course of 350ø, When the gate of the bridge crashed open and a panting, exhausted man stumbled on to the compass platform. Turner, back on the bridge again, peered closely at him in the red glare from the Stirling, recognised him as a stoker. His face was masked in sweat, the sweat already caking to ice in the intense cold. And in spite of that cold, he was hatless, coatless, clad only in a pair of thin dungarees. He was shivering violently, shivering from excitement and not because of the icy wind-he was oblivious to such things.

Turner seized him by the shoulder.

"What is it, man?" he demanded anxiously. The stoker was still too breathless to speak. "What's wrong? Quickly!"

"The T.S., sir!" The breathing was so quick, so agonised, that the words blurred into a gasping exhalation. "It's full of water!"

"The T.S.!" Turner was incredulous. "Flooded! When did this happen?"

"I'm not sure, sir." He was still gasping for breath. "But there was a bloody awful explosion, sir, just about amid------"

"I know! I know!" Turner interrupted impatiently. "Bomber carried away the for'ard funnel, exploded in the water, port side. But that was fifteen minutes ago, man! Fifteen minutes! Good God, they would have-----"

"T.S. switchboard's gone, sir." The stoker was beginning to recover, to huddle against the wind, but frantic at the Commander's deliberation and delay, he straightened up and grasped Turner's duffel without realising what he was doing. The note of urgency deepened still further. "All the power's gone, sir. And the hatch is jammed! The men can't get out!"'

"The hatch cover jammed!" Turner's eyes narrowed in concern. "What happened?" he rapped out. "Buckled?"

"The counter-weight's broken off, sir. It's on top of the hatch. We can only get it open an inch. You see, sir------"

"Number One!" Turner shouted.

"Here, sir." Carrington was standing just behind him. "I heard... Why can't you open it?"

"It's the T.S. hatch!" the stoker cried desperately. "A quarter of a bloody ton if it's an ounce, sir. You know, the one below the ladder outside the wheelhouse. Only two men can get at it at the same time. We've tried... Hurry, sir. Please."

"Just a minute." Carrrington was calm, unruffled, infuriatingly so.

"Hartley? No, still fire-fighting. Evans, Macintosh, dead." He was obviously thinking aloud. "Bellamy, perhaps?"

"What is it, Number One?" Turner burst out. He himself had caught up the anxiety, the impatience of the stoker. "What are you trying------?"

"hatch cover plus pulley, 1,000 Ibs.," Carrington murmured. "A special man for a special job."

"Petersen, sir!" The stoker had understood immediately. "Petersen!"

"Of course!" Carrington clapped gloved hands together. "We're on our way, sir. Acetylene? No time! Stoker, crow bars, sledges... Perhaps if you would ring the engine-room, sir?"

But Turner already had the phone in his hand.

Aft on the poop deck, the fire was under control, all but in a few odd corners where the flames were fed by a fierce through draught. In the mess decks, bulkheads, ladders, mess partitions, lockers had been twisted and buckled into strange shapes by the intense heat: on deck, the gasoline fed flames, incinerating the two and three quarter inch deck plating and melting the caulking as by some gigantic blow-torch, had cleanly stripped all covering and exposed the steel deck plates, plates dull red and glowing evilly, plates that hissed and spat as heavy snowflakes drifted down to sibilant extinction.

On and below decks, Hartley and his crews, freezing one moment, reeling in the blast of heat the next, toiled like men insane. Where their wasted, exhausted bodies found the strength God only knew. From the turrets, from the Master-At-Arms's office, from mess decks and emergency steering position, they pulled out man after man who had been there when the Condor had crashed: pulled them out, looked at them, swore, wept and plunged back into the aftermath of that holocaust, oblivious of pain and danger, tearing aside wreckage, wreckage still burning, still red hot, with charred and broken gloves: and when the gloves fell off, they used their naked hands.

As the dead were ranged in the starboard alleyway, Leading Seaman Doyle was waiting for them. Less than half an hour previously, Doyle had been in the for'ard galley passage, rolling in silent agony as frozen body and clothes thawed out after the drenching of his pom-pom. Five minutes later, he had been back on his gun, rock like, unflinching, as he pumped shell after shell over open sights into the torpedo bombers. And now, steady and enduring as ever, he was on the poop. A man of iron, and a face of iron, too, that night, the bearded leonine head still and impassive as he picked up one dead man after the other, walked to the guard rail and dropped his burden gently over the side. How many times he repeated that brief journey that night, Doyle never knew: he had lost count after the first twenty or so. He had no right to do this, of course: the navy was very strong on decent burial, and this was not decent burial. But the sailmakers were dead and no man would or could have sewn up these ghastly charred heaps in the weighted and sheeted canvas. The dead don't care, Doyle thought dispassionately, let them look after themselves. So, too, thought Carrington and Hartley, and they made no move to stop him.

Beneath their feet, the smouldering mess decks rang with hollow reverberating clangs as Nicholls and Leading Telegraphist Brown, still weirdly garbed in their white asbestos suits, swung heavy sledges against the securing clips of 'Y' magazine hatch. In the smoke and gloom and their desperate haste, they could hardly see each other, much less the clips: as often as not they missed their strokes and the hammers went spinning out of numbed hands into the waiting darkness.

Time yet, Nicholls thought desperately, perhaps there is time. The main flooding valve had been turned off five minutes ago: it was possible, barely possible, that the two trapped men inside were clinging to the ladder, above water level.

One clip, one clip only was holding the hatch cover now. With alternate strokes of their sledges, they struck it with vicious strength.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, it sheared off at fts base and the hatch cover crashed open under the explosive upsurge of the compressed air beneath.

Brown screamed in agony, a single coughing shout of pain, as the bone crashing momentum of the swinging hatch crashed into his right hip, then fell to the deck where he lay moaning quietly.

Nicholls did not even spare 'him a glance He leant far through the hatch, the powerful beam of his torch stabbing downwards into the gloom.

And he could see nothing, nothing at all, not what he wanted to see. All he saw was the water, dark and viscous and evil, water rising and falling, water flooding and ebbing in the eerie oilbound silence as the Ulysses plunged and lifted in the heavy seas.

"Below!" Nicholls called loudly. The voice, a voice, he noted impersonally, cracked and shaken with strain, boomed and echoed terrifyingly down the iron tunnel. "Below!" he shouted again. "Is there anybody there?" He strained his ears for the least sound, for the faintest whisper of an answer, but none came.

"McQuater!" He shouted a third time. "Williamson! Can you hear me?"

Again he looked, again he listened, but there was only the darkness and the muffled whisper of "the oil-slicked water swishing smoothly from side to side. He stared again down the light from the torch, marvelled that any surface could so quickly dissipate and engulf the brilliance of that beam. And beneath that surface... He shivered. The water, even the water seemed to be dead, old and evil and infinitely horrible. In sudden anger, he shook his head to clear it of these stupid, primitive fears: his imagination, he'd have to watch it. He stepped back, straightened up. Gently, carefully, he closed the swinging hatch. The mess deck echoed as his sledge swung down on the clips, again and again and again.

Engineer-Commander Dodson stirred and moaned. He struggled to open his eyes but his eyelids refused to function. At least, he thought that they did for the blackness around remained as it was, absolute, impenetrable, almost palpable.

He wondered dully what had happened, how long he had been there, what had happened. And the side of his head just below the ear that hurt abominably. Slowly, with clumsy deliberation, he peeled oflf his glove, reached up an exploratory hand. It came away wet and sticky: his hair, he realised with mild surprise, was thickly matted with blood. It must be blood he could feel it trickling slowly, heavily down the side of his cheek.

And that deep, powerful vibration, a vibration overlain with an indefinable note of strain that set his engineer's teeth on edge, he could hear it, almost feel it, immediately in front of him. His bare hand reached out, recoiled in instant reflex as it touched something smooth and revolving, and burning hot.

The shaft tunnel! Of course. That's where he was, the shaft tunnel.

They'd discovered fractured lubricating pipes on the port shafts too, and he'd decided to keep this engine turning. He knew they'd been attacked. Down here in the hidden bowels of the ship, sound did not penetrate: he had heard nothing of the aircraft engines: he hadn't even heard their own guns firing, but there had been no mistaking the jarring shock of the 5.25s surging back on their hydraulic recoils. And then, a torpedo perhaps, or a near miss by a bomb. Thank God he'd been sitting facing inboard when the Ulysses had lurched. The other way round and it would have been curtains for sure when he'd been flung across the shaft coupling and wrapped round...

The shaft! Dear God, the shaft! It was running almost red hot on dry bearings! Frantically, he pawed around, picked up his emergency lamp and twisted its base. There was no light. He twisted it again with all his strength, reached up, felt the jagged edges of broken screen and bulb, and flung the useless lamp to the deck. He dragged out his pocket torch: that, too, was smashed. Desperate now, he searched blindly around for his oil can: it was lying on its side, the patent spring top beside it.

The can was empty.

No oil, none. Heaven only knew how near that over-stressed metal was to the critical limit. He didn't. He admitted that: even to the best engineers, metal fatigue was an incalculable unknown. But, like all men who had spent a lifetime with machines, he had developed a sixth sense for these things, and, right now, that sixth sense was jabbing at him, mercilessly, insistently. Oil, he would have to get oil. But he knew he was in bad shape, dizzy, weak from shock and loss of blood, and the tunnel was long and slippery and dangerous, and unlighted. One slip, one stumble against or over that merciless shaft... Gingerly, the Engineer-Commander stretched out his hand again, rested his hand for an instant on the shaft, drew back sharply in sudden pain. He lifted his hand to his cheek, knew that it was not friction that had flayed and burnt the skin off the tips of his fingers. There was no choice.

Resolutely, he gathered his legs under him, swayed dizzily to his feet, his back bent against the arching convexity of the tunnel.

It was then that he noticed it for the first tune, a light, a swinging tiny pinpoint of light, imponderably distant in the converging sides of that dark tunnel, although he knew it could be only yards away. He blinked, closed his eyes and looked again. The light was still there, advancing steadily, and he could hear the shuffling of feet now. All at once he felt weak, light-headed: gratefully he sank down again, his feet safely braced once more against the bearing block.

The man with the light stopped a couple of feet away, hooked the lamp on to an inspection bracket, lowered himself carefully and sat beside Dodson. The rays of the lamp fell full on the dark heavy face, the jagged brows and prognathous jaw: Dodson stiffened in sudden surprise.

"Riley! Stoker Riley!" His eyes narrowed in suspicion and conjecture.

"What the devil are you doing here?"

"I've brought a two gallon drum of lubricating oil," Riley growled. He thrust a Thermos flask into the Engineer-Commander's hands. "And here's some coffee. I'll 'tend to this, you drink that... Suffering Christ! This bloody bearing's red hot!"

Dodson set down the Thermos with a thump.

"Are you deaf?" he asked harshly. "Why are you here? Who sent you?

Your station's in 'B' boiler room!"

"Grierson sent me," Riley said roughly. His dark face was impassive.

"Said he couldn't spare his engine room men, too bloody valuable... Too much?" The oil, thick, viscous, was pouring slowly on to the overheated bearing.

"Lieutenant Grierson!" Dodson was almost vicious, his voice a whiplash of icy correction. "And that's a damned lie, Riley! Lieutenant Grierson never sent you: I suppose you told him that somebody else had sent you?"

"Drink your coffee," Riley advised sourly. "You're wanted in the engine-room."

The Engineer-Commander clenched his fist, restrained himself with difficulty.

"You damned insolent bastard!" he burst out. Abruptly, control came back and he said evenly: "Commander's Defaulters in the morning. You'll pay for this, Riley!"

"No, I won't." Confound him, Dodson thought furiously, he's actually grinning, the insolent...

He checked his thought.

"Why not?" he demanded dangerously.

"Because you won't report me." Riley seemed to be enjoying himself hugely.

"Oh, so that's it!" Dodson glanced swiftly round the darkened tunnel, and his lips tightened as he realised for the first time how completely alone they were: in sudden certainty he looked back at Riley, big and hunched and menacing. Smiling yet, but no smile, Dodson thought, could ever transform that ugly brutal face. The smile on the face of the tiger... Fear, exhaustion, never, ending strain, they did terrible things to a man and you couldn't blame him for what he had become, or for what he was born... But his, Dodson's, first responsibility was to himself. Grimly, he remembered how Turner had berated him, called him all sorts of a fool for refusing to have Riley sent to prison.

"So that's it, eh?" he repeated softly. He turned himself, feet thrusting solidly against the block. "Don't be so sure, Riley. I can give you twenty five years, but------"

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Riley burst out impatiently. "What are you talking about, sir? Drink your coffee, please, You're wanted in the engine-room, I tell you!" he repeated impatiently.

Uncertainly, Dodson relaxed, unscrewed the cap of the Thermos. He had a sudden, peculiar feeling of unreality, as if he were a spectator, some bystander in no way involved in this scene, this fantastic scene. His head, he realised, still hurt like hell.

"Tell me, Riley," he asked softly, "what makes you so sure I won't report you?"

"Oh, you can report me all right." Riley was suddenly cheerful again.

"But I won't be at the Commander's table tomorrow morning."

"No?" It was half-challenge, half-question.

"No," Riley grinned. "'Cos there'll be no Commander and no table tomorrow morning." He clasped his hands luxuriously behind his head.

"In fact, there'll be no nothin'."

Something in the voice, rather than in the words, caught and held Dodson's attention. He knew, with instant conviction, that though Riley might be smiling, he wasn't joking. Dodson looked at him curiously, but said nothing.

"Commander's just finished broadcastin'," Riley continued. "The Tirpitz is out, we have four hours left."

The bald, flat statement, the complete lack of histrionics, of playing for effect, left no possible room for doubt. The Tirpitz out. The Tirpitz out. Dodson repeated the phrase to himself, over and over again. Four hours, just four hours to go.... He was surprised at his own reaction, his apparent lack of concern.

"Well?" Riley was anxious now, restive. "Are you goin' or aren't you? I'm not kiddin', sir, you're wanted urgent!"

"You're a liar," Dodson said pleasantly. "Why did you bring the coffee?"

"For myself." The smile was gone, the face set and sullen. "But I thought you needed it, you don't look so good to me... They'll fix you up back in the engine-room."

"And that's just where you're going, right nowl" Dodson said evenly.

Riley gave no sign that he had heard.

"On your way, Riley," Dodson said curtly. "That's an order!"

"-----, off!" Riley growled. "I'm stayin'. You don't require to have three -----, great gold stripes on your sleeve to handle a bloody oil can," he finished derisively.

"Possibly not." Dodson braced against a sudden, violent pitch, but too late to prevent himself lurching into Riley. "Sorry, Riley. Weather's worsening, I'm afraid. Well, we, ah-appear to have reached an impasse."

"What's that?" Riley asked suspiciously.

"A dead end. A no-decision fight... Tell me, Riley," he asked quietly. "What brought you here?"

"I told you!" Riley was aggrieved. "Grierson, Lieutenant Grierson sent me."

"What brought you here?" Dodson persisted. It was as if Riley had not spoken.

"That's my -----, business!" Riley answered savagely.

"'What brought you here?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake leave me alone!" Riley shouted. His voice echoed loudly along the dark tunnel. Suddenly he turned round full face, his mouth twisted bitterly. "You know bloody well why I came."

"To do me in, perhaps?"

Riley looked at him a long second, then turned away. His shoulders were hunched, his head held low.

"You're the only bastard in this ship that ever gave me a break," he muttered. "The only bastard I've ever known who ever gave me a chance," he amended slowly. "Bastard," Dodson supposed, was Riley's accolade of friendship, and he felt suddenly ashamed of his last remark.

"If it wasn't for you," Riley went on softly, "I'd 'a' been in cells the first time, in a civvy jail the second. Remember, sir?"

Dodson nodded. "You were rather foolish, Riley," he admitted.

"Why did you do it?" The big stoker was intense, worried. "God, everyone knows What I'm like------"

"Do they? I wonder... I thought you had the makings of a better man than you ------"

"Don't give me that bull!" Riley scoffed. " know what I'm like. I know what I am. I'm no -----, good! Everybody says I'm no -----, good! And they're right..." He leaned forward. "Do you know somethin'? I'm a Catholic. Four hours from now..." He broke off. "I should be on my knees, shouldn't I?" he sneered.

"Repentance, lookin' for, what do they call it?"

"Absolution?"

"Aye. That's it. Absolution. And do you know what?" He spoke slowly, emphatically. "I don't give a single, solitary damn!"

"Maybe you don't have to," Dodson murmured. "For the last time, get back to that engine-room!"

"No!"

The Engineer-Commander sighed, picked up the Thermos.

"In that case, perhaps you would care to join me in a cup of coffee?"

Riley looked up, grinned, and when he spoke it was in a very creditable imitation of Colonel Chinstrap of the famous ITMA radio programme.

"Ectually, I don't mind if I do!"

Vallery rolled over on his side, his legs doubled up, his hand automatically reaching for the towel. His emaciated body shook violently, and the sound of the harsh, retching cough beat back at him from the iron walls of his shelter. God, he thought, oh, God, it's never been as bad as this before. Funny, he thought, it doesn't hurt any more, not even a little bit. The attack eased. He looked at the crimson, sodden towel, flung it in sudden disgust and with what little feeble strength was left him into the darkest corner of the shelter.

"You carry this damned ship on your back!" Unbidden, old Socrates's phrase came into his mind and he smiled faintly. Well, if ever they needed him, it was now. And if he waited any longer, he knew he could never be able to go.

He sat up, sweating with the effort, swung his legs carefully over the side. As his feet touched the deck, the Ulysses pitched suddenly, steeply, and he fell forward against a chair, sliding helplessly to the floor. It took an eternity of time, an infinite effort to drag himself to his feet again: another effort like that, he knew, would surely kill him.

And then there was the door, that heavy, steel door. Somehow he had to open it, and he knew he couldn't. But he laid hold of the handle and the door opened, and suddenly, miraculously, he was outside, gasping as the cruel, sub-zero wind seared down through his throat and wasted lungs.

He looked fore and aft. The fires were dying, he saw, the fires on the Stirling and on his own poop-deck. Thank God for that at least. Beside him, two men had just finished levering the door off the Asdic cabinet, were flashing a torch inside. But he couldn't bear to look: he averted his head, staggered with outstretched hands for the gate of the compass platform.

Turner saw him coming, hurried to meet him, helped him slowly to his chair.

"You've no right to be here," he said quietly. He looked at Vallery for a long moment. "How are you feeling, sir?"

"I'm a good deal better, now, thanks," Vallery replied. He smiled and went on: "We Rear-Admirals have our responsibilities, you know, Commander: it's time I began to earn my princely salary."

"Stand back, there!" Carrington ordered curtly. "Into the wheelhouse or up on the ladder, all of you. Let's have a look at this."

He looked down at the great, steel hatch cover. Looking at it, he realised he'd never before appreciated just how solid, how massive that cover was. The hatch cover, open no more than an inch, was resting on a tommy-bar. He noticed the broken, stranded pulley, the heavy counterweight lying against the sill of the wheelhouse. So that's off, he thought: thank the Lord for that, anyway.

"Have you tried a block and tackle?" he asked abruptly.

"Yes, sir," the man nearest him replied. He pointed to a tangled heap in a corner. "No use, sir. The ladder takes the strain all right, but we can't get the hook under the hatch, except sideways, and then it slips off all the time." He gestured to the hatch. "And every clip's either bent, they were opened by sledges, or at the wrong angle.... I think I know how to use a block and tackle, sir."

"I'm sure you do," Carrington said absently. "Here, give me a hand, will you?"

He hooked his fingers under the hatch, took a deep breath. The seaman at one side of the cover, the other side was hard against the after bulkhead, did the same. Together they strained, thighs and backs quivering under the strain. Carrington felt his face turning crimson with effort, heard the blood pounding in his ears, and relaxed. They were only killing themselves and that damned cover hadn't shifted a fraction, someone had done remarkably well to open it even that far. But even though they were tired and anything but fit, Carrington thought, two men should have been able to raise an edge of that hatch. He suspected that the hinges were jammed, or the deck buckled. If that were so, he mused, even if they could hook on a tackle, it would be of little help. A tackle was of no use when a sudden, immediate application of force was required; it always yielded that fraction before tightening up.

He sank to his knees, put his mouth to the edge of the hatch.

"Below there!" he called. "Can you hear me?"

"We can hear you." The voice was weak, muffled. "For God's sake get us out of here. We're trapped like rats!". "Is that you, Brierley? Don't worry, we'll get you out. How's the water down there?"

"Water? More bloody oil than water! There must be a fracture right through the port oil tank. I think the ring main passage must be flooded, too."

"How deep is it?"

"Three quarters way up already! We're standing on generators, hanging on to switchboards. One of our boys is gone already, we couldn't hold him."

Even muffled by the hatch, the strain, the near desperation in the voice was all too obvious. "For pity's sake, hurry up!"

"I said we'd get you out!" Carrington's voice was sharp, authoritative.

The confidence was in his voice only, but he knew how quickly panic could spread down there. "Can you push from below at all?"

"There's room for only one on the ladder," Brierley shouted. "It's impossible to get any pressure, any leverage upwards." There was a sudden silence, then a series of muffled oaths.

"What's up?" Carrington called sharply.

"It's difficult to hang on," Brierley shouted. "There are waves two feet high down there. One of the men was washed off there.... I think he's back again. It's pitch dark down here."

Carrington heard the clatter of heavy footsteps above him, and straightened up. It was Petersen. In that narrow space, the blond Norwegian stoker looked gigantic. Carrington looked at him, looked at the immense span of shoulder, the great depth of chest, one enormous hand hanging loosely by his side, the other negligently holding three heavy crowbars and a sledge as if they were so many lengths of cane.

Carrington looked at him, looked at the still, grave eyes so startlingly blue under the flaxen hair, and all at once he felt oddly confident, reassured.

"We can't open this, Petersen," Carrington said baldly. "Can you?"

"I will try, sir." He laid down his tools, stooped, caught the end of the tommy-bar projecting beneath the corner of the cover. He straightened quickly, easily: the hatch lifted a fraction, then the bar, putty, like in its apparent malleability, bent over almost to a right angle.

"I think the hatch is jammed." Petersen wasn't even breathing heavily.

"It will be the hinges, sir."

He walked round the hatch, peered closely at the hinges, then grunted in satisfaction. Three times the heavy sledge, swung with accuracy and all the power of these great shoulders behind them, smashed squarely into the face of the outer hinge. On the third stroke the sledge snapped.

Petersen threw away the broken shaft in disgust, picked up another, much heavier crowbar.

Again the bar bent, but again the hatch cover lifted an inch this time.

Petersen picked up the two smaller sledges that had been used to open clips, hammered at the hinges till these sledges, too, were broken and useless.

This time he used the last two crowbars together, thrust under the same corner of the hatch. For five, ten seconds he remained bent over them, motionless. He was breathing deeply, quickly, now, then suddenly the breathing stopped. The sweat began to pour off his face, his whole body to quiver under the titanic strain: then slowly, incredibly, both crowbars began to bend.

Carrington watched, fascinated. He had never seen anything remotely like this before: he was sure no one else had either. Neither of these bars, he would have sworn, would have bent under less than half a ton of pressure. It was fantastic, but it was happening: and as the giant straightened, they were bending more and more. Then suddenly, so unexpectedly that everyone jumped, the hatch sprang open five or six inches and Petersen crashed backwards against the bulkhead, the bars falling from his hand and splashing into the water below.

Petersen flung himself back at the hatch, tigerish in his ferocity. His fingers hooked under the edge, the great muscles of his arms and shoulders lifted and locked as he tugged and pulled at that massive hatch cover. Three times he heaved, four times, then on the fifth the hatch almost literally leapt up with a screech of tortured metal and smashed shudderingly home into the retaining latch of the vertical stand behind. The hatch was open. Petersen just stood there smiling, no one had seen Petersen smile for a long time, his face bathed in sweat, his great chest rising and falling rapidly as his starved lungs sucked in great draughts of air.

The water level in the Low Power Room was within two feet of the hatch: sometimes, when the Ulysses plunged into a heavy sea, the dark, oily liquid splashed over the hatch coaming into the flat above. Quickly, the trapped men were hauled to safety. Soaked in oil from head to foot, their eyes gummed and blinded, they were men overcome by reaction, utterly spent and on the verge of collapse, so far gone that even their fear could not overcome their exhaustion. Three, in particular, could do no more than cling helplessly to the ladder, would almost certainly have slipped back into the surging blackness below; but Petersen bent over and plucked them clean out of the Low Power Room as if they had been little children.

"Take these men to the Sick Bay at once!" Carrington ordered. He watched the dripping, shivering men being helped up the ladder, then turned to the giant stoker with a smile. "We'll all thank you later, Petersen.

We're not finished yet. This hatch must be closed and battened down."

"It will be difficult, sir," Petersen said gravely.

"Difficult or not, it must be done." Carrington was emphatic.

Regularly, now, the water was spilling over the coaming, was lapping the sill of the wheelhouse. "The emergency steering position is gone: if the wheelhouse is flooded, we're finished."

Petersen said nothing. He lifted the retaining latch, pulled the protesting hatch cover down a foot. Then he braced his shoulder against the latter, planted his feet on the cover and straightened his back convulsively: the cover screeched down to 45ø. He paused, bent his back like a bow, his hands taking his weight on the ladder, then pounded his feet again and again on the edge of the cover. Fifteen inches to go.

"We need heavy hammers, sir," Petersen said urgently.

"No time!" Carrington shook his head quickly. "Two more minutes and it'll be impossible to shut the hatch cover against the water pressure. Hell!" he said bitterly. "If it were only the other way round, closing from below. Even I could lever it shut!"

Again Petersen said nothing. He squatted down by the side of the hatch, gazed into the darkness beneath his feet.

"I have an idea, sir," he said quickly. "If two of you would stand on the hatch, push against the ladder. Yes, sir, that way, but you could push harder if you turned your back to me."

Carrington laid the heels of his hands against the iron steps of the ladder, heaved with all his strength. Suddenly he heard a splash, then a metallic clatter, whirled round just in time to see a crowbar clutched in an enormous hand disappear below the edge of the hatch. There was no sign of Petersen. Like many big, powerful men, he was lithe and cat like in his movements: he'd gone down over the edge of that hatch without a sound.

"Petersen!" Carrington was on his knees by the hatch. "What the devil do you think you're doing? Come out of there, you bloody fool Do you want to drown?"

There was no reply. Complete silence below, a silence deepened by the gentle sussuration of the water. Suddenly the quiet was broken by the sound of metal striking against metal, then by a jarring screech as the hatch dropped six inches. Before Carrington had time to think, the hatch cover dropped farther still. Desperately, the First Lieutenant seized a crowbar, thrust it under the hatch cover: a split second later the great steel cover thudded down on top of it. Carrington had his mouth to the gap now.

"In the name of God, Petersen," he shouted, "Are you sane? Open up, open up at once, do you hear?"

"I can't." The voice came and went as the water surged over the stoker's head. "I won't. You said yourself... there is no time... this was the only way."

"But I never meant------"

"I know. It does not matter... it is better this way." It was almost impossible to make out what he was saying. "Tell Captain Vallery that Petersen says he is very sorry.... I tried to tell the Captain yesterday."

"Sorry I Sorry for what?" Madly Carrington flung all his strength against the iron bar: the hatch cover did not even quiver.

"The dead marine in Scapa Flow... I did not mean to kill him, I could never kill any man... But he angered me," the big Norwegian said simply. "He killed my friend."

For a second, Carrington stopped straining at the bar. Petersen! Of course, who but Petersen could have snapped a man's neck like that.

Petersen, the big, laughing Scandinavian, who had so suddenly changed overnight into a grave unsmiling giant, who stalked the deck, the mess decks and alleyways by day and by night, who was never seen to smile or sleep. With a sudden flash of insight, Carrington saw clear through into the tortured mind of that kind and simple man.

"Listen, Petersen," he begged. "I don't give a damn about that. Nobody shall ever know, I promise you. Please, Petersen, just------"

"It is better this way." The muffled voice was strangely content.

"It is not good to kill a man... it is not good to go on living.... I know... Please, it is important, you will tell my Captain Petersen is sorry and filled with shame... I do this for my Captain." Without warning, the crowbar was plucked from Carrington's hand. The cover clanged down in position. For a minute the wheelhouse flat rang to a succession of muffled, metallic blows. Suddenly the clamour ceased and there was only the rippling surge of the water outside the wheelhouse and the creak of the wheel inside as the Ulysses steadied on course.

The clear sweet voice soared high and true above the subdued roar of the engine-room fans, above the whine of a hundred electric motors and the sound of the rushing of the waters. Not even the metallic impersonality of the loudspeakers could detract from the beauty of that singing voice.... It was a favourite device of Vallery's when the need for silence was not paramount, to pass the long, dark hours by coupling up the record player to the broadcast system.

Almost invariably, the musical repertoire was strictly classical, or what is more often referred to, foolishly and disparagingly, as the popular classics. Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovski, Lehar, Verdi, Delius, these were the favourites.

"No. in B flat minor," "Air on a G string,"

"Moonlight on the Alster," "Claire de Lune," "The Skater's Waltz", the crew of the Ulysses could never have enough of these. "Ridiculous," "impossible", it is all too easy to imagine the comments of those who equate the matelot's taste in music with the popular conception of his ethics and morals; but those same people have never heard the hushed, cathedral silence in the crowded hangar of a great aircraft carrier in Scapa Flow as Yehudi Menuhin's magic bow sang across the strings of the violin, swept a thousand men away from the harsh urgencies of reality, from the bitter memories of the last patrol or convoy, into the golden land of music.

But now a girl was singing. It was Deanna Durbin, and she was singing

"Beneath the Lights of Home," that most heartbreakingly nostalgic of all songs. Below decks and above, bent over the great engines or huddled by their guns, men listened to the lovely voice as it drifted through the darkened ship and the falling snow, and turned their minds inwards and thought of home, thought of the bitter contrast and the morning that would not come. Suddenly, half-way through, the song stopped.

"Do you hear there?" the 'speakers boomed. "Do you hear there? This, this is the Commander speaking." The voice was deep and grave and hesitant: it caught and held the attention of every man in the ship.

"I have bad news for you." Turner spoke slowly, quietly. "I am sorry, I..." He broke off, then went on more slowly still. "Captain Vallery died five minutes ago." For a moment the 'speaker was silent, then crackled again. "He died on the bridge, in his chair. He knew he was dying and I don't think he suffered at all.... He insisted, he insisted that I thank you for the way you all stood by him. 'Tell them', these were his words, as far as I remember, 'tell them,' he said, 'that I couldn't have carried on without them, that they are the best crew that God ever gave a Captain.' Then he said, it was the last thing he said:' Give them my apologies. After all they've done for me, well, well, tell them I'm terribly sorry to let them down like this.' That was all he said, just' Tell them I'm sorry.' And then he died."