HMS Ulysses

CHAPTER SIXTEEN SATURDAY NIGHT

RICHARD VALLERY was dead. He died grieving, stricken at the thought that he was abandoning the crew of the Ulysses, leaving them behind, leaderless. But it was only for a short time, and he did not have to wait long. Before the dawn, hundreds more, men in the cruisers, the destroyers and the merchantmen, had died also. And they did not die as he had feared under the guns of the Tirpitz, another grim parallel with PQ17, for the Tirpitz had not left Alta Fjord. They died, primarily, because the weather had changed.

Richard Vallery was dead, and with his death a great change had come over the men of the Ulysses. When Vallery died, other things died also, for he took these things with him. He took with him the courage, the kindliness, the gentleness, the unshakable faith, the infinitely patient and understanding endurance, all these things which had been so peculiarly his own. And now these things were gone and the Ulysses was left without them and it did not matter. The men of the Ulysses no longer needed courage and all the adjuncts of courage, for they were no longer afraid. Vallery was dead and they did not know how much they respected and loved that gentle man until he was gone. But then they knew. They knew that something wonderful, something that had become an enduring part of their minds and memories, something infinitely fine and good, was gone and they would never know it again, and they were mad with grief. And, in war, a grief-stricken man is the most terrible enemy there is. Prudence, caution, fear, pain-for the grief-stricken man these no longer exist. He lives only to lash out blindly at the enemy, to destroy, if he can, the author of his grief.

Rightly or wrongly, the Ulysses never thought to blame the Captain's death on any but the enemy. There Was only, for them, the sorrow and the blind hate. Zombies, Nicholls had called them once, and the Ulysses was more than ever a ship manned by living zombies, zombies who prowled restlessly, incessantly, across the snow and ice of the heaving decks, automatons living only for revenge.

The weather changed just before the end of the middle watch. The seas did not change-FR77 was still butting into the heavy, rolling swell from the north, still piling up fresh sheets of glistening ice on their labouring fo'c'sles. But the wind dropped, and almost at once the snowstorm blew itself out, the last banks of dark, heavy cloud drifting away to the south. By four o'clock the sky was completely clear.

There was no moon that night, but the stars were out, keen and sharp and frosty as the icy breeze that blew steadily out of the north.

Then, gradually, the sky began to change. At first there was only a barely perceptible lightening on the northern rim then, slowly, a pulsating flickering band of light began to broaden and deepen and climb steadily above the horizon, climbing higher to the south with the passing of every minute. Soon that pulsating ribbon of light was paralleled by others, streamers in the most delicate pastel shades of blue and green and violet, but always and predominantly white. And always, too, these lanes of multi-coloured light grew higher and stronger and brighter: at the climax, a great band of white stretched high above the convoy, extending from horizon to horizon... These were the Northern Lights, at any time a spectacle of beauty and wonder, and this night surpassing lovely: down below, in ships clearly illumined against the dark and rolling seas, the men of FR77 looked up and hated them.

On the bridge of the Ulysses, Chrysler, Chrysler of the uncanny eyesight and super-sensitive hearing, was the first to hear it. Soon everyone else heard it too, the distant roar, throbbing and intermittent, of a Condor approaching from the south. After a time they became aware that the Condor was no longer approaching, but sudden hope died almost as it was born. There was no mistaking it now-the deeper, heavier note of a Focke-Wulf in maximum climb. The Commander turned wearily to Carrington.

"It's Charlie, all right," he said grimly. "The bastard's spotted us.

He'll already have radioed Alta Fjord and a hundred to one in anything you like that he's going to drop a marker flare at 10,000 feet or so.

It'll be seen fifty miles away."

"Your money's sake." The First Lieutenant was withering. "I never bet against dead certs... And then, by and by, maybe a few flares at a couple of thousand?"

"Exactly!" Turner nodded. "Pilot, how far do you reckon we're from Alta Fjord-in flying time, I mean?"

"For a 200-knot plane, just over an hour," the Kapok Kid said quietly. His ebullience was gone: he had been silent and dejected since Vallery had died two hours previously.

"An hour!" Carrington exclaimed. "And they'll be here. My God, sir," he went on wonderingly, "they're really out to get us. We've never been bombed nor torpedoed at night before. We've never had the Tirpitz after us before. We never------"

"The Tirpitz," Turner interrupted. "Just where the hell is that ship? She's had time to come up with us. Oh, I know it's dark and we've changed course," he added, as Carrington made to object, "but a fast destroyer screen would have picked us-Preston!" He broke off, spoke sharply to the Signal Petty Officer. "Look alive, man! That ship's flashing us."

"Sorry, sir." The signalman, swaying on his feet with exhaustion, raised his Aldis, clacked out an acknowledgment. Again the light on the merchantman began to wink furiously.

"'Transverse fracture engine bedplate,'" Preston read out. "'Damage serious: shall have to moderate speed.'"

"Acknowledge," said Turner curtly. "What ship is that, Preston?"

"The Ohio Freighter, sir."

"The one that stopped a tin fish a couple of days back?"

"That's her, sir."

"Make a signal. 'Essential maintain speed and position.'" Turner swore. "What a time to choose for an engine breakdown... Pilot, when do we rendezvous with the Fleet?"

"Six hours' time, sir: exactly."

"Six hours." Turner compressed his lips. "Just six hours, perhaps!" he added bitterly.

"Perhaps?" Carrington murmured.

"Perhaps," Turned affirmed. "Depends entirely on the weather. C.-in-C. won't risk capital ships so near the coast unless he can fly off fighter cover against air attack. And, if you ask me, that's why the Tirpitz hasn't turned up yet, some wandering U-boat's tipped him off that our Fleet Carriers are steaming south. He'll be waiting on the weather...

What's he saying now, Preston?" The Ohio's signal lamp had flashed briefly, then died.

"'Imperative slow down,'" Preston repeated. "'Damage severe. Am slowing down.'"

"He is, too," Carrington said quietly. He looked up at Turner, at the set face and dark eyes, and knew the same thought was in the Commander's mind as was in his own. "He's a goner, sir, a dead duck. He hasn't a chance. Not unless------"

"Unless what?" Turner asked harshly. "Unless we leave him an escort?

Leave what escort, Number One? The Viking-the only effective unit we've left?" He shook his head in slow decision. "The greatest good of the greatest number: that's how it has to be. They'll know that.

Preston, send 'Regret cannot leave you standby. How long to effect repairs?'"

The flare burst even before Preston's hand could close on the trigger.

It burst directly over FR77. It was difficult to estimate the height, probably six to eight thousand feet, but at that altitude it was no more than an incandescent pinpoint against the great band of the Northern Lights arching majestically above. But it was falling quickly, glowing more brightly by the sound: the parachute, if any, could have been only a steadying drogue.

The crackling of the W.T. speaker broke through the stuttering chatter of the Aldis.

"W.T.-bridge. W.T.-bridge. Message from Sirrus: 'Three survivors dead. Many dying or seriously wounded. Medical assistance urgent, repeat urgent.'" The speaker died, just as the Ohio started flickering her reply.

"Send for Lieutenant Nicholls," Turner ordered briefly. "Ask him to come up to the bridge at once."

Carrington stared down at the dark broad seas, seas flecked with milky foam: the bows of the Ulysses were crashing down heavily, continuously.

"You're going to risk it, sir?"

"I must. You'd do the same, Number One.... What does the Ohio say, Preston?"

"I understand. Too busy to look after the Royal Navy anyway. We will make up on you. Au revoir!"'

"We will make up on you. Au revoir." Turner repeated softly. "He lies in his teeth, and he knows it. By God!" he burst out. "If anyone ever tells me the Yankee sailors have no guts, I'll push his perishing face in. Preston, send: 'Au revoir. Good luck.'... Number One, I feel like a murderer." He rubbed his hand across his forehead, nodded towards the shelter where Vallery lay stretched out, and strapped to his settee.

"Month in, month out, he's been taking these decisions. It's no wonder..." He broke off as the gate creaked open.

"Is that you, Nicholls? There is work for you, my boy. Can't have you medical types idling around uselessly all day long." He raised his hand.

"All right, all right," he chuckled. "I know.... How are things on the surgical front?" he went on seriously.

"We've done all we can, sir. There was very little left for us to do,"

Nicholls said quietly. His face was deeply lined, haggard to the point of emaciation. "But we're in a bad way for supplies. Hardly a single dressing left. And no anaesthetics at all-except what's left in the emergency kit. The Surgeon-Commander refuses to touch those."

"Good, good," Turner murmured. "How do you feel, laddie?"

"Awful."

"You look it," Turner said candidly. "Nicholls-I'm terribly sorry, boy-I want you to go over to the Sirrus."

"Yes, sir." There was no surprise in the voice: it hadn't been difficult to guess why the Commander had sent for him. "Now?"

Turner nodded without speaking. His face, the lean strong features, the heavy brows and sunken eyes were quite visible H.U. 257 I now in the strengthening light of the plunging flare. A face to remember, Nicholls thought.

"How much kit can I take with me, sir?"

"Just your medical gear. No more. You're not travelling by Pullman, laddie!"

"Can I take my camera, my films?"

"All right." Turner smiled briefly. "Looking forward keenly to photographing the last seconds of the Ulysses, I suppose... Don't forget that the Sirrus is leaking like a sieve. Pilot, get through to the W.T. Tell the Sirrus to come' alongside, prepare to receive medical officer by breeches buoy."

The gate creaked again. Turner looked at the bulky figure stumbling wearily on to the compass platform. Brooks, like every man in the crew was dead on his feet; but the blue eyes burned as brightly as ever.

"My spies are everywhere," he announced. "What's this about the Sirrus shanghaiing young Johnny here?"

"Sorry, old man," Turner apologised. "It seems things are pretty bad on the Sirrus."

"I see." Brooks shivered. It might have been the thin threnody of the wind in the shattered rigging, or just the iceladen wind itself. He shivered again, looked upwards at the sinking flare. "Pretty, very pretty," he murmured. "What are the illuminations in aid of?"

"We are expecting company," Turner smiled crookedly. "An old world custom, O Socrates-the light in the window and what have you." He stiffened abruptly, then relaxed, his face graven in granitic immobility. "My mistake," he murmured. "The company has already arrived."

The last words were caught up and drowned in the rumbling of a heavy explosion. Turner had known it was coming-he'd seen the thin stiletto of flame stabbing skywards just for'ard of the Ohio Freighter's bridge.

The sound had taken five or six seconds to reach them-the Ohio was already over a mile distant on the starboard quarter, but clearly visible still under the luminance of the Northern Lights-the Northern Lights that had betrayed her, almost stopped in the water, to a wandering U-boat.

The Ohio Freighter did not remain visible for long. Except for the moment of impact, there was neither smoke, nor flame, nor sound. But her back must have been broken, her bottom torn out-and she was carrying a full cargo of nothing but tanks and ammunition. There was a curious dignity about her end-she sank quickly, quietly, without any fuss. She was gone in three minutes.

It was Turner who finally broke the heavy silence on the bridge. He turned away and in the light of the flare his face was not pleasant to see.

"Au revoir," he muttered to no one in particular. "Au revoir. That's what he said, the lying..." He shook his head angrily, touched the Kapok Kid on the arm. "Get through to W.T.," he said sharply. "Tell the Viking to sit over the top of that sub till we get clear."

"Where's it all going to end?" Brooks's face was still and heavy in the twilight.

"God knows! How I hate those murdering bastards!" Turner ground out.

"Oh, I know, I know, we do the same, but give me something I can see, something I can fight, something------"

"You'll be able to see the Tirpitz all right," Carrington interrupted dryly. "By all accounts, she's big enough."

Turner looked at him, suddenly smiled. He clapped his arm, then craned his head back, staring up at the shimmering loveliness of the sky. He wondered when the next flare would drop.

"Have you a minute to spare, Johnny?" The Kapok Kid's voice was low.

"I'd like to speak to you."

"Sure." Nicholls looked at him in surprise. "Sure, I've a minute, ten minutes-until the Sirrus comes up. What's wrong, Andy?"

"Just a second." The Kapok Kid crossed to the Commander. "Permission to go to the charthouse, sir?"

"Sure you've got your matches?" Turner smiled. "O.K. Off you go."

The Kapok Kid smiled faintly, said nothing. He took Nicholls by the arm, led him into the charthouse, flicked on the lights and produced his cigarettes. He looked steadily at Nicholls as he dipped his cigarette into the flickering pool of flame.

"Know something, Johnny?" he said abruptly. "I reckon I must have Scotch blood in me."

"Scots," Nicholls corrected. "And perish the very thought."

"I'm feeling-what's the word?, fey, isn't it? I'm feeling fey tonight, Johnny." The Kapok Kid hadn't even heard the interruption. He shivered. "I don't know why, I've never felt this way before."

"Ah, nonsense! Indigestion, my boy," Nicholls said briskly. But he felt strangely uncomfortable.

"Won't wash this time," Carpenter shook his head, half-smiling.

"Besides, I haven't eaten a thing for two days. I'm on the level, Johnny." In spite of himself, Nicholls was impressed. Emotion, gravity, earnestness-these were utterly alien to the Kapok Kid.

"I won't be seeing you again," the Kapok Kid continued softly. "Will you do me a favour, Johnny?"

"Don't be so bloody silly," Nicholls said angrily. "How the hell do you------?"

"Take this with you." The Kapok Kid pulled out a slip of paper, thrust it into Nicholls's hands. "Can you read it?"

"I can read it." Nicholls had stilled his anger. "Yes, I can read it."

There was a name and address on the sheet of paper, a girl's name and a Surrey address. "So that's her name," he said softly. "Juanita...

Juanita." He pronounced it carefully, accurately, in the Spanish fashion. "My favourite song and my favourite name," he murmured.

"Is it? "the Kapok Kid asked eagerly. "Is it indeed? And mine, Johnny."

He paused. "If, perhaps-well, if I don't, well, you'll go to see her, Johnny?"

"What are you talking about, man?" Nicholls felt embarrassed.

Half-impatiently, half-playfully, he tapped him on the chest. "Why, with that suit on, you could swim from here to Murmansk. You've said so yourself, a hundred times."

The Kapok Kid grinned up at him. The grin was a little crooked.

"Sure, sure, I know, I know-will you go, Johnny?"

"Dammit to hell, yes!" Nicholls snapped. "I'll go-and it's high time I was going somewhere else. Come on!" He snapped off the lights, pulled back the door, stopped with his foot half-way over the sill. Slowly, he stepped back inside the charthouse, closed the door and nicked on the light. The Kapok Kid hadn't moved, was gazing quietly at him.

"I'm sorry, Andy," Nicholls said sincerely. "I don't know what made me------"

"Bad temper," said the Kapok Kid cheerfully. "You always did hate to think that I was right and you were wrong!"

Nicholls caught his breath, closed his eyes for a second. Then he stretched out his hand.

"All the best, Vasco." It was an effort to smile. "And don't worry.

I'll see her if-well, I'll see her, I promise you. Juanita... But if I find you there," he went on threateningly, "I'll------"

"Thanks, Johnny. Thanks a lot." The Kapok Kid was almost happy. "Good luck, boy... Vaya con Dios. That's what she always said to me, what she said before I came away.' Vaya con Dios.'"

Thirty minutes later, Nicholls was operating aboard the Sirrus.

The time was 0445. It was bitterly cold, with a light wind blowing steadily from the north. The seas were heavier than ever, longer between the crests, deeper in their gloomy troughs, and the damaged Sirrus, labouring under a mountain of ice, was making heavy weather of it. The sky was still clear, a sky of breath-taking purity, and the stars were out again, for the Northern Lights were fading. The fifth successive flare was drifting steadily seawards.

It was at 0445 that they heard it, the distant rumble of gunfire far to the south, perhaps a minute after they had seen the incandescent brilliance of a burning flare on the run of the far horizon. There could be no doubt as to what was happening. The Viking, still in contact with the U-boat, although powerless to do anything about it, was being heavily attacked. And the attack must have been short, sharp and deadly, for the firing ceased soon after it had begun. Ominously, nothing came through on the W.T. No one ever knew what had happened to the Viking, for there were no survivors.

The last echo of the Viking's guns had barely died away before they heard the roar of the engines of the Condor, at maximum throttle in a shallow dive. For five, perhaps ten seconds-it seemed longer than that, but not long enough for any gun in the convoy to begin tracking him accurately-the great Focke-Wulf actually flew beneath his own flare, and then was gone. Behind him, the sky opened up in a blinding coruscation of flame, more dazzling, more hurtful, than the light of the noonday sun. So intense, so extraordinary the power of those flares, so much did pupils contract and eyelids narrow in instinctive self-protection, that the enemy bombers were through the circle of light and upon them before anyone fully realised what was happening The timing, the split-second co-operation between marker planes and bombers were magnificent.

There were twelve planes in the first wave. There was no concentration on one target, as before: not more than two attacked any ship. Turner, watching from the bridge, watching them swoop down steeply and level out before even the first gun in the Ulysses had opened up, caught his breath in sudden dismay. There was something terribly familiar about the speed, the approach, the silhouette of these planes. Suddenly he had it, Heinkels, by God! Heinkel 111's. And the Heinkel 111, Turner knew, carried that weapon he dreaded above all others, the glider bomb.

And then, as if he had touched a master switch, every gun on the Ulysses opened up. The air filled with smoke, the pungent smell of burning cordite: the din was indescribable. And all at once, Turner felt fiercely, strangely happy.... To hell with them and their glider bombs, he thought. This was war as he liked to fight it: not the cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek frustration of trying to outguess the hidden wolf-packs, but war out in the open, where he could see the enemy and hate him and love him for fighting as honest men should and do his damnedest to destroy him. And, Turner knew, if they could at all, the crew of the Ulysses would destroy him. It needed no great sensitivity to direct the sea-change that had overtaken his men-yes, his men now: they no longer cared for themselves: they had crossed the frontier of fear and found that nothing lay beyond it and they would keep on feeding their guns and squeezing their triggers until the enemy overwhelmed them.

The leading Heinkel was blown out of the sky, and fitting enough it was 'X' turret that destroyed it, 'X' turret, the turret of dead marines, the turret that had destroyed the Condor, and was now manned by a scratch marine crew. The Heinkel behind lifted sharply to avoid the hurtling fragments of fuselage and engines, dipped, flashed past the cruiser's bows less than a boat-length away, banked steeply to port under maximum power, and swung back in on the Ulysses. Every gun on the ship was caught on the wrong foot, and seconds passed before the first one was brought to bear-time and to spare for the Heinkel to angle in at 60ø, drop his bomb and slew frantically away as the concentrated fire of the Oerlikons and pom-poms closed in on him. Miraculously, he escaped.

The winged bomb was high, but not high enough. It wavered, steadied, dipped, then glided forwards and downwards through the drifting smoke of the guns to strike home with a tremendous, deafening explosion that shook the Ulysses to her keel and almost shattered the eardrums of those on deck.

To Turner, looking aft from the bridge, it seemed that the Ulysses could never survive this last assault. An ex-torpedo officer and explosives expert himself, he was skilled in assessing the disruptive power of high explosive: never before had he been so close to so powerful, so devastating an explosion. He had dreaded these glider bombs, but even so he had under-estimated their power: the concussion had been double, treble what he had been expecting.

What Turner did not know was that what he had heard had been not one explosion but two, but so nearly simultaneous as to be indistinguishable. The glider bomb, by a freakish chance had crashed directly into the port torpedo tubes. There had been only one torpedo left there, the other two had sent the Vytura to the bottom, and normally Amatol, the warhead explosive, is extremely stable and inert, even when subjected to violent shock: but the bursting bomb had been too close too powerful: sympathetic detonation had been inevitable.

Damage was extensive and spectacular: it was severe, but not fatal. The side of the Ulysses had been ripped open, as by a giant can-opener, almost to the water's edge: the tubes had vanished: the decks were holed and splintered: the funnel casing was a shambles, the funnel itself tilting over to port almost to fifteen degrees; but the greatest energy of the explosion had been directed aft, most of the blast expending itself over the open sea, while the galley and canteen, severely damaged already, were no more than a devil's scrapyard.

Almost before the dust and debris of the explosion had settled, the last of the Heinkels was disappearing, skimming the waves, weaving and twisting madly in evasive action, pursued and harried by a hundred glowing streams of tracer. Then, magically, they were gone, and there was only the sudden deafening silence and the flares, drooping slowly to extinction, lighting up the pall above the Ulysses, the dark clouds of smoke rolling up from the shattered Stirling and a tanker with its after superstructure almost gone. But not one of the ships in FR77 had faltered or stopped; and they had destroyed five Heinkels. A costly victory, Turner mused, if it could be called a victory; but he knew the Heinkels would be back. It was not difficult to imagine the fury, the hurt pride of the High Command in Norway: as far as Turner knew, no Russian Convoy had ever sailed so far south before.

Riley eased a cramped leg, stretched it gently so as to avoid the great spinning shaft. Carefully he poured some oil on to the bearing, carefully, so as not to disturb the Engineer Commander, propped in sleep between the tunnel wall and Riley's shoulder. Even as Riley drew back, Dodson stirred, opened heavy, gummed lids.

"Good God above!" he said wearily. "You still here, Riley?" It was the first time either of them had spoken for hours.

"It's a -----, good job I am here," Riley growled. He nodded towards the bearing. "Bloody difficult to get a firehose down to this place, I should think!" That was unfair Riley knew: he and Dodson had been taking it in half-hour turns to doze and feed the bearing. But he felt he had to say something: he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep on being truculent to the Engineer Commander.

Dodson grinned to himself, said nothing. Finally, he cleared his throat, murmured casually: "The Tirpitz is taking its time about making its appearance, don't you think?"

"Yes, sir." Riley was uncomfortable. "Should 'a' been here long ago, damn her!"

"Him," Dodson corrected absently. "Admiral von Tirpitz, you know... Why don't you give up this foolishness, Riley?"

Riley grunted, said nothing. Dodson sighed, then brightened.

"Go and get some more coffee, Riley. I'm parched!"

"No." Riley was blunt. "You get it."

"As a favour, Riley." Dodson was very gentle. "I'm damned thirsty I"

"Oh, all right." The big stoker swore, climbed painfully to his feet."

Where'll I get it?"

"Plenty in the engine-room. If it's not iced water they're swigging, it's coffee. But no iced water for me." Dodson shivered.

Riley gathered up the Thermos, stumbled along the passage. He had only gone a few feet when they felt the Ulysses shudder under the recoil of the heavy armament. Although they did not know it, it was the beginning of the air attack.

Dodson braced himself against the wall, saw Riley do the same, pause a second then hurry away in an awkward, stumbling run. There was something grotesquely familiar in that awkward run, Dodson thought. The guns surged back again and the figure scuttled even faster, like a giant crab in a panic.... Panic, Dodson thought: that's it, panic-stricken. Don't blame the poor bastard-I'm beginning to imagine things myself down here. Again the whole tunnel vibrated, more heavily this time-that must be 'X' turret, almost directly above. No, I don't blame him. Thank God he's gone. He smiled quietly to himself. I won't be seeing friend Riley again-he isn't all that of a reformed character. Tiredly, Dodson settled back against the wall. On my own at last, he murmured to himself, and waited for the feeling of relief. But it never came. Instead, there was only a vexation and loneliness, a sense of desertion and a strangely empty disappointment.

Riley was back inside a minute. He came back with that same awkward crab-like run, carrying a three-pint Thermos jug and two cups, cursing fluently and often as he slipped against the wall. Panting, wordlessly, he sat down beside Dodson, poured out a cup of steaming coffee. "Why the hell did you have to come back?" Dodson demanded harshly. "I don't want you and------"

"You wanted coffee," Riley interrupted rudely. "You've got the bloody stuff. Drink it."

At that instant the explosion and the vibration from the explosion in the port tubes echoed weirdly down the dark tunnel, the shock flinging the two men heavily against each other. His whole cup of coffee splashed over Dodson's leg: his mind was so tired, his reactions so slow, that his first realisation was of how damnably cold he was, how chill that dripping tunnel. The scalding coffee had gone right through his clothes, but he could feel neither warmth nor wetness: his legs were numbed, dead below the knees. Then he shook his head, looked up at Riley.

"What in God's name was that? What's happening? Did you------?"

"Haven't a clue. Didn't stop to ask." Riley stretched himself luxuriously, blew on his steaming coffee. Then a happy thought struck him, and a broad cheerful grin came as near to transforming that face as would ever be possible. "It's probably the Tirpitz," he said hopefully.

Three times more during that terrible night, the German squadrons took off from the airfield at Alta Fjord, throbbed their way nor'-nor'-west through the bitter Arctic night, over the heaving Arctic sea, in search of the shattered remnants of FR77. Not that the search was difficult-the Focke-Wulf Condor stayed with them all night, defied their best attempts to shake him off. He seemed to have an endless supply of these deadly flares, and might very well have been-in fact, almost certainly was-carrying nothing else. And the bombers had only to steer for the flares.

The first assault, about 0545, was an orthodox bombing attack, made from about 3,000 feet. The planes seemed to be Dorniers, but it was difficult to be sure, because they flew high above a trio of flares sinking close to the water level. As an attack, it was almost but not quite abortive, and was pressed home with no great enthusiasm. This was understandable: the barrage was intense. But there were two direct hits, one on a merchantman, blowing away most of the foc'sle, the other on the Ulysses. It sheered through the flag deck and the Admiral's day cabin, and exploded in the heart of the Sick Bay. The Sick Bay was crowded with the sick and dying, and, for many, that bomb must have come as a God-sent release, for the Ulysses had long since run out of anaesthetics. There were no survivors. Among the dead was Marshall, the Torpedo Officer, Johnson, the Leading S.B.A., the Master-At-Arms who had been lightly wounded an hour before by a splinter from the torpedo tubes, Burgess, strapped helplessly in a strait-jacket-he had suffered concussion on the night of the great storm and gone insane. Brown, whose hip had been smashed by the hatch cover of 'Y' magazine, and Brierley, who was dying anyway, his lungs saturated and rotted away with fuel oil.

Brooks had not been there.

The same explosion had also shattered the telephone exchange: barring only the bridge-gun phones, and the bridge-engine phones and speaking-tubes, all communication lines in the Ulysses were gone.

The second attack at 7 a.m., was made by only six bombers, Heinkels again, carrying glider-bombs. Obviously flying strictly under orders, they ignored the merchantmen and concentrated their attack solely on the cruisers. It was an expensive attack: the enemy lost all but two of their force in exchange for a single hit aft on the Stirling, a hit which, tragically, put both after guns out of action.

Turner, red-eyed and silent, bareheaded in that sub-zero wind, and pacing the shattered bridge of the Ulysses, marvelled that the Stirling still floated, still fought back with everything she had. And then he looked at his own ship, less a ship, he thought wearily, than a floating shambles of twisted a steel still scything impossibly through those heavy seas, and I marvelled all the more. Broken, burning cruisers, cruisers ravaged and devastated to the point of destruction, were nothing new for Turner: he had seen the Trinidad and the Edinburgh being literally battered to death on these same Russian convoys. But he had never seen any ship, at any time, take such inhuman, murderous punishment as the Ulysses and the obsolete Stirling and still live. He would not have believed it possible.

The third attack came just before dawn. It came with the grey half-light, an attack carried out with great courage and the utmost determination by fifteen Heinkel 111 gldder-bombers. Again the cruisers were the sole targets, the heavier attack by far being directed against the Ulysses. Far from shirking the challenge and bemoaning their ill-luck the crew of the Ulysses, that strange and selfless crew of walking zombies whom Nicholls had left behind, welcomed the enemy gladly, even joyfully, for how can one kill an enemy if he does not come to you? Fear, anxiety, the near-certainty of death-these did not exist.

Home and country, families, wives and sweethearts, were names, only names: they touched a man's mind, these thoughts, touched it and lifted and were gone as if they had never been. "Tell them," Vallery had said, "tell them they are the best crew God ever gave a captain." Vallery.

That was what mattered, that and what Vallery had stood for, that something that had been so inseparably a part of that good and kindly man that you never saw it because it was Vallery. And the crew hoisted the shells, slammed the breeches and squeezed their triggers, men uncaring, men oblivious of anything and everything, except the memory of the man who had died apologising because he had let them down, except the sure knowledge that they could not let Vallery down. Zombies, but inspired zombies, men above themselves, as men commonly are when they know the next step, the inevitable step has them clear to the top of the far side of the valley...

The first part of the attack was launched against the Stirling. Turner saw two Heinkels roaring in in a shallow dive, improbably surviving against heavy, concentrated fire at point-blank range. The bombs, delayed action and armour-piercing, struck the Stirling amidships, just below deck level, and exploded deep inside, in the boiler-room and engineroom. The next three bombers were met with only pom-pom and Lewis fire: the main armament for'ard had fallen silent. With sick apprehension, Turner realised what had happened: the explosion had cut the power to the turrets[4].

Ruthlessly, contemptuously almost, the bombers brushed aside the puny opposition: every bomb went home. The Stirling, Turner saw, was desperately wounded. She was on fire again, and listing heavily to starboard.

The suddenly lifting crescendo of aero engines spun Turner round to look to his own ship. There were five Heinkels in the first wave, at different heights and approach angles so as to break up the pattern of A.A. fire, but all converging on the after end of the Ulysses. There was so much smoke and noise that Turner could only gather confused, broken impressions. Suddenly, it seemed, the air was filled with glider-bombs and the tearing, staccato crash of the German cannon and guns. One bomb exploded in mid-air, just for'ard of the after funnel and feet away from it: a maiming, murderous storm of jagged steel scythed across the boat-deck, and all Oerlikons and the pom-poms fell immediately silent, their crews victim to shrapnel or concussion.

Another plunged through the deck and Engineers' Flat and turned the W.T. office into a charnel house. The remaining two that struck were higher, smashing squarely into 'X' gun-deck and 'X' turret. The turret was split open around the top and down both sides as by a giant cleaver, and blasted off its mounting, to lie grotesquely across the shattered poop.

Apart from the boat-deck and turret gunners, only one other man lost his life in that attack, but that man was virtually irreplaceable. Shrapnel from the first bomb had burst a compressed air cylinder in the torpedo workshop, and Hartley, the man who, above all, had become the backbone of the Ulysses had taken shelter there, only seconds before....

The Ulysses was running into dense black smoke, now the Stirling was heavily on fire, her fuel tanks gone. What happened in the next ten minutes, no one ever knew. In the smoke and flame and agony, they were moments borrowed from hell and men could only endure.

Suddenly, the Ulysses was out in the clear, and the Heinkels, all bombs gone, were harrying her, attacking her incessantly with cannon and machine-gun, ravening wolves with their victim on its knees, desperate to finish it off. But still, here and there, a gun fired on the Ulysses.

Just below the bridge, for instance-there was a gun firing there. Turner risked a quick glance over the side, saw the gunner pumping his tracers into the path of a swooping Heinkel. And then the Heinkel opened up, and Turner flung himself back, knocking the Kapok Kid to the deck. Then the bomber was gone and the guns were silent. Slowly, Turner hoisted himself to his feet, peered over the side: the gunner was dead, his harness cut to ribbons.

He heard a scuffle behind him, saw a slight figure fling off a restraining hand, and climb to the edge of the bridge. For an instant, Turner saw the pale, staring face of Chrysler, Chrysler who had neither smiled nor even spoken since they had opened up the Asdic cabinet; at the same time he saw three Heinkels forming up to starboard for a fresh attack.

"Get down, you young fool!" Turner shouted. "Do you want to commit suicide?"

Chrysler looked at him, eyes wide and devoid of recognition, looked away and dropped down to the sponson below. Turner lifted himself to the edge of the bridge and looked down.

Chrysler was struggling with all his slender strength, struggling in a strange and frightening silence, to drag the dead man from his Oerlikon cockpit. Somehow, with a series of convulsive, despairing jerks, he had him over the side, had laid him gently to the ground, and was climbing into the cockpit. His hand, Turner saw, was bare and bleeding, stripped to the raw flesh-then out of the corner of his eyes he saw the flame of the HeinkePs guns and flung himself backward.

One second passed, two, three, three seconds during which cannon shells and bullets smashed against the reinforced armour of the bridge, then, as a man in a daze, he heard the twin Oerlikons opening up. The boy must have held his fire to the very last moment. Six shots the Oerlikon fired-only six, and a great, grey shape, stricken and smoking, hurtled over the bridge barely at head height, sheared off its port wing on the Director Tower and crashed into the sea on the other side.

Chrysler was still sitting in the cockpit. His right hand was clutching his left shoulder, a shoulder smashed and shattered by a cannon shell, trying hopelessly to stem the welling arterial blood. Even as the next bomber straightened out on its strafing run, even as he flung himself backwards, Turner saw the mangled, bloody hand reach out for the trigger grip again.

Flat on the duckboards beside Carrington and the Kapok Kid, Turner pounded his fist on the deck in terrible frustration of anger. He thought of Starr, the man who had brought all this upon them, and hated him as he would never have believed he could hate anybody. He could have killed him then. He thought of Chrysler, of the excruciating hell of that gun-rest pounding into that shattered shoulder, of brown eyes glazed and shocked with pain and grief. If he himself lived, Turner swore, he would recommend that boy for the Victoria Cross. Abruptly the firing ceased and a Heinkel swung off sharply to starboard, smoke pouring from both its engines.

Quickly, together with the Kapok Kid, Turner scrambled to his feet, hoisted himself over the side of the bridge. He did it without looking, and he almost died then. A burst of fire from the third and last Heinkel-the bridge was always the favourite target-whistled past his head and shoulders: he felt the wind of their passing fan his cheek and hair. Then, winded from the convulsive back-thrust that had sent him there, he was stretched full length on the duckboards again. They were only inches from his eyes, these duck-boards, but he could not see them.

All he could see was the image of Chrysler, a gaping wound the size of a man's hand in his back, slumped forward across the Oerlikons, the weight of his body tilting the barrels grotesquely skywards. Both barrels had still been firing, were still firing, would keep on firing until the drums were empty, for the dead boy's hand was locked across the trigger.

Gradually, one by one, the guns of the convoy fell silent, the clamour of the aero engines began to fade in the distance. The attack was over.

Turner rose to his feet, slowly and heavily this time. He looked over the side of the bridge, stared down into the Oerlikon gunpit, then looked away, bis lace expressionless. Behind him, he heard someone coughing. It was a strange, bubbling kind of cough.

Turner whirled round, then stood stock-still, his hands clenched tightly at his sides.

The Kapok Kid, with Carrington kneeling helplessly at his side, was sitting quietly on the boards, his back propped against the legs of the Admiral's chair. From left groin to right shoulder through the middle of the embroidered "J "on the chest, stretched a neat, straight, evenly-spaced pattern of round holes, stitched in by the machine-gun of the Heinkel. The blast of the shells must have hurtled him right across the bridge.

Turner stood absolutely still. The Kid, he knew with sudden sick certainly, had only seconds to live: he felt that any sudden move on his part would snap the spun-silk thread that held him on to life.

Gradually, the Kapok Kid became aware of his presence, of his steady gaze, and looked up tiredly. The vivid blue of bis eyes was dulled already, the face white and drained of blood. Idly, his hand strayed up and down the punctured kapok, fingering the gashes. Suddenly he smiled, looked down at the quilted suit.

"Ruined," he whispered. "Bloody well ruined!" Then the wandering hand slipped down to his side, palm upward, and his head slumped forward on his chest. The flaxen hair stirred idly in the wind.