HMS Ulysses

CHAPTER FIVE TUESDAY

THE Invader and her troubles were soon forgotten. All too soon, the 14th Aircraft Carrier Squadron had enough, and more than enough, to worry about on their own account. They had their own troubles to overcome, their own enemy to face -- an enemy far more elemental and far more deadly than any mine or U-boat.

Tyndall braced himself more firmly against the pitching, rolling deck and looked over at Vallery. Vallery, he thought for the tenth time that morning, looked desperately ill.

"What do you make of it, Captain? Prospects aren't altogether healthy, are they?"

"We're for it, sir. It's really piling up against us. Carrington has spent six years in the West Indies, has gone through a dozen hurricanes.

Admits he's seen a barometer lower, but never one so low with the pressure still falling so fast, not in these latitudes. This is only a curtain-raiser."

"This will do me nicely, meantime, thank you," Tyndall said dryly. "For a curtain-raiser, it's doing not so badly."

It was a masterly understatement. For a curtain-raiser, it was a magnificent performance. The wind was fairly steady, about Force 9 on the Beaufort scale, and the snow had stopped. A temporary cessation only, they all knew-far ahead to the north-west the sky was a peculiarly livid colour. It was a dull glaring purple, neither increasing nor fading, faintly luminous and vaguely menacing in its uniformity and permanence. Even to men who had seen everything the Arctic skies had to offer, from pitchy darkness on a summer's noon, right through the magnificent displays of Northern Lights to that wonderfully washed-out blue that so often smiles down on the stupendous calms of the milk-white seas that lap edge of the Barrier, this was something quite unknown.

But the Admiral's reference had been to the sea. It had been building up, steadily, inexorably, all during the morning. Now, at noon, it looked uncommonly like an eighteenth-century print of a barque in a storm-serried waves of greenish-grey, straight, regular and marching uniformly along, each decoratively topped with frothing caps of white. Only I here, there were 500 feet between crest and crest, and the squadron, heading almost directly into it, was taking hearty punishment.

For the little ships, already burying their bows every fifteen seconds in a creaming smother of cascading white, this was bad enough, but another, a more dangerous and insidious enemy was at work-the cold. The temperature had long sunk below freezing point, and the mercury was still shrinking down, close towards the zero mark.

The cold was now intense: ice formed in cabins and mess decks: fresh-water systems froze solid: metal contracted, hatch covers jammed, door hinges locked in frozen immobility, the oil in the searchlight controls gummed up and made them useless. To keep a watch, especially a watch on the bridge, was torture: the first shock of that bitter wind seared the lungs, left a man fighting for breath: if he had forgotten to don gloves-first the silk gloves, then the woollen mittens, then the sheepskin gauntlets-and touched a handrail, the palms of the hands seared off, the skin burnt as by white-hot metal: on the bridge, if he forgot to duck when the bows smashed down into a trough, the flying spray, solidified in a second into hurtling slivers of ice, lanced cheek and forehead open to the bone: hands froze, the very marrow of the bones numbed, the deadly chill crept upwards from feet to calves to thighs, nose and chin turned white with frostbite and demanded immediate attention: and then, by far the worst of all, the end of the watch, the return below deck, the writhing, excruciating agony of returning circulation. But, for all this, words are useless things, pale shadows of reality. Some things lie beyond the knowledge and the experience of the majority of mankind, and here imagination finds itself in a world unknown.

But all these things were relatively trifles, personal inconveniences to be shrugged aside. The real danger lay elsewhere. It lay in the fact of ice.

There were over three hundred tons of it already on the decks of the Ulysses, and more forming every minute. It lay in a thick, even coat over the main deck, the fo'c'sle, the gun-decks and the bridges: it hung in long, jagged icicles from coamings and turrets and rails: it trebled the diameter of every wire, stay and halliard, and turned slender masts into monstrous trees, ungainly and improbable. It lay everywhere, a deadly menace, and much of the danger lay in the slippery surface it presented-a problem much more easily overcome on a coal-fired merchant ship with clinker and ashes from its boilers, than in the modern, oil-fired warships. On the Ulysses, they spread salt and sand and hoped for the best.

But the real danger of the ice lay in its weight. A ship, to use technical terms, can be either stiff or tender. If she's stiff, she has a low centre of gravity, rolls easily, but whips back quickly and is extremely stable and safe. If she's tender, with a high centre of gravity, she rolls reluctantly but comes back even more reluctantly, is unstable and unsafe. And if a ship were tender, and hundreds of tons of ice piled high on its decks, the centre of gravity rose to a dangerous height. It could rise to a fatal height...

The escort carriers and the destroyers, especially the Port-patrick, were vulnerable, terribly so. The carriers, already unstable with the great height and weight of their reinforced flight-decks, provided a huge, smooth, flat surface to the falling snow, ideal conditions for the formation of ice. Earlier on, it had been possible to keep the flight-decks relatively clear-working parties had toiled incessantly with brooms and sledges, salt and steam hoses. But the weather had deteriorated so badly now that to send out a man on that wildly pitching, staggering flight-deck, glassy and infinitely treacherous, would be to send him to his death. The Wrestler and Blue Ranger had modified heating systems under the flight-decks-modified, because, unlike the British ships, these Mississippi carriers had planked flight-decks: in such extreme conditions, they were hopelessly inefficient.

Conditions aboard the destroyers were even worse. They had to contend not only with the ice from the packed snow, but with ice from the sea itself. As regularly as clockwork, huge clouds of spray broke over the destroyers' fo'c'sles as the bows crashed solidly, shockingly into the trough and rising shoulder of the next wave: the spray froze even as it touched the deck, even before it touched the deck, piling up the solid ice, in places over a foot thick, from the stem aft beyond the breakwater. The tremendous weight of the ice was pushing the little ships down by their heads; deeper, with each successive plunge ever deeper, they Buried their noses in the sea, and each time, more and more sluggishly, more and more reluctantly, they staggered laboriously up from the depths. Like the carrier captains, the destroyer skippers could only look down from their bridges, helpless, hoping.

Two hours passed, two hours in which the temperature fell to zero, hesitated, then shrank steadily beyond it, two hours in which the barometer tumbled crazily after it. Curiously, strangely, the snow still held off, the livid sky to the northwest was as far away as ever, and the sky to the south and east had cleared completely. The squadron presented a fantastic picture now, little toy-boats of sugar-icing, dazzling white, gleaming and sparkling in the pale, winter sunshine, pitching crazily through the ever-lengthening, ever-deepening valleys of grey and green of the cold Norwegian Sea, pushing on towards that far horizon, far and weird and purply glowing, the horizon of another world. It was an incredibly lovely spectacle.

Rear-Admiral Tyndall saw nothing beautiful about it. A man who was wont to claim that he never worried, he was seriously troubled now. He was gruff, to those on the bridge, gruff to the point of discourtesy and the old geniality of the Farmer Giles of even two months ago was all but gone. Ceaselessly his gaze circled the fleet; constantly, uncomfortably, he twisted in his chair. Finally he climbed down, passed through the gate and went into the Captain's shelter.

Vallery had no light on and the shelter was in semi-darkness. He lay there on his settee, a couple of blankets thrown over him. In the half-light, his face looked ghastly, corpse-like. His right hand clutched a balled handkerchief, spotted and stained: he made no attempt to hide it. With a painful effort, and before Tyndall could stop him, he had swung his legs over the edge of the settee and pulled forward a chair. Tyndall choked off his protest, sank gracefully into the seat.

"I think your curtain's just about to go up, Dick... What on earth ever induced me to become a squadron commander?"

Vallery grinned sympathetically. "I don't particularly envy you, sir. What are you going to do now?"

"What would you do?" Tyndall countered dolefully.

Vallery laughed. For a moment his face was transformed, boyish almost, then the laugh broke down into a bout of harsh, dry coughing. The stain spread over his handkerchief. Then he looked up and smiled.

"The penalty for laughing at a superior officer. What would I do? Heave to, sir. Better still, tuck my tail between my legs and run for it."

Tyndall shook his head.

"You never were a very convincing liar, Dick."

Both men sat in silence for a moment, then Vallery looked up.

"How far to go, exactly, sir?"

"Young Carpenter makes it 170 miles, more or less."

"One hundred and seventy." Vallery looked at his watch. "Twenty hours to go, in this weather. We must make it!"

Tyndall nodded heavily. "Eighteen ships sitting out there, nineteen, counting the sweeper from Hvalfjord, not to mention old Starr's blood pressure..."

He broke off as a hand rapped on the door and a head looked in.

"Two signals, Captain, sir."

"Just read them out, Bentley, will you?"

"First is from the Portpatrick: 'Sprung bow-plates: making water fast: pumps coming: fear further damage: please advise.'"

Tyndall swore. Vallery said calmly: "And the other?"

"From the Gannet, sir. 'Breaking up.'"

"Yes, yes. And the rest of the message?"

"Just that, sir. 'Breaking up.'"

"Ha I One of these taciturn characters," Tyndall growled. "Wait a minute, Chief, will you?" He sank back in his chair, hand rasping his chin, gazing at his feet, forcing his tired mind to think.

Vallery murmured something in a low voice, and Tyndall looked up, his eyebrows arched.

"Troubled waters, sir. Perhaps the carriers------"

Tyndall slapped his knee. "Two minds with but a single thought.

Bentley, make two signals. One to all screen vessels, tell 'em to take position-astern-close astern, of the carriers. Other to the carriers. Oil hose, one each through port and starboard loading ports, about-ah-how much would you say, Captain?"

"Twenty gallons a minute, sir?"

"Twenty gallons it is. Understand, Chief? Right-o, get 'em off at once. And Chief, tell the Navigator to bring his chart here." Bentley left, and he turned to Vallery. "We've got to fuel later on, and we can't do it here. Looks as if this might be the last chance of shelter this side of Murmansk.... And if the next twenty-four hours are going to be as bad as Carrington forecasts, I doubt whether some of the little ships could live through it anyway... Ah! Here you are, Pilot. Let's see where we are. How's the wind, by the way?"

"Force 10, sir." Bracing himself against the wild lurching of the Ulysses, the Kapok Kid smoothed out the chart on the Captain's bunk.

"Backing slightly."

"North-west, would you say, Pilot?" Tyndall rubbed his hands.

"Excellent. Now, my boy, our position?"

"12.40 west. 66.15 north," said the Kapok Kid precisely. He didn't even trouble to consult the chart. Tyndall lifted his eyebrows but made no comment.

"Course?"

"310, sir."

"Now, if it were necessary for us to seek shelter for fuelling-----"

"Course exactly 290, sir. I've pencilled it in, there. Four and a half hours' steaming, approximately."

"How the devil------" Tyndall exploded. "Who told you to-to------" He spluttered into a wrathful silence.

"I worked it out five minutes ago, sir. It-er-seemed inevitable. 290 would take us a few miles inside the Langanes peninsula. There should be plenty shelter there." Carpenter was grave, unsmiling.

"Seemed inevitable!" Tyndall roared. "Would you listen to him, Captain Vallery? Inevitable! And it's only just occurred to me! Of all the... Get out! Take yourself and that damned comic-opera fancy dress elsewhere!"

The Kapok Kid said nothing. With an air of injured innocence he gathered up his charts and left. Tyndall's voice halted him at the door.

"Pilot!"

"Sir?" The Kapok Kid's eyes were fixed on a point above Tyndall's head.

"As soon as the screen vessels have taken up position, tell Bentley to send them the new course."

"Yes, sir. Certainly." He hesitated, and Tyndall chuckled. "All right, all right," he said resignedly. "I'll say it again, I'm just a crusty old curmudgeon... and shut that damned door! We're freezing in here."

The wind was rising more quickly now and long ribbons of white were beginning to streak the water. Wave troughs were deepening rapidly, their sides steepening, their tops blown off and flattened by the wind.

Gradually, but perceptibly to the ear now, the thin, lonely whining in the rigging was climbing steadily up the register. From time to time, large chunks of ice, shaken loose by the increasing vibration, broke off from the masts and stays and spattered on the deck below.

The effect of the long oil-slicks trailing behind the carriers was almost miraculous. The destroyers, curiously mottled with oil now, were still plunging astern, but the surface tension of the fuel held the water and spray from breaking aboard. Tyndall, justifiably, was feeling more than pleased with himself.

Towards half-past four in the afternoon, with shelter still a good fifteen miles away, the elation had completely worn off. There was a whole gale blowing now and Tyndall had been compelled to signal for a reduction in speed.

From deck level, the seas now were more than impressive. They were gigantic, frightening. Nicholls stood with the Kapok Kid, off watch now, on the main deck, under the port whaler, sheltering in the lee of the fo'c'sle deck. Nicholls, clinging to a davit to steady himself, and leaping back now and then to avoid a deluge of spray, looked over to where the Defender, the Vultra and Viking tailing behind, were pitching madly, grotesquely, under that serene blue sky. The blue sky above, the tremendous seas below. There was something almost evil, something literally spine-chilling, in that macabre contrast.

"They never told me anything about this in the Medical School,"

Nicholls observed at last. "My God, Andy," he added in awe, "have you ever seen anything like this?"

"Once, just once. We were caught in a typhoon off the Nicobars. I don't think it was as bad as this. And Number One says this is damn' all compared to what's coming tonight, and he knows. God, I wish I was back in Henley!"

Nicholls looked at him curiously.

"Can't say I know the First Lieutenant well. Not a very-ah-approachable customer, is he? But everyone, old Giles, the skipper, the Commander, yourself, they all talk about him with bated breath.

What's so extra special about him? I respect him, mind you, everyone seems to, but dammit to hell, he's no superman."

"Sea's beginning to break up," the Kapok Kid murmured absently.

"Notice how every now and again we're beginning to get a wave half as big again as the others? Every seventh wave, the old sailors say. No, Johnny, he's not a superman. Just the greatest seaman you'll ever see.

Holds two master's-tickets, square-rigged and steam. He was going round the Horn in Finnish barques when we were still in our prams. Commander could tell you enough stories about him to fill a book." He paused then went on quietly: "He really is one of the few great seamen of today. Old Blackbeard Turner is no slouch himself, but he'll tell anyone that he can't hold a candle to Jimmy... I'm no hero-worshipper, Johnny. You know that. But you can say about Carrington what they used to say about Shackleton, when there's nothing left and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for him. Believe me, Johnny, I'm damned glad he's here."

Nicholls said nothing. Surprise held him silent. For the Kapok Kid, flippancy was a creed, derogation second nature: seriousness was a crime and anything that smacked of adulation bordered on blasphemy. Nicholls wondered what manner of man Carrington must be.

The cold was vicious. The wind was tearing great gouts of water off the wave-tops, driving the atomised spray at bullet speed against fo'c'sle and sides. It was impossible to breathe without turning one's back, without wrapping layers of wool round mouth and nose. Faces blue and white, shaking violently with the cold, neither suggested, neither even thought of going below. Men hypnotised, men fascinated by the tremendous seas, the towering waves, 1,000, 2,000 feet in length, long, sloping on the lee side, steep-walled and terrifying on the other, pushed up by a sixty knot wind and by some mighty force lying far to the north-west. In these gigantic troughs, a church steeple would be lost for ever.

Both men turned round as they heard the screen door crashing behind them. A duffel-coated figure, cursing fluently, fought to shut the heavy door against the pitching of the Ulysses, finally succeeded in heaving the clips home. It was Leading Seaman Doyle, and even though his beard hid three-quarters of what could be seen of his face, he still looked thoroughly disgusted with life.

Carpenter grinned at him. He and Doyle had served a commission together on the China Station. Doyle was a very privileged person.

"Well, well, the Ancient Mariner himself! How are things down below, Doyle?"

"Bloody desperate, sir!" His voice was as lugubrious as his face.

"Cold as charity, sir, and everything all over the bloody place. Cups, saucers, plates in smithereens. Half the crew------"

He broke off suddenly, eyes slowly widening in blank disbelief. He was staring out to sea between Nicholls and Carpenter.

"Well, what about half the crew?... What's the matter, Doyle?'

"Christ Almighty!" Doyle's voice was slow, stunned: it was almost a prayer. "Oh, Christ Almighty!" The voice rose sharply on the last two syllables.

The two officers twisted quickly round. The Defender was climbing-all 500 feet of her was literally climbing up the lee side of a wave that staggered the imagination, whose immensity completely defied immediate comprehension. Even as they watched, before shocked minds could grasp the significance of it all, the Defender reached the crest, hesitated, crazily tilted up her stern till screw and rudder were entirely clear of the water, then crashed down, down, down...

Even at two cable-lengths' distance in that high wind the explosive smash of the plummeting bows came like a thunder-clap. An aeon ticked by, and still the Defender seemed to keep on going under, completely buried now, right back to the bridge island, in a sea of foaming white.

How long she remained like that, arrowed down into the depths of the Arctic, no one could afterwards say: then slowly, agonisingly, incredibly, great rivers of water cascaded off her bows, she broke surface again. Broke surface, to present to frankly disbelieving eyes a spectacle entirely without precedent, anywhere, at any time. The tremendous, instantaneous, up-thrusting pressure of unknown thousands of tons of water had torn the open flight-deck completely off its mountings and bent it backwards, in a great, sweeping "U," almost as far as the bridge. It was a sight to make men doubt their sanity, to leave them stupefied, to leave them speechless, all, that is, except the Kapok Kid.

He rose magnificently to the occasion.

"My word I" he murmured thoughtfully. "That is unusual."

Another such wave, another such shattering impact, and it would have been the end for the Defender. The finest ships, the stoutest, most powerful vessels, are made only of thin, incredibly thin, sheets of metal, and metal, twisted and tortured as was the Defender's, could never have withstood another such impact.

But there were no more such waves, no more such impacts. It had been a freak wave, one of these massive, inexplicable contortions of the sea which have occurred, With blessed infrequency, from time immemorial, in all the great seas of the world whenever Nature wanted to show mankind, an irreverent, over-venturesome mankind, just how puny and pitifully helpless a thing mankind really is.. There were no more such waves and, by five o'clock, although land was still some eight to ten miles away, the squadron had moved into comparative shelter behind the tip of the Langanes peninsula.

From time to time, the captain of the Defender, who seemed to be enjoying himself hugely, sent reassuring messages to the Admiral. He was making a good deal of water, but he was managing nicely, thank you. He thought the latest shape in flight-decks very fashionable, and a vast improvement on the old type; straight flight-dec'cs lacked imagination, he thought, and didn't the Admiral think so too. The vertical type, he stated, provided excellent protection against wind and weather, and would make a splendid sail with the wind in the right quarter. With his last message, to the effect that he thought that it would be rather difficult to fly off planes, a badly-worried Tyndall lost his temper and sent back such a blistering signal that all communications abruptly ceased.

Shortly before six o'clock, the squadron hove-to under the shelter of Langanes, less than two miles offshore Langanes is low-lying, and the wind, still climbing the scale, swept over it and into the bay beyond without a brpak ; but the sea, compared to an hour ago, was mercifully calm, although the ships still rolled heavily. At once the cruisers and the screen vessels-except the Portpatrick and the Gannet-moved alongside the carriers, took oil hoses aboard. Tyndall, reluctantly and after much heart-searching, had decided that the Portpatrick and Gannet were suspect, a potential liability: they were to escort the crippled carrier back to Scapa.

Exhaustion, an exhaustion almost physical, almost tangible, lay heavily over the mess-decks and the wardroom of the Ulysses. Behind lay another sleepless night, another twenty-four hours with peace unknown and rest impossible. With dull tired minds, men heard the broadcast that the Defender, the Portpatrick and the Gannet were to return to Scapa when the weather moderated. Six gone now, only eight left-half the carrier force gone. Little wonder that men felt sick at heart, felt as if they were being deserted, as if, in Riley's phrase, they were being thrown to the wolves.

But there was remarkably little bitterness, a puzzling lack of resentment which, perhaps, sprung only from sheer passive acceptance.

Brooks was aware of it, this inaction of feeling, this unnatural extinction of response, and was lost for a reason to account for it.

Perhaps, he thought, this was the nadir, the last extremity when sick men and sick minds cease altogether to function, the last slow-down of all vital processes, both human and animal. Perhaps this was just the final apathy. His intellect told him that was reasonable, more, it was inevitable... And all the time some fugitive intuition, some evanescent insight, was thrusting upon him an awareness, a dim shadowy awareness of something altogether different; but his mind was too tired to grasp it.

Whatever it was, it wasn't apathy. For a brief moment that evening, a white-hot anger ran through the ship like a flame, then resentment of the injustice which had provoked it. That there had been cause for anger even Vallery admitted; but his hand had been forced.

It had all happened simply enough. During routine evening tests, it had been discovered that the fighting lights on the lower yardarm were not working. Ice was at once suspected as being the cause.

The lower yardarm, on this evening dazzling white and heavily coated with snow and ice, paralleled the deck, sixty feet above it, eighty feet above the waterline. The fighting lights were suspended below the outer tip: to work on these, a man had either to sit on the yardarm-a most uncomfortable position as the heavy steel W.T. transmission aerial was bolted to its upper length-or in a bosun's chair suspended from the yardarm. It was a difficult enough task at any time: tonight, it had to be done with the maximum speed, because the repairs would interrupt radio transmission-the 3,000-volt steel "Safe-to-Transmit" boards (which broke the electrical ckcuits) had to be withdrawn and left in the keeping of the Officer of the Watch during the repair: it had to be done-very precise, finicky work had to be done-in that sub-zero temperature: it had to be done on that slippery, glass-smooth yardarm, with the Ulysses rolling regularly through a thirty-degree arc: the job was more than ordinarily difficult, it was highly dangerous.

Marshall did not feel justified in detailing the duty L.T.O. for the job, especially as that rating was a middle-aged and very much overweight reservist, long past his climbing prime. He asked for volunteers. It was inevitable that he should have picked Ralston, for that was the kind of man Ralston was.

The task took half an hour, twenty minutes to climb the mast, edge out to the yardarm tip, fit the bosun's chair and lifeline, and ten minutes for the actual repair. Long before he was finished, a hundred, two hundred tired men, robbing themselves of sleep and supper, had come on deck and huddled there in the bitter wind, watching in fascination.

Ralston swung in a great arc across the darkening sky, the gale plucking viciously at his duffel and hood. Twice, wind and wave flung him out, still in his chair, parallel to the yard-arm, forcing him to wrap both arms around the yardarm and hang on for his life. On the second occasion he seemed to strike his face against the aerial, for he held his head for a few seconds afterwards, as if he were dazed. It was then that he lost his gauntlets-he must have had them in his lap, while making some delicate adjustment: they dropped down together, disappeared over the side.

A few minutes later, while Vallery and Turner were standing amidships examining the damage the motor boat had suffered in Scapa Flow, a short, stocky figure came hurriedly out of the after screen door, made for the fo'c'sle at an awkward stumbling run. He pulled up abruptly at the sight of the Captain and the Commander: they saw it was Hastings, the Master-at-Arms.

"What's the matter, Hastings?" Vallery asked curtly. He always found it difficult to conceal his dislike for the Master-at-Arms, his dislike for his harshness, his uncalled-for severity.

"Trouble on the bridge, sir" Hastings jerked out breathlessly. Vallery could have sworn to a gleam of satisfaction in his eye. "Don't know exactly what-could hardly hear a thing but the wind on the phone... I think you'd better come, sir."

They found only three people on the bridge: Etherton, the gunnery officer, one hand still clutching a phone, worried, unhappy: Ralston, his hands hanging loosely by his sides, the palms raw and torn, the face ghastly, the chin with the dead pallor of frostbite, the forehead masked in furrowed, frozen blood: and, lying in a corner, Sub-Lieutenant Carslake, moaning in agony, only the whites of his eyes showing, stupidly fingering his smashed mouth, the torn, bleeding gaps in his prominent upper teeth.

"Good God!" Vallery ejaculated. "Good God above!" He stood there, his hand on the gate, trying to grasp tRe significance of the scene before him. Then his mouth clamped shut and he swung round on the Gunnery Officer.

"What the devil's happened here, Etherton?" he demanded harshly. "What is all this? Has Carslake------"

"Ralston hit him, sir," Etherton broke in.

"Don't be so bloody silly, Guns!" Turner grunted.

"Exactly!" Vallery's voice was impatient. "We can see that. Why?"

"A W.T. messenger came up for the 'Safe-to-Transmit' boards. Carslake gave them to him, about ten minutes ago, I-I think."

"You think! Where were you, Etherton, and why did you permit it? You know very well..." Vallery broke off short, remembering the presence of Ralston and the MA.A.

Etherton muttered something. His words were inaudible in the gale.

Vallery bent forward. "What did you say, Etherton?"

"I was down below, sir." Etherton was looking at the deck. "Just-just for a moment, sir."

"I see. You were down below." Vallery's voice was controlled now, quiet and even; his eyes held an expression that promised ill for Etherton. He looked round at Turner. "Is he badly hurt, Commander?"

"He'll survive," said Turner briefly. He had Carslake on his feet now, still moaning, his hand covering his smashed mouth.

For the first time, the Captain seemed to notice Ralston. He looked at him for a few seconds, an eternity on that bitter, storm lashed bridge, then spoke, monosyllabic, ominous, thirty years of command behind the word.

"Well?"

Ralston's face was frozen, expressionless. His eyes never left Carslake.

"Yes, sir. I did it. I hit him, the treacherous, murdering bastard!"

"Ralston!" The MA.A.'s voice was a whiplash.

Suddenly Ralston's shoulders sagged. With an effort, he looked away from Carslake, looked wearily at Vallery.

"I'm sorry. I forgot. He's got a stripe on his arm, only ratings are bastards." Vallery winced at the bitterness. "But he------"

"You've got frostbite."

"Rub your chin, man!" Turner interrupted sharply.

Slowly, mechanically, Ralston did as he was told. He used the back of his hand. Vallery winced again as he saw the palm of the hand, raw and mutilated, skin and flesh hanging in strips. The agony of that bare-handed descent from the yardarm...

"He tried to murder me, sir. It was deliberate." Ralston sounded tired.

"Do you realise what you are saying?" Vallery's voice was as icy as the wind that swept over Langanes. But he felt the first, faint chill of fear.

"He tried to murder me, sir," Ralston repeated tonelessly. "He returned the boards five minutes before I left the yard-arm. W.T. must have started transmitting just as soon as I reached the mast, coming down."

"Nonsense, Ralston. How dare you------"

"He's right, sir." It was Etherton speaking. He was replacing the receiver carefully, his voice unhappy. "I've just checked."

The chill of fear settled deeper on Vallery's mind. Almost desperately he said:

"Anyone can make a mistake. Ignorance may be culpable, but------"

"Ignorance!" The weariness had vanished from Ralston as if it had never been. He took two quick steps forward. "Ignorance I I gave him these boards, sir, when I came to the bridge. I asked for the Officer of the Watch and he said he was, I didn't know the Gunnery Officer was on duty, sir. When I told him that the boards were to be returned only to me, he said:' I don't want any of your damned insolence, Ralston. I know my job, you stick to yours. Just you get up there and perform your heroics.' He knew, sir."

Carslake burst from the Commander's supporting arm, turned and appealed wildly to the Captain. The eyes were white and staring, the whole face working.

"That's a lie, sir! It's a damned, filthy lie!" He mouthed the words, slurred them through smashed lips. "I never said..."

The words crescendoed into a coughing, choking scream as Ralston's fist smashed viciously, terribly into the torn, bubbling mouth. He staggered drunkenly through the port gate, crashed into the chart house, slid down to lie on the deck, huddled and white and still. Both Turner and the M.AA. had at once leapt forward to pinion the L.T.O.'s arms, but he made no attempt to move.

Above and beyond the howl of the wind, the bridge seemed strangely silent. When Vallery spoke, his voice was quite expressionless.

"Commander, you might phone for a couple of our marines. Have Carslake taken down to his cabin and ask Brooks to have a look at him.

Master-at-Arms?"

"Sir?"

"Take this rating to the Sick Bay, let him have any necessary treatment. Then put him in cells. With an armed guard. Understand?"

"I understand, sir." There was no mistaking the satisfaction in Hastings's voice.

Vallery, Turner and the Gunnery Officer stood in silence as Ralston and the M.A.A. left, in silence as two burly marines carried Carslake, still senseless, off the bridge and below. Vallery moved after them, broke step at Etherton's voice behind him.

"Sir?"

Vallery did not even turn round. "I'll see you later, Etherton."

"No, sir. Please. This is important."

Something in the Gunnery Officer's voice held Vallery. He turned back, impatiently.

"I'm not concerned with excusing myself, sir. There's no excuse." The eyes were fixed steadily on Vallery. "I was standing at the Asdic door when Ralston handed the boards to Carslake. I overheard them, every word they said."

Vallery's face became very still. He glanced at Turner, saw that he, too, was waiting intently.

"And Ralston's version of the conversation?" In spite of himself, Vallery's voice was rough, edged with suspense.

"Completely accurate, sir." The words were hardly audible. "In every detail. Ralston told the exact truth."

Vallery closed his eyes for a moment, turned slowly, heavily away. He made no protest as he felt Turner's hand under his arm, helping him down the steep ladder. Old Socrates had told him a hundred times that he carried the ship on his back. He could feel the weight of it now, the crushing burden of every last ounce of it.

Vallery was at dinner with Tyndall, in the Admiral's day cabin, when the message arrived. Sunk in private thought, he gazed down at his untouched food as Tyndall smoothed out the signal.

The Admiral cleared his throat.

"On course. On time. Sea moderate, wind freshening. Expect rendezvous as planned. Commodore 77."

He laid the signal down. "Good God! Seas moderate, fresh winds, Do you reckon he's in the same damned ocean as us?"

Vallery smiled faintly.

"This is it, sir."

"This is it," Tyndall echoed. He turned to the messenger.

"Make a signal. 'You are running into severe storm. Rendezvous unchanged. You may be delayed. Will remain at rendezvous until your arrival.' That clear enough, Captain?"

"Should be, sir. Radio silence?"

"Oh, yes. Add 'Radio silence. Admiral, 14th A.C.S.' Get it off at once, will you? Then tell W.T. to shut down themselves."

The door shut softly. Tyndall poured himself some coffee, looked across at Vallery.

"That boy still on your mind, Dick?"

Vallery smiled non-committally, lit a cigarette. At once he began to cough harshly.

"Sorry, sir," he apologised. There was silence for some time, then he looked up quizzically.

"What mad ambition drove me to become a cruiser captain?" he asked sadly.

Tyndall grinned. "I don't envy you... I seem to have heard this conversation before. What are you going to do about Ralston, Dick?"

"What would you do, sir?" Vallery countered.

"Keep him locked up till we return from Russia. On a bread-and-water diet, in irons if you like."

Vallery smiled.

"You never were a very good liar, John."

Tyndall laughed. "Touche!" He was warmed, secretly pleased. Rarely did Richard Vallery break through his self-imposed code of formality.

"A heinous offence, we all know, to clout one of H.M. commissioned officers, but if Ether-ton's story is true, my only regret is that Ralston didn't give Brooks a really large-scale job of replanning that young swine's face."

"It's true, all right, I'm afraid," said Vallery soberly. "What it amounts to is that naval discipline, oh, how old Starr would love this, compels me to punish a would, be murderer's victim I" He broke off in a fresh paroxysm of coughing, and Tyndall looked away: he hoped the distress wasn't showing in his face, the pity and anger he felt that Vallery, that very perfect, gentle knight, the finest gentleman and friend he had ever known, should be coughing his heart out, visibly dying on his feet, because of the blind inhumanity of an S.N.O. in London, two thousand miles away. "A victim," Vallery went on at last, "who has already lost his mother, brother and three sisters... I believe he has a father at sea somewhere."

"And Carslake?"

"I shall see him tomorrow. I should like you to be there, sir. I will tell him that he will remain an officer of this ship till we return to Scapa, then resign his commission... I don't think he'd care to appear at a court martial, even as a witness," he finished dryly.

"Not if he's sane, which I doubt," Tyndall agreed. A sudden thought struck him. "Do you think he is sane?" he frowned.

"Carslake," Vallery hesitated. "Yes, I think so, sir. At least, he was. Brooks isn't so sure. Says he didn't like the look of him tonight, something queer about him, he thinks, and in these abnormal conditions small provocations are magnified out of all proportion."

Vallery smiled briefly. "Not that Carslake is liable to regard the twin assaults on pride and person as a small provocation."

Tyndall nodded agreement. "He'll bear watching... Oh, damn! I wish the ship would stay still. Half my coffee on the tablecloth. Young Spicer", he looked towards the pantry," will be as mad as hell. Nineteen years old and a regular tyrant... I thought these would be sheltered waters, Dick?"

"So they are, compared to what's waiting for us. Listen!" He cocked his head to the howling of the wind outside. "Let's see what the weather man has to say about it."

He reached for the desk phone, asked for the transmitting station. After a brief conversation he replaced the receiver.

"T.S. says the anemometer is going crazy. Ousting up to eighty knots. Still north-west. Temperature steady at ten below." He shivered. "Ten below!" Then looked consideringly at Tyndall. "Barometer almost steady at 27.8."

"What!"

"27.8. That's what they say. It's impossible, but that's what they say."

He glanced at his wrist-watch. "Forty-five minutes, sir... This is a very complicated way of committing suicide."

They were silent for a minute, then Tyndall spoke for both of them, answering the question in both their minds.

"We must go, Dick. We must. And by the way, our fire-eating young Captain CD, the doughty Orr, wants to accompany us in the Sirrus... We'll let him tag along a while. He has things to learn, that young man."

At 2020 all ships had completed oiling. Hove to, they had had the utmost difficulty in keeping position in that great wind; but they were infinitely safer than in the open sea. They were given orders to proceed when the weather moderated, the Defender and escorts to Scapa, the squadron to a position 100 miles ENE. of rendezvous. Radio silence was to be strictly observed.

At 2030 the Ulysses and Sirrus got under way to the East. Lights winked after them, messages of good luck. Fluently, Tyndall cursed the squadron for the breach of darken-ship regulations, realised that, barring themselves there was no one on God's earth to see the signals anyway, and ordered a courteous acknowledgment.

At 2045, still two miles short of Langanes point, the Sirrus was plunging desperately in mountainous seas, shipping great masses of water over her entire fo'c'sle and main deck, and, in the darkness, looking far less like a destroyer than a porpoising submarine.

At 2050, at reduced speed, she was observed to be moving in close to such slight shelter as the land afforded there. At the same time, her six-inch Aldis flashed her signal: "Screen doors stove in: 'A' turret not tracking: flooding port boiler-room intake fans." And on the Sirrus's bridge Commander Orr swore in chagrin as he received the Ulysses's final message: "Lesson without words, No. 1. Rejoin squadron at once. You can't come out to play with the big boys." But he swallowed his disappointment, signalled: "Wilco. Just you wait till I grow up," pulled the Sirrus round in a madly swinging half-circle and headed thankfully back for shelter. Aboard the flagship, it was lost to sight almost immediately.

At 2100, the Ulysses moved out into the Denmark Strait.