HMS Ulysses

CHAPTER EIGHT THURSDAY NIGHT

IT WAS still only afternoon, but the grey Arctic twilight was already thickening over the sea as the Ulysses dropped slowly astern. The wind had died away completely; again the snow was falling, steadily, heavily, and visibility was down to a bare cable-length. It was bitterly cold.

In little groups of three and four, officers and men made their way aft to the starboard side of the poop-deck. Exhausted, bone-chilled men, mostly sunk in private and bitter thought, they shuffled wordlessly aft, dragging feet kicking up little puffs of powdery snow. On the poop, they ranged themselves soundlessly behind the Captain or in a line inboard and aft of the long, symmetrical row of snow-covered hummocks that heaved up roundly from the unbroken whiteness of the poop.

The Captain was flanked by three of his officers-Carslake, Etherton and the Surgeon-Commander. Carslake was by the guard-rail, the lower half of his face swathed in bandages to the eyes. For the second time in twenty-four hours he had waylaid Vallery, begged him to reconsider the decision to deprive him of his commission. On the first occasion Vallery had been adamant, almost contemptuous: ten minutes ago he had been icy and abrupt, had threatened Carslake with close arrest if he annoyed him again. And now Carslake just stared unseeingly into the snow and gloom, pale-blue eyes darkened and heavy with hate.

Etherton stood just behind Vallery's left shoulder, shivering uncontrollably. Above the white, jerking line of compressed mouth, cheek and jaw muscles were working incessantly: only his eyes were steady, dulled in sick fascination at the curious mound at his feet. Brooks, too, was tight-lipped, but there the resemblance ended: red of face and wrathful blue of eye, he fumed and seemed as can only a doctor whose orders have been openly flouted by the critically ill. Vallery, as Brooks had told him, forcibly and insubor-dinately, had no bloody right to be there, was all sorts of a damned fool for leaving his bunk. But, as Vallery had mildly pointed out, somebody had to conduct a funeral service, and that was the Captain's duty if the padre couldn't do it. And this day the padre couldn't do it, for it was the padre who lay dead at his feet.... At his feet, and at the feet of Etherton-the man who had surely killed him.

The padre had died four hours ago, just after Charlie had gone. Tyndall had been far out in his estimate. Charlie had not appeared within the hour. Charlie had not appeared until mid-morning, but when he did come he had the company of three of his kind. A long haul indeed from the Norwegian coast to this, the 10th degree west of longitude, but nothing for these giant Condors Focke-Wulf 200s, who regularly flew the great dawn to dusk half-circle from Trondheim to Occupied France, round the West Coast of the British Isles.

Condors in company always meant trouble, and these were no exception.

They flew directly over the convoy, approaching from astern: the barrage from merchant ships and escorts was intense, and the bombing attack was pressed home with a marked lack of enthusiasm: the Condors bombed from a height of 7,000 feet. In that clear, cold morning air the bombs were in view almost from the moment they cleared the bomb-bays: there was time to spare to take avoiding action. Almost at once the Condors had broken off the attack and disappeared to the east impressed, but apparently unharmed, by the warmth of their reception.

In the circumstances, the attack was highly suspicious. Circumspect Charlie might normally be on reconnaissance, but on the rare occasions that he chose to attack he generally did so with courage and determination. The recent sally was just too timorous, the tactics too obviously hopeless. Possibly, of course, recent entrants to the Luftwaffe were given to a discretion so signally lacking in their predecessors, or perhaps they were under strict orders not to risk their valuable craft. But probably, almost certainly, it was thought, that futile attack was only diversionary and the main danger lay elsewhere.

The watch over and under the sea was intensified.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed and nothing had happened. Radar and Asdic screens remained obstinately clear. Tyndall finally decided that there was no justification for keeping the entire ship's company, so desperately in need of rest, at Action Stations for a moment longer and ordered the stand-down to be sounded.

Normal Defence Stations were resumed. All forenoon work had been cancelled, and officers and ratings off watch, almost to a man, went to snatch what brief sleep they could. But not all. Brooks and Nicholls had their patients to attend to: the Navigator returned to the chart-house: Marshall and his Commissioned Gunner, Mr. Peters, resumed their interrupted routine rounds: and Etherton, nervous, anxious, over-sensitive and desperately eager to redeem himself for his share in the Carslake-Ralston episode, remained huddled and watchful in the cold, lonely eyrie of the Director Tower.

The sharp, urgent call from the deck outside came to Marshall and Peters as they were talking to the Leading Wireman in charge of No. 2 Electrical Shop. The shop was on the port side of the fo'c'sle deck cross-passage which ran athwartships for'ard of the wardroom, curving aft round the trunking of 'B' turret. Four quick steps had them out of the shop, through the screen door and peering over the side through the freshly falling snow, following the gesticulating finger of an excited marine. Marshall glanced at the man, recognised him immediately: it was Charteris, the only ranker known personally to every officer in the ship-in port, he doubled as wardroom barman.

"What is it, Charteris?" he demanded. "What are you seeing? Quickly, man!"

"There, sir! Look! Out there, no, a bit more to your right! It's, it's a sub, sir, a U-boat!"

"What? What's that? A U-boat?" Marshall half-turned as the Rev. Winthrop, the padre, squeezed to the rail between himself and Charteris.

"Where? Where is it? Show me, show me!"

"Straight ahead, padre. I can see it now, but it's a damned funny shape for a U-boat-if you'll excuse the language," Marshall added hastily. He caught the war-like, un-Christian gleam in Winthrop's eyes, smothered a laugh and peered through the snow at the strange squat shape which had now drifted almost abreast of them.

High up in the Tower, Etherton's restless, hunting eyes had already seen it, even before Charteris. Like Charteris, he immediately thought it was a U-boat caught surfacing in a snow storm, the pay-off of the attack by the Condors: the thought that Asdic or radar would certainly have picked it up never occurred to him. Time, speed, that was the essence, before it vanished. Unthinkingly, he grabbed the phone to the for'ard multiple pom-pom.

"Director-pom-pom!" he barked urgently. "U-boat, port 60. Range 100 yards, moving aft. Repeat, port 60. Can you see it?... No, no, port 60-70 now!" he shouted desperately. "Oh, good, good! Commence tracking."

"On target, sir," the receiver crackled in his ear.

"Open fire-continuous!"

"Sir-but, sir, Kingston's not here. He went------"

"Never mind Kingston!" Etherton shouted furiously. Kingston, he knew, was Captain of the Gun. "Open fire, you fools, now! I'll take full responsibility." He thrust the phone back on the rest, moved across to the observation panel... Then realisation, sickening, shocking, fear seared through his mind and he lunged desperately for the phone.

"Belay the last order!" he shouted wildly. "Cease fire! Cease fire! Oh, my God, my God, my God!" Through the receiver came the staccato, angry bark of the two-pounder. The receiver dropped from his hand, crashed against the bulkhead. It was too late.

It was too late because he had committed the cardinal sin, he had forgotten to order the removal of the muzzle-covers, the metal plates that sealed off the flash-covers of the guns when not in use. And the shells were fused to explode on contact...

The first shell exploded inside its barrel, killing the trainer and seriously wounding the communication number: the other three smashed through their flimsy covers and exploded within a second of each other, a few feet from the faces of the four watchers on the fo'c'sle deck.

All four were untouched, miraculously untouched by the flying, screaming metal. It flew outwards and downwards, a red-hot iron hail sizzling into the sea. But the blast of the explosion was backwards, and the power of even a few pounds of high explosive detonating at arm's length is lethal.

The padre died instantly, Peters and Charteris within seconds, and all from the same cause-telescoped occiputs. The blast hurled them backwards off their feet, as if flung by a giant hand, the backs of their heads smashing to an eggshell pulp against the bulkhead. The blood seeped darkly into the snow, was obliterated in a moment.

Marshall was lucky, fantastically so. The explosion, he said afterwards that it was like getting in the way of the driving piston of the Coronation Scot-flung him through the open door behind him, ripped off the heels of both shoes as they caught on the storm-sill: he braked violently in mid-air, described a complete somersault, slithered along the passage and smashed squarely into the trunking of 'B' turret, his back framed by the four big spikes of the butterfly nuts securing an inspection hatch. Had he been standing a foot to the right or the left, had his heels been two inches higher as he catapulted through the doorway, had he hit the turret a hair's-breadth to the left or right, Lieutenant Marshall had no right to be alive. The laws of chance said so, overwhelmingly. As it was, Marshall was now sitting up in the Sick Bay, strapped, broken ribs making breathing painful, but otherwise unharmed.

The upturned lifeboat, mute token of some earlier tragedy on the Russian Convoys, had long since vanished into the white twilight.

Captain Vallery's voice, low and husky, died softly away. He stepped back, closing the Prayer Book, and the forlorn notes of the bugle echoed briefly over the poop and died in the blanketing snow. Men stood silently, unmovingly, as, one by one, the thirteen figures shrouded in weighted canvas slid down the tipped plank, down from under the Union Flag, splashed heavily into the Arctic and were gone. For long seconds, no one moved. The unreal, hypnotic effect of that ghostly ritual of burial held tired, sluggish minds in unwilling thrall, held men oblivious to cold and discomfort. Even when Etherton half-stepped forward, sighed, crumpled down quietly, unspectacularly in the snow, the trance-like hiatus continued. Some ignored him, others glanced his way, incuriously. It seemed absurd, but it struck Nicholls, standing in the background, that they might have stayed there indefinitely, the minds and the blood of men slowing up, coagulating, freezing, while they turned to pillars of ice. Then suddenly, with exacerbating abruptness, the spell was shattered: the strident scream of the Emergency Stations whistle seared through the gathering gloom.

It took Vallery about three minutes to reach the bridge. He rested often, pausing on every second or third step of the four ladders that reached up to the bridge: even so, the climb drained the last reserves of his frail strength. Brooks had to half-carry him through the gate.

Vallery clung to the binnacle, fighting for breath through foam-flecked lips; but his eyes were alive, alert as always, probing through the swirling snow.

"Contact closing, closing: steady on course, interception course: speed unchanged." The radar loudspeaker was muffled, impersonal; but the calm precise tones of Lieutenant Bowden were unmistakable.

"Good, good! We'll fox him yet!" Tyndall, his tired, sagging face lit up in almost beaming anticipation, turned to the Captain. The prospect of action always delighted Tyndall.

"Something coming up from the SSW., Captain. Good God above, man, what are you doing here?" He was shocked at Vallery's appearance. "Brooks !"

Why in heaven's name "Suppose you try talking to him?" Brooks growled wrathfully. He slammed the gate shut behind him, stalked stiffly off the bridge.

"What's the matter with him?" Tyndall asked of no one in particular.

"What the hell am I supposed to have done?"

"Nothing, sir," Vallery pacified him. "It's all my fault, disobeying doctor's orders and what have you. You were saying, ?"

"Ah, yes. Trouble, I'm afraid, Captain." Vallery smiled secretly as he saw the satisfaction, the pleased anticipation creep back into the Admiral's face. "Radar reports a surface vessel approaching, big, fast, more or less on interception course for us.".

"And not ours, of course?" Vallery murmured. He looked up suddenly.

"By jove, sir, it couldn't be, ?"

"The Tirpitz!" Tyndall finished for him. He shook his head in decision. "My first thought, too, but no. Admiralty and Air Force are watching her like a broody hen over her eggs. If she moves a foot, we'll know... Probably some heavy cruiser."

"Closing. Closing. Course unaltered." Bowden's voice, clipped, easy, was vaguely reminiscent of a cricket commentator's. "Estimated speed 24, repeat 24 knots."

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

"W.T., bridge. W.T., bridge. Signal from convoy: Stirling, Admiral. Understood. Wilco. Out."

"Excellent, excellent! From Jeffries," Tyndall explained. "I sent him a signal ordering the convoy to alter course to NNW. That should take 'em well clear of our approaching friend."

Vallery nodded. "How far ahead is the convoy, sir?"

"Pilot!" Tyndall called and leaned back expectantly.

"Six, six and a half miles." The Kapok Kid's face was expressionless.

"He's slipping," Tyndall said mournfully. "The strain's telling. A couple of days ago he'd have given us the distance to the nearest yard.

Six miles, far enough, Captain. He'll never pick 'em up. Bowden says he hasn't even picked us up yet, that the intersection of courses must be pure coincidence... I gather Lieutenant Bowden has a poor opinion of German radar."

"I know. I hope he's right. For the first time the question is of rather more than academic interest." Vallery gazed to the South, his binoculars to his eyes: there was only the sea, the thinning snow.

"Anyway, this came at a good time."

Tyndall arched a bushy eyebrow.

"It was strange, down there on the poop." Vallery was hesitant. "There was something weird, uncanny in the air. I didn't like it, sir. It was desperately, well, almost frightening. The snow, the silence, the dead men, thirteen dead men, I can only guess how the men felt, about Etherton, about anything. But it wasn't good, don't know how it would have ended-----"

"Five miles," the loudspeaker cut in. "Repeat, five miles. Course, speed, constant."

"Five miles," Tyndall repeated in relief. Intangibles bothered him.

"Time to trail our coats a little, Captain. We'll soon be in what Bowden reckons is his radar range. Due east, I think, it'll look as if we're covering the tail of the convoy and heading for the North Cape."

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

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

"Radar-bridge. Constant distance, altering on interception course."

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

Vallery reached for the Director handset.

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

Vallery replaced the set, looked across at Tyndall.

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

"Sounds uncommon like our friends here." Tyndall jerked his head in the direction of the Kapok Kid, then looked up in surprise.

"Courtney? Did you say 'Courtney'? Where's Guns?"

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

The Ulysses shuddered, and the whip-like crash of 'X' turret drowned Vallery's voice as the 5.25 shells screamed away into the twilight.

Seconds later, the ship shook again as the guns of 'Y' turret joined in.

Thereafter the guns fired alternately, one shell at a time, every half-minute: there was no point in wasting ammunition when the fall of shot could not be observed; but it was probably the bare minimum necessary to infuriate the enemy and distract his attention from everything except the ship ahead.

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

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

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

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

An illusory appearance. Everyone ducked low, in reflex instinct, as the shells whistled just over their heads and plunged into the sea ahead.

Everyone, that is, except the Kapok Kid. He bent an impassive eye on the Admiral as the latter slowly straightened up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Just take the message, Chrysler."

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

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

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

"That was Nicholls." Vallery's voice was flat, colourless.

"Lieutenant Etherton shot himself in his cabin, five minutes ago."

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

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

Any impartial court of judgment would have cleared Tyndall of all guilt, would have acquitted him without a trial. He had done what he thought right, what any commander would have done in his place. But Tyndall sat before the merciless court of his own conscience. He could not forget that it was he who had re-routed the convoy so far to the north, that it was he who had ignored official orders to break straight for the North Cape, that it was exactly on latitude 70 N., where their Lordships had told him they would be, that FR77 had, on that cold, clear windless dawn, blundered straight into the heart of the heaviest concentration of U-boats encountered in the Arctic during the entire course of the war.

The wolf-pack had struck at its favourite hour-the dawn, and from its favourite position, the north-east, with the dawn in its eyes. It struck cruelly, skilfully and with a calculated ferocity. Admittedly, the era of Kapitan Leutnant Prien-his U-boat long ago sent to the bottom with all hands by the destroyer Wolverine, and his illustrious contemporaries, the hey-day of the great U-boat Commanders, the high noon of individual brilliance and great personal gallantry, was gone.

But in its place-and generally acknowledged to be even more dangerous, more deadly, were the concerted, highly integrated mass attacks of the wolf-packs, methodical, machine-like, almost reduced to a formula, under a single directing command.

The Cochella, third vessel in the port line, was the first to go. Sister ship to the Vytura and the Varella, also accompanying her in FR77, the Cochella carried over 3,000,000 gallons of 100-octane petrol. She was hit by at least three torpedoes: the first two broke her almost in half, the third triggered off a stupendous detonation that literally blew her out of existence. One moment she was there, sailing serenely through the limpid twilight of sunrise: the next moment she was gone. Gone, completely, utterly gone, with only a seething ocean, convulsed in boiling white, to show where she had been: gone, while stunned eardrums and stupefied minds struggled vainly to grasp the significance of what had happened: gone, while blind reflex instinct hurled men into whatever shelter offered as a storm of lethal metal swept over the fleet.

Two ships took the full force of the explosion. A huge mass of metal-it might have been a winch-passed clear through the superstructure of the Sinus, a cable-length away on the starboard: it completely wrecked the radar office. What happened to the other ship immediately astern, the impossibly-named Tennessee Adventurer, was not clear, but almost certainly her wheelhouse and bridge had been severely damaged: she had lost steering control, was not under command.

Tragically, this was not at first understood, simply because it was not apparent. Tyndall, recovering fast from the sheer physical shock of the explosion, broke out the signal for an emergency turn to port. The wolf-pack, obviously, lay on the port hand, and the only action to take to minimise further losses, to counter the enemy strategy, was to head straight towards them. He was reasonably sure that the U-boats would be bunched-generally, they strung out only for the slow convoys. Besides, he had adopted this tactic several times in the past with a high degree of success. Finally, it cut the U-boats' target to an impossible tenth, forcing on them the alternative of diving or the risk of being trampled under.

With the immaculate precision and co-ordination of Olympic equestrians, the convoy heeled steadily over to starboard, slewed majestically round, trailing curved, white wakes phos-phorescently alive in the near-darkness that still clung to the surface of the sea. Too late, it was seen that the Tennessee Adventurer was not under command. Slowly, then with dis-, maying speed, she came round to the east, angling directly for another merchantman, the Tobacco Planter. There was barely time to think, to appreciate the inevitable: frantically, the Planter's helm went hard over in an attempt to clear the other astern, but the wildly swinging Adventurer, obviously completely out of control, matched the Planter's tightening circle, foot by inexorable foot, blind malice at the helm.

She struck the Planter with sickening violence just for'ard of the bridge. The Adventurer's bows, crumpling as they went, bit deeply into her side, fifteen, twenty feet in a chaos of tearing, rending metal: the stopping power of 10,000 tons deadweight travelling at 15 knots is fantastic. The wound was mortal, and the Planter's own momentum, carrying her past, wrenched her free from the lethal bows, opening the wound to the hungry sea and hastened her own end..Almost at once she began to fill, to list heavily to starboard. Aboard the Adventurer, someone must have taken over command: her engine stopped, she lay almost motionless alongside the sinking ship, slightly down by the head.

The rest of the convoy cleared the drifting vessels, steadied west by north. Far out on the starboard hand, Commander Orr, in the Sirrus, clawed his damaged destroyer round in a violent turn, headed back towards the crippled freighters. He had gone less than half a mile when he was recalled by a vicious signal from the flagship. Tyndall was under no illusions. The Adventurer, he knew, might remain there all day, unharmed-it was obvious that the Planter would be gone in a matter of minutes-but that would be a guarantee neither of the absence of U-boats nor of the sudden access of misguided enemy chivalry: the enemy would be there, would wait to the last possible second before dark in the hope that some rescue destroyer would heave to alongside the Adventurer.

In that respect, Tyndall was right. The Adventurer was torpedoed just before sunset. Three-quarters of the ship's company escaped in lifeboats, along with twenty survivors picked up from the Planter. A month later the frigate Esher found them, in three lifeboats tied line ahead, off the bitter, iron coast of Bear Island, heading steadily north. The Captain, alert and upright, was still sitting in the stern-sheets, empty eye-sockets searching for some lost horizon, a withered claw locked to the tiller. The rest were sitting or lying about the boats, one actually standing, his arm cradled around the mast, and all with shrunken sun-blackened lips drawn back in hideous mirth. The log-book lay beside the Captain, empty: all had frozen to death on that first night. The young frigate commander had cast them adrift, watched them disappear over the northern rim of the world, steering for the Barrier. And the Barrier is the region of the great silence, the seas of incredible peace, so peaceful, so calm, so cold that they may be there yet, the dead who cannot rest. A mean and shabby end for the temple of the spirit.... It is not known whether the Admiralty approved the action of the captain of the frigate.

But in the major respect, that of anticipating enemy disposition, the Admiral was utterly wrong. The wolf-pack commander had outguessed him and it was arguable that Tyndall should have foreseen this. His tactic of swinging an fast, highly manoeuvrable, impeccably handled, bobbed and weaved their way to safety with almost contemptuous ease, straightened up and headed south under maximum power.

The merchant ships, big, clumsy, relatively slow, were less fortunate.

Two ships in the port line, a tanker and a freighter, were struck: miraculously, both just staggered under the numbing shock, then kept on coming. Not so the big freighter immediately behind them, her holds crammed with tanks, her decks lined with them. She was torpedoed three times in three seconds: there was no smoke, no fire, no spectacular after-explosion: sieved and ripped from stern to stem, she sank quickly, quietly, still on even keel, dragged down by the sheer weight of metal.

No one below decks had even the slightest chance of escaping.

A merchantman in the centre line, the Belle Me, was torpedoed amidships. There were two separate explosions, probably she had been struck twice-and she was instantly on fire. Within seconds, the list to port was pronounced, increasing momentarily: gradually her rails dipped under, the outslung lifeboats almost touching the surface of the sea. A dozen, fifteen men were seen to be slipping, sliding down the sheering decks and hatch covers, already half-submerged, towards the nearest lifeboat. Desperately they hacked at belly-band securing ropes, piled into the lifeboat in grotesquely comical haste, pushed it clear of the dipping davits, seized the oars and pulled frantically away. From beginning to end, hardly a minute had elapsed.

Half a dozen powerful strokes had them clear beyond their ship's counter: two more took them straight under the swinging bows of the Walter A. Baddeley, her companion tank-carrier in the starboard line.

The consummate seamanship that had saved the Baddeley could do nothing to save the lifeboat: the little boat crumpled and splintered like a matchwood toy, catapulting screaming men into the icy sea.

As the big, grey hull of the Baddeley slid swiftly by them, they struck out with insane strength that made nothing of their heavy Arctic clothing. At such times, reason vanishes: the thought that if, by some God-given miracle, they were to escape the guillotine of the Baddeley''s single great screw, they would do so only to die minutes later in the glacial cold of the Arctic, never occurred to them. But, as it happened, death came by neither metal nor cold. They were still struggling, almost abreast the poop, vainly trying to clear the rushing, sucking vortex of water, when the torpedoes struck the Baddeley, close together and simultaneously, just for'ard of the rudder.

For swimming men who have been in the close vicinity of an underwater high explosion there can be no shadow of hope: the effect is inhuman, revolting, shocking beyond conception: in such cases, experienced doctors, pathologists even, can with difficulty bring themselves to look upon what were once human beings... But for these men, as so often in the Arctic, death was kind, for they died unknowing.

The Walter A. Baddeley's stern had been almost completely blown off.

Hundreds of tons of water were already rushing in the great, gaping hole below the counter, racing through cross-bulkheads fractured by the explosion, smashing open engine-boiler room watertight doors buckled by the blast, pulling her down by the stern, steadily, relentlessly, till her taffrail dipped salute to the waiting Arctic. For a moment, she hung there. Then, in quick succession from deep inside the hull, came a muffled explosion, the ear-shattering, frightening roar of escaping high-pressure steam and the thunderous crash of massive boilers rending away from their stools as the ship upended. Almost immediately the shattered stern lurched heavily, sunk lower and lower till the poop was completely gone, till the dripping forefoot was tilted high above the sea. Foot by foot the angle of tilt increased, the stern plunged a hundred, two hundred feet under the surface of the sea, the bows rearing almost as high against the blue of the sky, buoyed up by half a million cubic feet of trapped air.

The ship was exactly four degrees off the vertical when the end came. It was possible to establish this angle precisely, for it was just at that second, half a mile away aboard the Ulysses, that the shutter clicked, the shutter of the camera in Lieutenant Nicholls's gauntleted hands.

A camera that captured an unforgettable picture-a stark, simple picture of a sinking ship almost vertically upright against a pale-blue sky. A picture with a strange lack of detail, with the exception only of two squat shapes, improbably suspended in mid-air: these were 30-ton tanks, broken loose from their foredeck lashings, caught in midnight as they smashed down on the bridge structure, awash in the sea. In the background was the stern of the Belle Isle, the screw out of the water, the Red Duster trailing idly in the peaceful sea.

Bare seconds after the camera had clicked, the camera was blown from Nicholls's hands, the case crumpling against a bulkhead, the lens shattering but the film still intact. Panic-stricken the seamen in the lifeboat may have been, but it wasn't unreasoning panic: in No. 2 hold, just for'ard of the fire, the Belle Isle had been carrying over 1,000 tons of tank ammunition.... Broken cleanly in two, she was gone inside a minute: the Baddeley's bows, riddled by the explosion, slid gently down behind her.

The echoes of the explosion were still rolling out over the sea in ululating diminuendo when they were caught up and flung back by a series of muffled reports from the South. Less than two miles away, the Sirrus, Vectra and Viking, dazzling white in the morning sun, were weaving a crazily intricate pattern over the sea, depth-charges cascading from either side of their poop-decks. From time to time, one or other almost disappeared behind towering mushrooms of erupting water and spray, reappearing magically as the white columns fell back into the sea.

To join in the hunt, to satisfy the flaming, primitive lust for revenge-that was Tyndall's first impulse. The Kapok Kid looked at him furtively and wondered, wondered at the hunched rigidity, the compressed lipless mouth, the face contorted in white and bitter rage-a bitterness directed not least against himself. Tyndall twisted suddenly in his seat.

"Bentley! Signal the Stirling-ascertain damage." The Stirling was more than a mile astern now, but coming round fast, her speed at least twenty knots.

"Making water after engine-room," Bentley read eventually. "Store-rooms flooded, but hull damage slight. Under control. Steering gear jammed. On emergency steering. Am all right."

"Thank God for that! Signal,' Take over: proceed east.' Come on, Captain, let's give Orr a hand to deal with these murdering hounds!"

The Kapok Kid looked at him in sudden dismay.

"Sir!"

"Yes, yes, Pilot! What is it?" Tyndall was curt, impatient.

"How about that first U-boat?" Carpenter ventured. "Can't be much more than a mile to the south, sir. Shouldn't we-----?"

"God Almighty!" Tyndall swore. His face was suffused with anger. "Are you trying to tell me... ?" He broke off abruptly, stared at Carpenter for a long moment. "What did you say, Pilot?"

"The boat that sunk the tanker, sir," the Kapok Kid said carefully.

"She could have reloaded by now and she's in a perfect position------"

"Of course, of course," Tyndall muttered. He passed a hand across his eyes, flickered a glance at Vallery. The Captain had his head averted.

Again the hand passed across the tired eyes. "You're quite right, Pilot, quite right." He paused, then smiled. "As usual, damn you!"

The Ulysses found nothing to the north. The U-boat that had sunk the Cochella and sprung the trap had wisely decamped. While they were quartering the area, they heard the sound of gunfire, saw the smoke erupting from the Sinus's 4.7s.

"Ask him what all the bloody fuss is about," Tyndall demanded irritably.

The Kapok Kid smiled secretly: the old man had life in him yet.

"Vectra and Viking damaged, probably destroyed U-boat," the message read. "Vectra and self sunk surfaced boat. How about you?"

"How about you!" Tyndall exploded. "Damn his confounded insolence! How about you? He'll have the oldest, bloody minesweeper in Scapa for his next command... This is all your fault, Pilot!"

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Maybe he's only asking in a spirit of-ah-anxious concern."

"How would you like to be his Navigator in his next command?" said Tyndall dangerously. The Kapok Kid retired to his charthouse.

"Carrington!"

"Sir?" The First Lieutenant was his invariable self, clear-eyed, freshly shaven, competent, alert. The sallow skin, hall-mark of all men who have spent too many years under tropical suns-was unshadowed by fatigue. He hadn't slept for three days.

"What do you make of that?" He pointed to the northwest. Curiously woolly grey clouds were blotting out the horizon; before them the sea dusked to indigo under wandering catspaws from the north.

"Hard to say, sir," Carrington said slowly. "Not heavy weather, that's certain... I've seen this before, sir, low, twisting cloud blowing up on a fine morning with a temperature rise. Very common in the Aleutians and the Bering Sea, sir, and there it means fog, heavy mist."

"And you, Captain?"

"No idea, sir." Vallery shook his head decisively. The plasma transfusion seemed to have helped him. "New to me, never seen it before."

"Thought not," Tyndall granted. "Neither have I, that's why I asked Number One first... If you think it's fog that's coming up, Number One, let me know, will you? Can't afford to have convoy and escorts scattered over half the Arctic if the weather closes down. Although, mind you," he added bitterly, "I think they'd be a damned sight safer without us!"

"I can tell you now, sir." Carrington had that rare gift, the ability to make a confident, quietly unarguable assertion without giving the slightest offence. "It's fog."

"Fair enough." Tyndall never doubted him. "Let's get the hell out of it. Bentley-signal the destroyers: Break off engagement. Rejoin convoy. And Bentley, add the word 'Immediate.'" He turned to Vallery. "For Commander Orr's benefit."

Within the hour, merchant ships and escorts were on station again, on a north-east course at first to clear any further packs on latitude 70. To the south-east, the sun was still bright: but the first thick, writhing tendrils of the mist, chill and dank, were already swirling round the convoy. Speed had been reduced to six knots: all ships were streaming fog-buoys.

Tyndall shivered, climbed stiffly from his chair as the stand-down sounded. He passed through the gate, stopped in the passage outside. He laid a glove on Chrysler's shoulder, kept it there as the boy turned round in surprise.

"Just wanted a squint at these eyes of yours, laddie," he smiled. "We owe them a lot. Thank you very much-we will not forget." He looked a long time into the young face, forgot his own exhaustion and swore softly in sudden compassion as he saw the red-rimmed eyes, the white, maculated cheeks stained with embarrassed pleasure.

"How old are you, Chrysler?" he asked abruptly.

"Eighteen, sir... in two days' time." The soft West Country voice was almost defiant.

"He'll be eighteen-in two days' time!" Tyndall repeated slowly to himself. "Good God! Good God above!" He dropped his hand, walked wearily aft to the shelter, entered, closed the door behind him.

"He'll be eighteen-in two days' time," he repeated, like a man in a daze.

Vallery propped himself up on the settee. "Who? Young Chrysler?"

Tyndall nodded unhappily.

"I know." Vallery was very quiet. "I know how it is... He did a fine job today."

Tyndall sagged down in a chair. His mouth twisted in bitterness.

"The only one... Dear God, what a mess!" He drew heavily on a cigarette, stared down at the floor. "Ten green bottles, hanging on a wall," he murmured absently.

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Fourteen ships left Scapa, eighteen St. John-the two components of FR77," Tyndall said softly. "Thirty-two ships in all. And now "-he paused-" now there are seventeen, and three of these damaged. I'm counting the Tennessee Adventurer as a dead duck." He swore savagely.

"Hell's teeth, how I hate,leaving ships like that, sitting targets for any murdering..." He stopped short, drew on his cigarette again, deeply. "Doing wonderfully, amn't I?"

"Ah, nonsense, sir!" Vallery interrupted, impatient, almost angry.

"It wasn't any fault of yours that the carriers had to return."

"Meaning that the rest was my fault?" Tyndall smiled faintly, lifted a hand to silence the automatic protest. "Sorry, Dick, I know you didn't meant that-but it's true, it's true. Six merchant boys gone in ten minutes-six! And we shouldn't have lost one of them." Head bent, elbows on knees, he screwed the heels of his palms into exhausted eyes.

"Rear-Admiral Tyndall, master strategist," he went on softly. "Alters convoy course to run smack into a heavy cruiser, alters it again to run straight into the biggest wolf-pack I've ever known-and just where the Admiralty said they would be.... No matter what old Starr does to me when I get back, I've no kick coming. Not now, not after this."

He rose heavily to his feet. The light of the single lamp caught his face. Vallery was shocked at the change.

"Where to, now, sir?" he asked.

"The bridge. No, no, stay where you are, Dick." He tried to smile, but the smile was a grimace that flickered only to die. "Leave me in peace while I ponder my next miscalculation."

He opened the door, stopped dead as he heard the unmistakable whistling of shells close above, heard the E.A.S. Signal screaming urgently through the fog. Tyndall turned his head slowly, looked back into the shelter.

"It looks," he said bitterly, "as if I've already made it."