Stand-down came at 0800. At 0810 the port watch was below, making tea, washing, queueing up at the galley for H.U. breakfast trays, when a muffled explosion shook the Ulysses. Towels, soap, cups, plates and trays went flying or where left where they were: blasphemous and bitter, the men were on their way before Vallery’s hand closed on the Emergency switch.
Less than half a mile away the Invader was slewing round in a violent half-circle, her flight-deck tilted over at a crazy angle. It was snowing heavily again now, but not heavily enough to obscure the great gouts of black oily smoke belching up for’ard of the Invader’s bridge.
Even as the crew of the Ulysses watched, she came to rest, wallowing dangerously in the troughs between the great waves.
“The fools, the crazy fools!” Tyndall was terribly bitter, unreasonably so; even to Vallery, he would not admit how much he was now feeling the burden, the strain of command that sparked off his now almost chronic irritability. “This is what happens, Captain, when a ship loses station! And it’s as much my fault as theirs-should have sent a destroyer to escort her back.” He peered through his binoculars, turned to Vallery. “Make a signal please:’ Estimate of damage, please inform.’… That damned U-boat must have trailed her from first light, waiting for a line-up.”
Vallery said nothing. He knew how Tyndall must feel to see one of his ships heavily damaged, maybe sinking. The Invader was still lying over at the same unnatural angle, the smoke rising in a steady column now.
There was no sign of flames.
“Going to investigate, sir?” Vallery inquired.
Tyndall bit his lip thoughtfully and hesitated.
“Yes, I think we’d better do it ourselves. Order squadron to proceed, same speed, same course. Signal the Baliol and the Nairn to stand by the Invader.”
Vallery, watching the flags fluttering to the yardarm, was aware of someone at his elbow. He half-turned.
“That was no U-boat, sir.” The Kapok Kid was very sure of himself.
“She can’t have been torpedoed.”
Tyndall overheard him. He swung round in his chair, glared at the unfortunate navigator.
“What the devil do you know about it, sir?” he growled. When the Admiral addressed his subordinates as “sir,” it was time to take to the boats. The Kapok Kid flushed to the roots of his blond hair, but he stood his ground.
“Well, sir, in the first place the Sirrus is covering the Invader’s port side, though well ahead, ever since your recall signal.
She’s been quartering that area for some time. I’m sure Commander Orr would have picked her up. Also, it’s far too rough for any sub. to maintain periscope depth, far less line up a firing track. And if the U-boat did fire, it wouldn’t only fire one-six more likely, and, from that firing angle, the rest of the squadron must have been almost a solid wall behind the Invader. But no one else has been hit… I did three years in the trade, sir.”
“I did ten,” Tyndall growled. “Guesswork, Pilot, just guesswork.”
“No, sir,” Carpenter persisted. “It’s not. I can’t swear to it”, he had his binoculars to his eyes” but I’m almost sure the Invader is going astern. Could only be because her bows, below the waterline, that is, have been damaged or blown off. Must have been a mine, sir, probably acoustic.”
“Ah, of course, of course!” Tyndall was very acid. “Moored in 6,000 feet of water, no doubt?”
“A drifting mine, sir,” the Kapok Kid said patiently. “Or an old acoustic torpedo-spent German torpedoes don’t always sink. Probably a mine, though.”
“Suppose you’ll be telling me next what mark it is and when it was laid,” Tyndall growled. But he was impressed in spite of himself. And the Invader was going astern, although slowly, without enough speed to give her steerage way. She still wallowed helplessly in the great troughs.
An Aldis clacked acknowledgment to the winking light on the Invader.
Bentley tore a sheet off a signal pad, handed it to Vallery.
“‘Invader to Admiral,’ “the Captain read. “‘Am badly holed, starboard side for’ard, very deep. Suspect drifting mine. Am investigating extent of damage. Will report soon.'”
Tyndall took the signal from him and read it slowly. Then he looked over his shoulder and smiled faintly.
“You were dead right, my boy, it seems. Please accept an old curmudgeon’s apologies.”
Carpenter murmured something and turned away, brick-red again with embarrassment. Tyndall grinned faintly at the Captain, then became thoughtful.
“I think we’d better talk to him personally, Captain. Barlow, isn’t it? Make a signal.”
They climbed down two decks to the Fighter Direction room. Westcliffe vacated his chair for the Admiral.
“Captain Barlow?” Tyndall spoke into the hand-piece.
“Speaking.” The sound came from the loudspeaker above his head.
“Admiral here, Captain. How are things?”
“We’ll manage, sir. Lost most of our bows, I’m afraid. Several casualties. Oil fires, but under control. W.T. doors all holding, and engineers and damage control parties are shoring up the cross-bulkheads.”
“Can you go ahead at all, Captain?”
“Could do, sir, but risky-in this, anyway.”
“Think you could make it back to base?”
“With this wind and sea behind us, yes. Still take three-four days.”
“Right-o, then,” Tyndall’s voice was gruff. “Off you go. You’re no good to us without bows! Damned hard luck, Captain Barlow. My commiserations. And oh! I’m giving you the Baliol and Nairn as escorts and radioing for an ocean-going tug to come out to meet you-just in case.”
“Thank you, sir. We appreciate that. One last thing, permission to empty starboard squadron fuel tanks. We’ve taken a lot of water, can’t get rid of it all, only way to recover our trim.”
Tyndall sighed. “Yes, I was expecting that. Can’t be helped and we can’t take it off you in this weather. Good luck, Captain. Good-bye.”
“Thank you very much, sir. Good-bye.”
Twenty minutes later, the Ulysses was back on station in the squadron.
Shortly afterwards, they saw the Invader, not listing quite so heavily now, head slowly round to the southeast, the little Hunt class destroyer and the frigate, one on either side, rolling wickedly as they came round with her. In another ten minutes, watchers on the Ulysses had lost sight of them, buried in a flurrying snow squall. Three gone and eleven left behind; but it was the eleven who now felt so strangely alone.
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.