“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.