“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.