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.