“Three signals, Chief. First to Vectra. “Steer 360°. Do not disperse.
Repeat, do not disperse. Am coming to your assistance.’ “He paused, then went on: “Sign it,’ Admiral, 14 A.C.S.’ Got it? … Right. No time to code it. Plain language. Send one of your men to the W.T. at once.”
“Second: To Stirling, Sirrus and Viking.’ Abandon pursuit immediate. Course north-east. Maximum speed.’ Plain language also.” He turned to the Kapok Kid. “How’s your forehead, Pilot? Can you carry on?” “Of course, sir.”
“Thank you, boy. You heard me? Convoy re-routed north-say in a few minutes’ time, at 1015. 6 knots. Give me an intersection course as soon as possible.”
“Third signal, Bentley: To Stirling, Sirrus and Viking:’ Radar out of action. Cannot pick you up on screen. Stream fog-buoys. Siren at two-minute intervals.’ Have that message coded. All acknowledgements to the bridge at once. Commander I”
“Sir?” Turner was at his elbow.
“Hands to defence stations. It’s my guess the pack will have gone before we get there. Who’ll be off watch?”
“Lord only knows,” said Turner frankly. “Let’s call it port.”
Vallery smiled faintly. “Port it is. Organise two parties. First of port to clear away all loose wreckage: over the side with the lot-keep nothing. You’ll need the blacksmith and his mate, and I’m sure Dodson will provide you with an oxy-acetylene crew. Take charge yourself.
Second of port as burial party. Nicholls in charge. All bodies recovered to be laid out in the canteen when it’s clear… Perhaps you could give me a full report of casualties and damage inside the hour?”
“Long before that, sir… Could I have a word with you in private?”
They walked aft. As the shelter door shut behind them, Vallery looked at the Commander curiously, half-humorously. “Another mutiny, perhaps, Commander?”
“No, sir.” Turner unbuttoned his coat, his hand struggling into the depths of a hip-pocket. He dragged out a flat half-bottle, held it up to the light. “Thank the Lord for that!” he said piously. “I was afraid it got smashed when I fell… Rum, sir. Neat. I know you hate the stuff, but never mind. Come on, you need this!”
Vallery’s brows came down in a straight line.
“Rum. Look here, Commander, do you—–?”
“To hell with K.R.s and A.F.O.s!” Turner interrupted rudely. “Take it-you need it badly! You’ve been hurt, you’ve lost a lot more blood and you’re almost frozen to death.” He uncorked it, thrust the bottle into Vallery’s reluctant hands. “Face facts. We need you-more than ever now-and you’re almost dead on your feet-and I mean dead on your feet,” he added brutally. “This might keep you going a few more hours.”
“You put things so nicely,” Vallery murmured. “Very well. Against my better judgment…”
He paused, the bottle to his mouth.
“And you give me an idea, Commander. Have the bosun break out the rum. Pipe ‘Up spirits.’ Double ration to each man. They, too, are going to need it.” He swallowed, pulled the bottle away, and the grimace was not for the rum.
“Especially,” he added soberly, “the burial party.”
CHAPTER TEN
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
THE SWITCH clicked on and the harsh fluorescent light flooded the darkening surgery. Nicholls woke with a start, one hand coming up automatically to shield exhausted eyes. The light hurt. He screwed his eyes to slits, peered painfully at the hands of his wrist-watch. Four o’clock! Had he been asleep that long? God, it was bitterly cold!
He hoisted himself stiffly forward in the dentist’s chair, twisted his head round. Brooks was standing with his back to the door, snow-covered hood framing his silver hair, numbed fingers fumbling with a packet of cigarettes. Finally he managed to pull one out. He looked up quizzically over a flaring match-head.
“Hallo, there, Johnny! Sorry to waken you, but the skipper wants you. Plenty of time, though.” He dipped the cigarette into the dying flame, looked up again. Nicholls, he thought with sudden compassion, looked ill, desperately tired and overstrained; but no point in telling him so. “How are you? On second thoughts, don’t tell me! I’m a damned sight worse myself. Have you any of that poison left?”
“Poison, sir?” The levity was almost automatic, part of their relationship with each other. “Just because you make one wrong diagnosis? The Admiral will be all right—–”
“Gad! The intolerance of the very young-especially on the providentially few occasions that they happen to be right… I was referring to that bottle of bootleg hooch from the Isle of Mull.”
“Coll,” Nicholls corrected. “Not that it matters, you’ve drunk it all, anyway,” he added unkindly. He grinned tiredly at the Commander’s crestfallen face, then relented. “But we do have a bottle of Talisker left.” He crossed over to the poison cupboard, unscrewed the top of a bottle marked “Lysol.” He heard, rather than saw, the clatter of glass against glass, wondered vaguely, with a kind of clinical detachment, why his hands were shaking so badly.
Brooks drained his glass, sighed in bliss as he felt the grateful warmth sinking down inside him.
“Thank you, my boy. Thank you. You have the makings of a first-class doctor.”
“You think so, sir? I don’t. Not any longer. Not after today.” He winced, remembering. “Forty-four of them, sir, over the side in ten minutes, one after the other, like-like so many sacks of rubbish.”
“Forty-four?” Brooks looked up. “So many, Johnny?”
“Not really, sir. That was the number of missing. About thirty, rather, and God only knows how many bits and pieces. … It was a brush and shovel job in the F.D.R.” He smiled, mirthlessly. “I had no dinner, today. I don’t think anybody else in the burial party had either. …
I’d better screen that porthole.”
He turned away quickly, walked across the surgery. Low on the horizon, through the thinly-falling snow, he caught intermittent sight of an evening star. That meant that the fog was gone-the fog that had saved the convoy, had hidden them from the U-boats when it had turned so sharply to the north. He could see the Vectra, her depth-charge racks empty and nothing to show for it. He could see the Vytura, the damaged tanker, close by, almost awash in the water, hanging grimly on to the convoy. He could see four of the Victory ships, big, powerful, reassuring, so pitifully deceptive in their indestructible permanence. … He slammed the scuttle, screwed home the last butterfly nut, then swung round abruptly.
“Why the hell don’t we turn back?” he burst out. “Who does the old man think he’s kidding-us or the Germans? No air cover, no radar, not the faintest chance of helpl The Germans have us pinned down to an inch now-and it’ll be easier still for them as we go on. And there’s a thousand miles to go!” His voice rose. “And every bloody enemy ship, U-boat and plane in the Arctic smacking thek lips and waiting to pick us off at thek leisure.” He shook his head in despair. “I’ll take my chance with anybody else, sir. You know that. But this is just murder-or suicide. Take your pick, sir. It’s all the same when you’re dead.”
“Now, Johnny, you’re not——”
“Why doesn’t he turn back?” Nicholls hadn’t even heard the interruption. “He’s only got to give the order. What does he want?
Death or glory? What’s he after? Immortality at my expense, at our expense?” He swore, bitterly. “Maybe Riley was right. Wonderful headlines.’ Captain Richard Vallery, D.S.O., has been posthumously award”Shut up!” Brooks’s eye was as chill as the Arctic ice itself, his voice a biting lash.
“You dare to talk of Captain Vallery like that!” he said softly. “You dare to besmkch the name of the most honourable…” He broke off, shook his head in wrathful wonder. He paused to pick his words carefully, his eyes never leaving the other’s white, strained face.
“He is a good officer, Lieutenant Nicholls, maybe even a great officer: and that just doesn’t matter a damn. What does matter is that he is the finest gentleman, I say gentleman, I’ve ever known, that ever walked the face of this graceless, God-forsaken earth. He is not like you or me. He is not like anybody at all. He walks alone, but he is never lonely, for he has company all the way… men like Peter, like Bede, like St. Francis of Assisi.” He laughed shortly. “Funny, isn’t it, to hear an old reprobate like myself talk like this? Blasphemy, even, you might call it, except that the truth can never be blasphemy. And I know.”
Nicholls said nothing. His face was like a stone.
“Death, glory, immortality,” Brooks went on relentlessly. “These were your words, weren’t they? Death?” He smiled and Shook his head again. “For Richard Vallery, death doesn’t exist. Glory? Sure, he wants glory, we all want glory, but all the London Gazettes and Buckingham Palaces in the world can’t give him the kind of glory he wants: Captain Vallery is no longer a child, and only children play with toys… As for immortality.” He laughed, without a trace of rancour now, laid a hand on Nicholls’s shoulder. “I ask you, Johnny-wouldn’t it be damned stupid to ask for what he has already?”