“Hallo, Petersen. Hartley tells me you’re coming with us. Do you really want to? You don’t have to, you know.”
“Please, Captain.” The speech was slow and precise, the face curiously dignified in unhappiness. “I am very sorry for what has happened——”
“No, no!” Vallery was instantly contrite. “You misunderstand. It’s a bitter night up top. But I would like it very much if you would come. Will you?”
Petersen stared at him, then began slowly to smile, his face darkening with pleasure. As the Captain set foot on the first step, the giant arm came round him. The sensation, as Vallery described it later, was very much like going up in a lift.
From there they visited Engineer Commander Dodson in his engine-room, a cheerful, encouraging, immensely competent Dodson, an engineer to his finger-tips in his single-minded devotion to the great engines under his care. Then aft to the Engineers’ Flat, up the companionway between the wrecked Canteen and the Police Office, out on to the upper deck. After the heat of the boiler-room, the 100° drop in temperature, a drop that strangled breath with the involuntary constriction of the throat and made a skin-crawling mockery of “Arctic clothing,” was almost literally paralysing.
The starboard torpedo tubes-the only ones at the standby, were only four paces away. The crew, huddled in the lee of the wrecked bosun’s store-the one destroyed by the Blue Ranger’s shells-were easily located by the stamping of frozen feet, the uncontrollable chattering of teeth.
Vallery peered into the gloom. L.T.O. there?”
“Captain, sir?” Surprise, doubt in the voice.
“Yes. How are things going?”
“All right, sir.” He was still off-balance, hesitant. “I think young Smith’s left foot is gone, sir-frostbite.”
“Take him below-at once. And organise your crew into ten minute watches: one to keep a telephone watch here, the other four in the Engineers’ Flat. From now on. You understand?” He hurried away, as if to avoid the embarrassment of thanks, the murmurs of smiling gladness.
They passed the torpedo shop, where the spare torpedoes and compressed air cylinders were stored, climbed the ladder to the boat-deck. Vallery paused a moment, one hand on the boat-winch, the other holding the bloody scarf, already frozen almost solid, to mouth and nose. He could just distinguish the shadowy bulkiness of merchantmen on either side:
their masts, though, were oddly visible, swinging lazily, gently against the stars as the ships rolled to a slight swell, just beginning. He shuddered, pulled his scarf higher round his neck. God, it was cold! He moved for’ard, leaning heavily on Peterson’s arm. The snow, three to four inches deep, cushioned his footsteps as he came up behind an Oerlikon gun. Quietly, he laid a hand on the shoulder of the hooded gunner hunched forward in his cockpit.
“Things all right, gunner?”
No reply. The man appeared to stir, moved forward, then fell still again.
“I said,’ Are you all right?'” Vallery’s voice had hard, i ened. He shook the gunner by the shoulder, turned impatiently to Hartley.
“Asleep, Chief! At Action Stations! We’re all dead from lack of sleep, I know-but his mates below are depending on him. There’s no excuse. Take his name!”
“Take his name!” Nicholls echoed softly, bent over the I cockpit. He shouldn’t speak like this, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. “Take his name,” he repeated. “What for? His next of kin? This man is dead.”
The snow was beginning to fall again, cold and wet and feathery, the wind lifting a perceptible fraction. Vallery felt the first icy flakes, unseen in the darkness, brushing his cheeks, heard the distant moan of the wind in the rigging, lonely and forlorn. He shivered.
“His heater’s gone.” Hartley withdrew an exploratory hand, straightened up. He seemed tired. “These Oerlikons have black heaters bolted to the side of the cockpit. The gunners lean against them, sir, for hours at a time… I’m afraid the fuse must have blown. They’ve been warned against this, sir, a thousand times.”
“Good God! Good God!” Vallery shook his head slowly. He felt old, terribly tired. “What a useless, futile way to die… Have him taken to the Canteen, Hartley.”
“No good, sir.” Nicholls straightened up also. “It’ll have to wait.
What with the cold and the quick onset of rigor mortis-well, it’ll have to wait.”
Vallery nodded assent, turned heavily away. All at once, the deck ‘speaker aft of the winch blared into raucous life, a rude desecration that shattered the chilled hush of the evening.
“Do you hear there? Do you hear there? Captain, or notify Captain, to contact bridge immediately, please.” Three times the message was repeated, then the ‘speaker clicked off.
Quickly Vallery turned to Hartley.
“Where’s the nearest phone, Chief?”
“Right here, sir.” Hartley turned back to the Oerlikon, stripped earphones and chest mouthpiece from the dead man. “That is, if the A.A. tower is still manned?”
“What’s left of it is.”
“Tower? Captain to speak to bridge. Put me through.” He handed the receiver to Vallery. “Here you are, sir.”
“Thank you. Bridge? Yes, speaking… Yes, yes… Very good.
Detail the Sirrus… No, Commander, nothing I can do anyway-just maintain position, that’s all.” He took the handset off, handed it back to Hartley.
“Asdic contact from Viking” he said briefly. “Red 90.” He turned, looked out over the dark sea, realised the futility of his instinctive action, and shrugged. “We’ve sent the Sirrus after him. Come on.”
Their tour of the boat-deck gun-sites completed with a visit to the midships’ pom-pom crew, bone-chilled and shaking with cold, under the command of the bearded Doyle, respectfully sulphurous in his outspoken comments on the weather, they dropped down to the main deck again. By this time Vallery was making no protest at all, not even of the most token kind, against Petersen’s help and support. He was too glad of them. He blessed Brooks for his foresight and thoughtfulness, and was touched by the rare delicacy and consideration that prompted the big Norwegian to withdraw his supporting arm whenever they spoke to or passed an isolated group of men.
Inside the port screen door and just for’ard of the galley, Vallery and Nicholls, waiting as the others knocked the clamps off the hatch leading down to the stokers’ mess, heard the muffled roar of distant depth-charges-there were four in all-felt the pressure waves strike the hull of the Ulysses. At the first report Vallery had stiffened, head cocked in attention, eyes fixed on infinity, in the immemorial manner of a man whose ears are doing the work for all the senses. Hesitated a moment, shrugged, bent his arm to hook a leg over the hatch coaming. There was nothing he could do.
In the centre of the stokers’ mess was another, heavier hatch. This, too, was opened. The ladder led down to the steering position, which, as in most modern warships, was far removed from the bridge, deep in the heart of the ship below the armour-plating. Here, for a couple of minutes, Vallery talked quietly to the quartermaster, while Petersen, working in the confined space just outside, opened the massive hatch-450 Ibs. of steel, actuated by a counter-balancing pulley weight-which gave access to the hold, to the very bottom of the Ulysses, to the Transmitting Station and No. 2 Low Power Room.
A mazing, confusing mystery of a place, this Low Power Room, confusing to the eye and ear. Round every bulkhead, interspersed with scores of switches, breakers and rheostats, were ranged tiered banks of literally hundreds of fuses, baffling to the untrained eye in their myriad complexity. Baffling, too, was the function of a score or more of low-power generators, nerve-drilling in the frenetic dissonance of i their high-pitched hums. Nicholls straightened up at the foot of the ladder and shuddered involuntarily. A bad place, this. How easily could mind and nerves slide over the edge of insanity under the pounding, Insistent clamour of the desynchronised cacophony. Just then there were only two men there-an Electric Artificer and his assistant, bent over the big Sperry master gyro, making some latitude adjustment to the highly complex machinery of the compass. They looked up quickly, tired surprise melting into tired pleasure. Vallery had a few words with them-speech was difficult in that bedlam of sound-then moved over to the door of the T.S.
He had his glove on the door handle when he froze to complete stillness. Another pattern had exploded, much closer this time, two cable lengths distant, at most. Depth-charges, they knew, but only because reason and experience told them: deep down in the heart of an armour-plated ship there is no sense of explosion, no roar of erruption from a detonating depth-charge. Instead, there is a tremendous, metallic clang, peculiarly tinny in calibre, as if some giant with a giant sledge had struck the ship’s side and found the armour loose.
The pattern was followed almost immediately by another two explosions, and the Ulysses was still shuddering under the impact of the second when Vallery turned the handle and walked in. The others filed in after the Captain, Petersen closing the door softly behind him. At once the clamour of the electric motors died gratefully away in the hushed silence of the T.S.