“Well, Bentley? What does he say?”
“Bit confused, sir,” Bentley apologised. “Couldn’t get it all. Says he’s going to leave the convoy, proceed on his own. Something like that, sir.”
Proceed on his own! That was no solution, Vallery knew. He might still burn for hours, a dead give-away, even on a different course. But to proceed on his own! An unprotected crippled, blazing tanker-and a thousand miles to Murmansk, the worst thousand miles in all the world!
Vallery closed his eyes. He felt sick to his heart. A man like that, and a ship like that-and he had to destroy them both!
Suddenly Tyndall spoke.
“Port 30!” he ordered. His voice was loud, authoritative. Vallery stiffened in dismay. Port 30! They’d turn into the Vytura.
There was a couple of seconds’ silence, then Carrington, Officer of the Watch, bent over the speaking-tube, repeated: “Port 30.” Vallery started forward, stopped short as he saw Carrington gesturing at the speaking-tube. He’d stuffed a gauntlet down the mouthpiece.
“Midships!”
“Midships, sir!”
“Steady! Captain?”
“Sir?”
“That light hurts my eyes,” Tyndall complained. “Can’t we put that fire out?”
“We’ll try, sir.” Vallery walked across, spoke softly. “You look tired, sir. Wouldn’t you like to go below?”
“What? Go below! Me!”
“Yes, sir. We’ll send for you if we need you,” he added persuasively.
Tyndall considered this for a moment, shook his head grimly.
“Won’t do, Dick. Not fair to you…” His voice trailed away and he muttered something that sounded like’ Admiral Tyndall,” but Vallery couldn’t be sure.
“Sir? I didn’t catch——”
“Nothing!” Tyndall was very abrupt. He looked away towards the Vytura, exclaimed in sudden pain, flung up an arm to protect his eyes. Vallery, too, started back, eyes screwed up to shut out the sudden blinding flash of flame from the Vytura.
The explosion crashed in their ears almost simultaneously, the blast of the pressure wave sent them reeling. The Vytura had been torpedoed again, right aft, close to her engine-room, and was heavily on fire there. Only the bridge island, amidships, was miraculously free from smoke and flames. Even in the moment of shock, Vallery thought, “She must go now. She can’t last much longer.” But he knew he was deluding himself, trying to avoid the inevitable, the decision he must take. Tankers, as he’d told Nicholls, died hard, terribly hard. Poor old Giles, he thought unaccountably, poor old Giles.
He moved aft to the port gate. Turner was shouting angrily into the telephone.
“You’ll damn’ well do what you’re told, do you hear? Get them out immediately! Yes, I said ‘immediately’!”
Vallery touched his arm in surprise. “What’s the matter, Commander?”
“Of all the bloody insolence I” Turner snorted. “Telling me what to do!”
“Who?”
“The L.T.O. on the tubes. Your friend Ralston!” said Turner wrathfully.
“Ralston! Of course!” Vallery remembered now. “He told me that was his night Action Stations. What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong: Says he doesn’t think he can do it. Doesn’t like to, doesn’t wish to do it, if you please. Blasted insubordination!” Turner fumed.
Vallery blinked at him. “Ralston, are you sure? But of course you are… I wonder… That boy’s been through a very private hell, Turner.
Do you think——”
“I don’t know what to think!” Turner lifted the phone again. “Tubes nine-oh? At last! … What? What did you say? .. . Why don’t we …
Gunfire! Gunfire!” He hung up the receiver with a crash, swung round on Vallery.
“Asks me, pleads with me, for gunfire instead of torpedoes! He’s mad, he must be! But mad or not, I’m going down there to knock some sense into that mutinous young devil!” Turner was angrier than Vallery had ever seen him. “Can you get Carrington to man this phone, sir?”
“Yes, yes, of course!” Vallery himself had caught up some of Turner’s anger. “Whatever his sentiments, this is no time to express them!” he snapped. “Straighten him up… Maybe I’ve been too lenient, too easy, perhaps he thinks we’re in his debt, at some psychological disadvantage, for the shabby treatment he’s received… All right, all right, Commander!” Turner’s mounting impatience was all too evident. “OS you go. Going in to attack in three or four minutes.” He turned abruptly, passed in to the compass platform.
“Bentley!”
“Sir?”
“Last signal——”
“Better have a look, sir,” Carrington interrupted. “He’s slowing up.”
Vallery stepped forward, peered over the windscreen. The Vytura, a roaring mass of flames was falling rapidly astern.
“Clearing the davits, sir!” the Kapok Kid reported excitedly. “I think-yes, yes, I can see the boat coming down!”
“Thank God for that!” Vallery whispered. He felt as though he had been granted a new lease of life. Head bowed, he clutched the screen with both hands-reaction had left him desperately weak. After a few seconds he looked up.
“W.T. code signal to Sirrus” he ordered quietly. “‘ Circle well astern. Pick up survivors from the Vytura’s lifeboat.'”
He caught Carrington’s quick look and shrugged. “It’s a better than even risk, Number One, so to hell with Admiralty orders. God,” he added with sudden bitterness, “wouldn’t I love to see a boatload of the ‘no-survivors-will-be-picked-up’ Whitehall warriors drifting about in the Barents Sea!” He turned away, caught sight of Nicholls and Petersen.
“Still here, are you, Nicholls? Hadn’t you better get below?”
“If you wish, sir.” Nicholls hesitated, nodded forward towards Tyndall.
“I thought, perhaps——”
“Perhaps you’re right, perhaps you’re right.” Vallery shook his head in weary perplexity. “We’ll see. Just wait a bit, will you?” He raised his voice. “Pilot!”
“Sir?”
“Slow ahead both!”
“Slow ahead both, sir!”
Gradually, then more quickly, way fell off the Ulysses and she dropped slowly astern of the convoy. Soon, even the last ships in the lines were ahead of her, thrashing their way to the north-east. The snow was falling more thickly now, but still the ships were bathed in that savage glare, frighteningly vulnerable in their naked helplessness.
Seething with anger, Turner brought up short at the port torpedoes. The tubes were out, their evil, gaping mouths, high-lighted by the great flames, pointing out over the intermittent refulgence of the rolling swell. Ralston, perched high on the unprotected control position above the central tube, caught hi’s eye at once.
“Ralston!” Turner’s voice was harsh, imperious. “I want to speak to you!”
Ralston turned round quickly, rose, jumped on to the deck. He stood facing the Commander. They were of a height, their eyes on a level, Ralston’s still, blue, troubled, Turner’s dark and stormy with anger.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Ralston?” Turner ground out.
“Refusing to obey orders, is that it?”
“No, sir.” Ralston’s voice was quiet, curiously strained. “That’s not true.”
“Not true!” Turner’s eyes were narrowed, his fury barely in check.
“Then what’s all this bloody claptrap about not wanting to man the tubes? Are you thinking of emulating Stoker Riley? Or have you just taken leave of your senses, if any?”
Ralston said nothing.
The silence, a silence all too easily interpreted as dumb insolence, infuriated Turner. His powerful hands reached out, grasped Ralston’s duffel coat. He pulled the rating towards him, thrust his face close to the other’s.
“I asked a question, Ralston,” he said softly. “I haven’t had an answer. I’m waiting. What is all this?”
“Nothing, sir.” Distress in his eyes, perhaps, but no fear. “I-I just don’t want to, sir. I hate to do it-to send one of our own ships to the bottom!” The voice was pleading now, blurred with overtones of desperation: Turner was deaf to them. “Why does she have to go, sir I”
he cried. “Why? Why? Why?”
“None of your bloody business-but as it so happens she’s endangering the entire convoy!” Turner’s face was still within inches of Ralston’s.
“You’ve got a job to do, orders to obey. Just get up there and obey them! Go on!” he roared, as Ralston hesitated. “Get up there I He fairly spat the words out.
Ralston didn’t move.
“There are other L.T.O.s, sir!” His arms lifted high in appeal, something in the voice cut through Turner’s blind anger: he realised, almost with shock, that this boy was desperate. “Couldn’t they——?”
“Let someone else do the dirty work, eh? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?” Turner was bitingly contemptuous. “Get them to do what you won’t do yourself, you-you contemptible young bastard! Communications Number?
Give me your set. I’ll take over from the bridge.” He took the phone, watched Ralston climb slowly back up and sit hunched forward, head bent over the Dumaresq.
“Number One? Commander speaking. All set here. Captain there?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll call him.” Carrington put down the phone, walked through the gate.
“Captain, sir. Commander’s on the——”
“Just a moment!” The upraised hand, the tenseness of the voice stopped him. “Have a look, No. I. What do you think?” Vallery pointed towards the Vytura, past the oil-skinned figure of the Admiral. Tyndall’s head was sunk on his chest, and he was muttering incoherently to himself.