Almost before the dust and debris of the explosion had settled, the last of the Heinkels was disappearing, skimming the waves, weaving and twisting madly in evasive action, pursued and harried by a hundred glowing streams of tracer. Then, magically, they were gone, and there was only the sudden deafening silence and the flares, drooping slowly to extinction, lighting up the pall above the Ulysses, the dark clouds of smoke rolling up from the shattered Stirling and a tanker with its after superstructure almost gone. But not one of the ships in FR77 had faltered or stopped; and they had destroyed five Heinkels. A costly victory, Turner mused, if it could be called a victory; but he knew the Heinkels would be back. It was not difficult to imagine the fury, the hurt pride of the High Command in Norway: as far as Turner knew, no Russian Convoy had ever sailed so far south before.
Riley eased a cramped leg, stretched it gently so as to avoid the great spinning shaft. Carefully he poured some oil on to the bearing, carefully, so as not to disturb the Engineer Commander, propped in sleep between the tunnel wall and Riley’s shoulder. Even as Riley drew back, Dodson stirred, opened heavy, gummed lids.
“Good God above!” he said wearily. “You still here, Riley?” It was the first time either of them had spoken for hours.
“It’s a —–, good job I am here,” Riley growled. He nodded towards the bearing. “Bloody difficult to get a firehose down to this place, I should think!” That was unfair Riley knew: he and Dodson had been taking it in half-hour turns to doze and feed the bearing. But he felt he had to say something: he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep on being truculent to the Engineer Commander.
Dodson grinned to himself, said nothing. Finally, he cleared his throat, murmured casually: “The Tirpitz is taking its time about making its appearance, don’t you think?”
“Yes, sir.” Riley was uncomfortable. “Should ‘a’ been here long ago, damn her!”
“Him,” Dodson corrected absently. “Admiral von Tirpitz, you know… Why don’t you give up this foolishness, Riley?”
Riley grunted, said nothing. Dodson sighed, then brightened.
“Go and get some more coffee, Riley. I’m parched!”
“No.” Riley was blunt. “You get it.”
“As a favour, Riley.” Dodson was very gentle. “I’m damned thirsty I”
“Oh, all right.” The big stoker swore, climbed painfully to his feet.”
Where’ll I get it?”
“Plenty in the engine-room. If it’s not iced water they’re swigging, it’s coffee. But no iced water for me.” Dodson shivered.
Riley gathered up the Thermos, stumbled along the passage. He had only gone a few feet when they felt the Ulysses shudder under the recoil of the heavy armament. Although they did not know it, it was the beginning of the air attack.
Dodson braced himself against the wall, saw Riley do the same, pause a second then hurry away in an awkward, stumbling run. There was something grotesquely familiar in that awkward run, Dodson thought. The guns surged back again and the figure scuttled even faster, like a giant crab in a panic. .. . Panic, Dodson thought:
that’s it, panic-stricken. Don’t blame the poor bastard-I’m beginning to imagine things myself down here. Again the whole tunnel vibrated, more heavily this time-that must be ‘X’ turret, almost directly above. No, I don’t blame him. Thank God he’s gone. He smiled quietly to himself. I won’t be seeing friend Riley again-he isn’t all that of a reformed character. Tiredly, Dodson settled back against the wall. On my own at last, he murmured to himself, and waited for the feeling of relief. But it never came. Instead, there was only a vexation and loneliness, a sense of desertion and a strangely empty disappointment.
Riley was back inside a minute. He came back with that same awkward crab-like run, carrying a three-pint Thermos jug and two cups, cursing fluently and often as he slipped against the wall. Panting, wordlessly, he sat down beside Dodson, poured out a cup of steaming coffee. “Why the hell did you have to come back?” Dodson demanded harshly. “I don’t want you and——”
“You wanted coffee,” Riley interrupted rudely. “You’ve got the bloody stuff. Drink it.”
At that instant the explosion and the vibration from the explosion in the port tubes echoed weirdly down the dark tunnel, the shock flinging the two men heavily against each other. His whole cup of coffee splashed over Dodson’s leg: his mind was so tired, his reactions so slow, that his first realisation was of how damnably cold he was, how chill that dripping tunnel. The scalding coffee had gone right through his clothes, but he could feel neither warmth nor wetness: his legs were numbed, dead below the knees. Then he shook his head, looked up at Riley.
“What in God’s name was that? What’s happening? Did you——?”
“Haven’t a clue. Didn’t stop to ask.” Riley stretched himself luxuriously, blew on his steaming coffee. Then a happy thought struck him, and a broad cheerful grin came as near to transforming that face as would ever be possible. “It’s probably the Tirpitz,” he said hopefully.
Three times more during that terrible night, the German squadrons took off from the airfield at Alta Fjord, throbbed their way nor’-nor’-west through the bitter Arctic night, over the heaving Arctic sea, in search of the shattered remnants of FR77. Not that the search was difficult-the Focke-Wulf Condor stayed with them all night, defied their best attempts to shake him off. He seemed to have an endless supply of these deadly flares, and might very well have been-in fact, almost certainly was-carrying nothing else. And the bombers had only to steer for the flares.
The first assault, about 0545, was an orthodox bombing attack, made from about 3,000 feet. The planes seemed to be Dorniers, but it was difficult to be sure, because they flew high above a trio of flares sinking close to the water level. As an attack, it was almost but not quite abortive, and was pressed home with no great enthusiasm. This was understandable: the barrage was intense. But there were two direct hits, one on a merchantman, blowing away most of the foc’sle, the other on the Ulysses. It sheered through the flag deck and the Admiral’s day cabin, and exploded in the heart of the Sick Bay. The Sick Bay was crowded with the sick and dying, and, for many, that bomb must have come as a God-sent release, for the Ulysses had long since run out of anaesthetics. There were no survivors. Among the dead was Marshall, the Torpedo Officer, Johnson, the Leading S.B.A., the Master-At-Arms who had been lightly wounded an hour before by a splinter from the torpedo tubes, Burgess, strapped helplessly in a strait-jacket-he had suffered concussion on the night of the great storm and gone insane. Brown, whose hip had been smashed by the hatch cover of ‘Y’ magazine, and Brierley, who was dying anyway, his lungs saturated and rotted away with fuel oil.
Brooks had not been there.
The same explosion had also shattered the telephone exchange: barring only the bridge-gun phones, and the bridge-engine phones and speaking-tubes, all communication lines in the Ulysses were gone.
The second attack at 7 a.m., was made by only six bombers, Heinkels again, carrying glider-bombs. Obviously flying strictly under orders, they ignored the merchantmen and concentrated their attack solely on the cruisers. It was an expensive attack: the enemy lost all but two of their force in exchange for a single hit aft on the Stirling, a hit which, tragically, put both after guns out of action.
Turner, red-eyed and silent, bareheaded in that sub-zero wind, and pacing the shattered bridge of the Ulysses, marvelled that the Stirling still floated, still fought back with everything she had. And then he looked at his own ship, less a ship, he thought wearily, than a floating shambles of twisted a steel still scything impossibly through those heavy seas, and I marvelled all the more. Broken, burning cruisers, cruisers ravaged and devastated to the point of destruction, were nothing new for Turner: he had seen the Trinidad and the Edinburgh being literally battered to death on these same Russian convoys. But he had never seen any ship, at any time, take such inhuman, murderous punishment as the Ulysses and the obsolete Stirling and still live. He would not have believed it possible.
The third attack came just before dawn. It came with the grey half-light, an attack carried out with great courage and the utmost determination by fifteen Heinkel 111 gldder-bombers. Again the cruisers were the sole targets, the heavier attack by far being directed against the Ulysses. Far from shirking the challenge and bemoaning their ill-luck the crew of the Ulysses, that strange and selfless crew of walking zombies whom Nicholls had left behind, welcomed the enemy gladly, even joyfully, for how can one kill an enemy if he does not come to you? Fear, anxiety, the near-certainty of death-these did not exist.