‘What do you know about the weather? You haven’t been out of here all night. If you had been, I would have known.’ He turned a dismissive back on her and looked at Ulbricht. ‘How do you feel, Lieutenant?’
‘I have an option?’ Ulbricht smiled. ‘I feel well enough. Even if I didn’t I’m still coming. Don’t be too hard on the ward sister, Bo’sun – even your lady with a lamp in the Crimea had a pretty short way with difficult patients – but she’s overlooking my natural selfishness. I’m on this ship too.’ He climbed stiffly out of bed and, with the assistance of McKinnon and Jamieson, started to pull clothing on over his pyjamas while Sister Morrison looked on in frigid disapproval. The disapproval finally culminated in the drumming of fingertips on the table.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that we should have Dr Singh in here.’
McKinnon turned slowly and looked at her and when he spoke his voice was as expressionless as his face. ‘I don’t think it matters very much what you think, Sister. I suggest you just give a shake to Captain Bowen there and find out just how much your thinking matters.’
‘The Captain is under heavy sedation. When he regains consciousness, I shall report you for insolence.’
‘Insolence?’ McKinnon looked at her with indifference. ‘I think he would prefer that to stupidity – the stupidity of •a person who is trying to endanger the San Andreas and all those aboard her. It’s a pity we don’t have any irons on this ship.’
She glared at him, made to speak, then turned as Dr Sinclair came into the ward. Sleepy-eyed and tousle-haired, he looked in mild astonishment at the spectacle before him.
‘Dr Sinclair! Thank heavens you’re here!’ Rapidly and urgently she began to explain the situation to him. ‘Those – those men want starsights or navigation or something and in spite of all my protests they insist on dragging a seriously ill man up to the bridge or wherever and – ‘
‘I can see what’s happening,’ Sinclair said mildly. ‘But if the Lieutenant is being dragged he’s not putting up much in the way of resistance, is he? And by no stretch of the imagination can you describe him as being seriously ill. But I do take your point, Sister. He should be under constant medical supervision.’
‘Ah! Thank you, Doctor.’ Sister Morrison came very close to permitting herself a smile. ‘So it’s back to bed for him.’
‘Well, no, not quite. A duffel coat, a pair of sea boots, my bag of tricks and I’ll go up with them. That way the Lieutenant will be under constant medical supervision.’
Even with three men lending what assistance they could, it look twice as long as expected to help Lieutenant Ulbricht as far as the Captain’s cabin. Once there, he sank heavily into the chair behind the table.
‘Thank you very much, gentlemen.’ He was very pale, his breathing shallow and abnormally rapid. ‘Sorry about that. It would seem that I am not as fit as I thought I was.’
‘Nonsense.’ Dr Sinclair was brisk. ‘You did splendidly. It’s that inferior English blood that we had to give you this morning, that’s all.’ He made free with Captain Bowen’s supplies. ‘Superior Scotch blood. Effects guaranteed.’
Ulbricht smiled faintly. ‘Isn’t there something about opening pores?’
‘You won’t be out in the open long enough to give your pores a chance to protest.’
Up on the bridge McKinnon adjusted Ulbricht’s goggles, then scarfed him so heavily above and below the goggles that not a square millimetre of skin was left exposed. When he was finished, Lieutenant Ulbricht was as immune to the weather as it was possible for anyone to be: two balaclavas and a tightly strung duffel hood made sure of that.
McKinnon went out on the starboard wing, hung a trailing lamp from the canvas windbreaker, went back inside, picked up the sextant, took Ulbricht by his right arm – the undamaged one – and led him outside. Even although he was so cocooned against the elements, even though the Bo’sun had warned him and even though he had already had an ominous foretaste of what lay in store in their brief journey across the upper deck, he was totally unprepared for the power and savagery of the wind that caught him as soon as he stepped out on the wing. His weakened limbs were similarly unprepared. He took two short sharp steps forward, and though he managed to clutch the top of the windbreaker, would probably have fallen but for McKinnon’s sustaining hand. Had he been carrying the sextant he would almost certainly have dropped it.
With McKinnon’s arm around him Ulbricht took three starsights, to the south, west and north, clumsily noting down the results as he did so. The first two sights were comparatively quick and simple: the third, to the north, took much longer and was far more difficult, for Ulbricht had to keep clearing away the ice spicules from his goggles and the sextant. When he had finished he handed the sextant back to McKinnon, leant his elbows on the after edge of the wing and stared out towards the stern, occasionally and mechanically wiping his goggles with the back of his hand. After almost twenty seconds of this McKinnon took his good arm and almost literally dragged him back into the shelter of the bridge, banging the door to behind him. Handing the sextant to Jamieson, he quickly removed Ulbricht’s duffel hood, balaclavas and goggles.
‘Sorry about that, Lieutenant, but there’s a time and a place for everything and daydreaming or sightseeing out on that wing is not one of them.’
The funnel.’ Ulbricht looked slightly dazed. ‘What’s happened to your funnel?’
‘It fell off.’
‘I see. It fell off. You mean -1 -‘
‘What’s done is done,’ Jamieson said philosophically. He handed a glass to the Lieutenant. ‘To help you with your calculations.’
‘Thank you. Yes.’ Ulbricht shook his head as if to clear it. ‘Yes. My calculations.’
Weak though he was and shivering constantly – this despite the fact that the bridge temperature was already over 55ºF. – Ulbricht left no doubt that, as a navigator, he knew precisely what he was about. Working from starsights, he had no need to worry about the vagaries of deviation and variation. With a chart, dividers, parallel rules, pencils and chronometer, he completed his calculations in remarkably short order and made a tiny cross on the chart after having consulted navigational tables.
‘We’re here. Well, near enough. 68.05 north, 7.20 east -more or less due west of the Lofotens. Our course is 218. Is one permitted to ask our destination?’
Jamieson smiled. ‘Quite frankly, Lieutenant Ulbricht, you wouldn’t be much use to us if you didn’t. Aberdeen.’
‘Ah! Aberdeen. They have a rather famous prison there, do they not? Peterhead, isn’t it? I wonder what the cells are like.’ v
‘It’s a prison for civilians. Of the more intractable kind. I should hardly think you’d end up there. Or in any prison.’ Jamieson looked at him with some curiosity. ‘How do you know about Peterhead, Lieutenant?’
‘I know Scotland well. I know England even better.’ Ulbricht did not seek to elaborate. ‘So, Aberdeen. We’ll stay on this course until we get to the latitude of Trondheim, then south until we get to the latitude of Bergen – or, if you like Mr McKinnon, the latitude of your home islands.’
‘How did you know I’m a Shetlander?’
‘Some members of the nursing staff don’t seem to mind talking to me. Then on a more westerly course. That’s speaking roughly, we’ll work out the details as we go along. It’s a very simple exercise and there’s no problem.’
‘Of course it’s no problem,’ Jamieson said, ‘neither is playing Rachmaninoff, not as long as you are a concert pianist.’
Ulbricht smiled. ‘You overrate my simple skills. The only problem that will arise is when we make our landfall, which of course will have to be in daylight. At this time of year North Sea fogs are as common as not and there’s no way I can navigate in a fog without a radio and compass.’
‘With any luck, there shouldn’t be all that much of a problem,’ McKinnon said. ‘War or no war, there’s still pretty heavy traffic on the east coast and there’s more than an even chance that we can pick up a ship and be guided into harbour.’
‘Agreed,’ Ulbricht said. ‘A Red Cross ship is not easily overlooked – especially one with its funnel missing.’ He sipped his drink, pondered briefly, then said: ‘Is it your intention to return me to the hospital?’
‘Naturally,’ Sinclair said. ‘That’s where you belong. Why do you ask?’
Ulbricht looked at Jamieson. ‘I would, of course, be expected to do some more navigating?’
‘Expecting, Lieutenant? “Depending” is the word you’re after.’
‘And at frequent intervals if cloud or snow conditions permit. We never know when the set of the sea and the wind may change without our being aware of it. Point is, I don’t much fancy dragging myself back down to the hospital, then coming back up here again every time I have to take starsights. Couldn’t I just lie down in the Captain’s: cabin?’