H. M. S. Ulysses

by Alistair MacLean

  Vallery looked up, amused, curious.

  ‘Fallen down the stokehold again, I presume?’

  ‘Exactly the question I put, sir—although it looked more as if he had fallen into a concrete mixer. “No, sir,” says one of the stretcher-bearers. “He tripped over the ship’s cat.” “Ship’s cat?” I says. “What ship’s cat?” So he turns to his oppo and says: “Ain’t we got a ship’s cat, Nobby?” Whereupon the stoker looks at him pityingly and says: “E’s got it all wrong, sir. Poor old Riley just came all over queer— took a weak turn, ’e did. I ’ope ’e ain’t ’urt ’isself?” He sounded quite anxious.’

  ‘What had happened?’ Tyndall queried.

  ‘I let it go at that. Young Nicholls took two of them aside, promised no action and had it out of them in a minute flat. Seems that Riley saw in this morning’s affair a magnificent opportunity for provoking trouble. Cursed you for an inhuman, cold-blooded murderer and, I regret to say, cast serious aspersions on your immediate ancestors—and all of this, mind you, where he thought he was safe—among his own friends. His friends half-killed him . . . You know, sir, I envy you . . . ’

  He broke off, rose abruptly to his feet.

  ‘Now, sir, if you’ll just lie down and roll up your sleeve . . . Oh, damn!’

  ‘Come in.’ It was Tyndall who answered the knock. ‘Ah, for me, young Chrysler. Thank you.’

  He looked up at Vallery. ‘From London—in reply to my signal.’ He turned it over in his hand two or three times. ‘I suppose I have to open it some time,’ he said reluctantly.

  The Surgeon-Commander half-rose to his feet.

  ‘Shall I—’

  ‘No, no, Brooks. Why should you? Besides, it’s from our mutual friend, Admiral Starr. I’m sure you’d like to hear what he’s got to say, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’ Brooks was very blunt. ‘I can’t imagine it’ll be anything good.’

  Tyndall opened the signal, smoothed it out.

  ‘DNO to Admiral Commanding 14 ACS,’ he read slowly. ‘Tirpitz reported preparing to move out. Impossible detach Fleet carrier: FR77 vital: proceed Murmansk all speed: good luck: Starr.’ Tyndall paused, his mouth twisted. ‘Good luck! He might have spared us that!’

  For a long time the three men looked at each other, silently, without expression. Characteristically, it was Brooks who broke the silence.

  ‘Speaking of forgiveness,’ he murmured quietly, ‘what I want to know is—who on God’s earth, above or below it, is ever going to forgive that vindictive old bastard?’

  EIGHT

  Thursday Night

  It was still only afternoon, but the grey Arctic twilight was already thickening over the sea as the Ulysses dropped slowly astern. The wind had died away completely; again the snow was falling, steadily, heavily, and visibility was down to a bare cable-length. It was bitterly cold.

  In little groups of three and four, officers and men made their way aft to the starboard side of the poop-deck. Exhausted, bone-chilled men, mostly sunk in private and bitter thought, they shuffled wordlessly aft, dragging feet kicking up little puffs of powdery snow. On the poop, they ranged themselves soundlessly behind the Captain or in a line inboard and aft of the long, symmetrical row of snow-covered hummocks that heaved up roundly from the unbroken whiteness of the poop.

  The Captain was flanked by three of his officers—Carslake, Etherton and the Surgeon-Commander. Carslake was by the guardrail, the lower half of his face swathed in bandages to the eyes. For the second time in twenty-four hours he had waylaid Vallery, begged him to reconsider the decision to deprive him of his commission. On the first occasion Vallery had been adamant, almost contemptuous: ten minutes ago he had been icy and abrupt, had threatened Carslake with close arrest if he annoyed him again. And now Carslake just stared unseeingly into the snow and gloom, pale-blue eyes darkened and heavy with hate.

  Etherton stood just behind Vallery’s left shoulder, shivering uncontrollably. Above the white, jerking line of compressed mouth, cheek and jaw muscles were working incessantly: only his eyes were steady, dulled in sick fascination at the curious mound at his feet. Brooks, too, was tight-lipped, but there the resemblance ended: red of face and wrathful blue of eye, he fumed and seethed as can only a doctor whose orders have been openly flouted by the critically ill. Vallery, as Brooks had told him, forcibly and insubordinately, had no bloody right to be there, was all sorts of a damned fool for leaving his bunk. But, as Vallery had mildly pointed out, somebody had to conduct a funeral service, and that was the Captain’s duty if the padre couldn’t do it. And this day the padre couldn’t do it, for it was the padre who lay dead at his feet . . . At his feet, and at the feet of Etherton—the man who had surely killed him.

  The padre had died four hours ago, just after Charlie had gone. Tyndall had been far out in his estimate. Charlie had not appeared within the hour. Charlie had not appeared until mid-morning, but when he did come he had the company of three of his kind. A long haul indeed from the Norwegian coast to this, the 10th degree west of longitude, but nothing for these giant Condors—Foke-Wulf 200s—who regularly flew the great dawn to dusk half-circle from Trondheim to Occupied France, round the West Coast of the British Isles.

  Condors in company always meant trouble, and these were no exception. They flew directly over the convoy, approaching from astern: the barrage from merchant ships and escorts was intense, and the bombing attack was pressed home with a marked lack of enthusiasm: the Condors bombed from a height of 7,000 feet. In that clear, cold morning air the bombs were in view almost from the moment they cleared the bomb-bays: there was time to spare to take avoiding action. Almost at once the Condors had broken off the attack and disappeared to the east impressed, but apparently unharmed, by the warmth of their reception.

  In the circumstances, the attack was highly suspicious. Circumspect Charlie might normally be on reconnaissance, but on the rare occasions that he chose to attack he generally did so with courage and determination. The recent sally was just too timorous, the tactics too obviously hopeless. Possibly, of course, recent entrants to the Luftwaffe were given to a discretion so signally lacking in their predecessors, or perhaps they were under strict orders not to risk their valuable craft. But probably, almost certainly, it was thought, that futile attack was only diversionary and the main danger lay elsewhere. The watch over and under the sea was intensified.

  Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed and nothing had happened. Radar and Asdic screens remained obstinately clear. Tyndall finally decided that there was no justification for keeping the entire ship’s company, so desperately in need of rest, at Action Stations for a moment longer and ordered the stand-down to be sounded.

  Normal Defence Stations were resumed. All forenoon work had been cancelled, and officers and ratings off watch, almost to a man, went to snatch what brief sleep they could. But not all. Brooks and Nicholls had their patients to attend to: the Navigator returned to the chart-house: Marshall and his Commissioned Gunner, Mr Peters, resumed their interrupted routine rounds: and Etherton, nervous, anxious, over-sensitive and desperately eager to redeem himself for his share in the Carslake-Ralston episode, remained huddled and watchful in the cold, lonely eyrie of the Director Tower.

  The sharp, urgent call from the deck outside came to Marshall and Peters as they were talking to the Leading Wireman in charge of No 2 Electrical Shop. The shop was on the port side of the fo’c’sle deck cross-passage which ran athwartships for’ard of the wardroom, curving aft round the trunking of ‘B’ turret. Four quick steps had them out of the shop, through the screen door and peering over the side through the freshly falling snow, following the gesticulating finger of an excited marine. Marshall glanced at the man, recognized him immediately: it was Charteris, the only ranker known personally to every officer in the ship—in port, he doubled as wardroom barman.

  ‘What is it, Charteris?’ he demanded. ‘What are you seeing? Quickly, man!’

  ‘There, sir! Look! Out there—no, a
bit more to your right! It’s— it’s a sub, sir, a U-boat!’

  ‘What? What’s that? A U-boat?’ Marshall halfturned as the Rev Winthrop, the padre, squeezed to the rail between himself and Charteris. ‘Where? Where is it? Show me, show me!’

  ‘Straight ahead, padre. I can see it now—but it’s a damned funny shape for a U-boat—if you’ll excuse the language,’ Marshall added hastily. He caught the war-like, un-Christian gleam in Winthrop’s eye, smothered a laugh and peered through the snow at the strange squat shape which had now drifted almost abreast of them.

  High up in the Tower, Etherton’s restless, hunting eyes had already seen it, even before Charteris. Like Charteris, he immediately thought it was a U-boat caught surfacing in a snowstorm—the pay-off of the attack by the Condors: the thought that Asdic or radar would certainly have picked it up never occurred to him. Time, speed—that was the essence, before it vanished. Unthinkingly, he grabbed the phone to the for’ard multiple pom-pom.

  ‘Director—pom-pom!’ he barked urgently. ‘U-boat, port 60. Range 100 yards, moving aft. Repeat, port 60. Can you see it? . . . No, no, port 60-70 now!’ he shouted desperately. ‘Oh, good, good! Commence tracking.’

  ‘On target, sir,’ the receiver crackled in his ear.

  ‘Open fire—continuous!’

  ‘Sir—but, sir—Kingston’s not here. He went—’

  ‘Never mind Kingston!’ Etherton shouted furiously. Kingston, he knew, was Captain of the Gun. ‘Open fire, you fools—now! I’ll take full responsibility.’ He thrust the phone back on the rest, moved across to the observation panel . . . Then realization, sickening, shocking, fear seared through his mind and he lunged desperately for the phone.

  ‘Belay the last order!’ he shouted wildly. ‘Cease fire! Cease fire! Oh, my God, my God, my God!’ Through the receiver came the staccato, angry bark of the two-pounder. The receiver dropped from his hand, crashed against the bulkhead. It was too late.

  It was too late because he had committed the cardinal sin—he had forgotten to order the removal of the muzzle-covers—the metal plates that sealed off the flash-covers of the guns when not in use. And the shells were fused to explode on contact . . .

  The first shell exploded inside its barrel, killing the trainer and seriously wounding the communication number: the other three smashed through their flimsy covers and exploded within a second of each other, a few feet from the faces of the four watchers on the fo’c’sle deck.

  All four were untouched, miraculously untouched by the flying, screaming metal. It flew outwards and downwards, a red-hot iron hail sizzling into the sea. But the blast of the explosion was backwards, and the power of even a few pounds of high explosive detonating at arm’s length is lethal.

  The padre died instantly, Peters and Charteris within seconds, and all from the same cause—telescoped occiputs. The blast hurled them backwards off their feet, as if flung by a giant hand, the backs of their heads smashing to an eggshell pulp against the bulkhead. The blood seeped darkly into the snow, was obliterated in a moment.

  Marshall was lucky, fantastically so. The explosion—he said afterwards that it was like getting in the way of the driving piston of the Coronation Scot—flung him through the open door behind him, ripped off the heels of both shoes as they caught on the storm-sill: he braked violently in mid-air, described a complete somersault, slithered along the passage and smashed squarely into the trunking of ‘B’ turret, his back framed by the four big spikes of the butterfly nuts securing an inspection hatch. Had he been standing a foot to the right or the left, had his heels been two inches higher as he catapulted through the doorway, had he hit the turret a hair’s-breadth to the left or right—Lieutenant Marshall had no right to be alive. The laws of chance said so, overwhelmingly. As it was, Marshall was now sitting up in the Sick bay, strapped, broken ribs making breathing painful, but otherwise unharmed.

  The upturned lifeboat, mute token of some earlier tragedy on the Russian Convoys, had long since vanished into the white twilight.

  Captain Vallery’s voice, low and husky, died softly away. He stepped back, closing the Prayer Book, and the forlorn notes of the bugle echoed briefly over the poop and died in the blanketing snow. Men stood silently, unmovingly, as, one by one, the thirteen figures shrouded in weighted canvas, slid down the tipped plank, down from under the Union Flag, splashed heavily into the Arctic and were gone. For long seconds, no one moved. The unreal, hypnotic effect of that ghostly ritual of burial held tired, sluggish minds in unwilling thrall, held men oblivious to cold and discomfort. Even when Etherton half-stepped forward, sighed, crumpled down quietly, unspectacularly in the snow, the trance-like hiatus continued. Some ignored him, others glanced his way, incuriously. It seemed absurd, but it struck Nicholls, standing in the background, that they might have stayed there indefinitely, the minds and the blood of men slowing up, coagulating, freezing, while they turned to pillars of ice. Then suddenly, with exacerbating abruptness, the spell was shattered: the strident scream of the Emergency Stations whistle seared through the gathering gloom.

  It took Vallery about three minutes to reach the bridge. He rested often, pausing on every second or third step of the four ladders that reached up to the bridge: even so, the climb drained the last reserves of his frail strength. Brooks had to half-carry him through the gate. Vallery clung to the binnacle, fighting for breath through foam-flecked lips; but his eyes were alive, alert as always, probing through the swirling snow.

  ‘Contact closing, closing: steady on course, interception course: speed unchanged.’ The radar loudspeaker was muffled, impersonal; but the calm precise tones of Lieutenant Bowden were unmistakable.

  ‘Good, good! We’ll fox him yet!’ Tyndall, his tired, sagging face lit up in almost beaming anticipation, turned to the Captain. The prospect of action always delighted Tyndall.

  ‘Something coming up from the SSW, Captain. Good God above, man, what are you doing here?’ He was shocked at Vallery’s appearance. ‘Brooks! Why in heaven’s name—?’

  ‘Suppose you try talking to him?’ Brooks growled wrathfully. He slammed the gate shut behind him, stalked stiffly off the bridge.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’ Tyndall asked of no one in particular. ‘What the hell am I supposed to have done?’

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ Vallery pacified him. ‘It’s all my fault—disobeying doctor’s orders and what have you. You were saying—?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Trouble, I’m afraid, Captain.’ Vallery smiled secretly as he saw the satisfaction, the pleased anticipation creep back into the Admiral’s face. ‘Radar reports a surface vessel approaching, big, fast, more or less on interception course for us.’

  ‘And not ours, of course?’ Vallery murmured. He looked up suddenly. ‘By jove, sir, it couldn’t be—?

  ‘The Tirpitz?’ Tyndall finished for him. He shook his head in decision. ‘My first thought, too, but no. Admiralty and Air Force are watching her like a broody hen over her eggs. If she moves a foot, we’ll know . . . Probably some heavy cruiser.’

  ‘Closing. Closing. Course unaltered.’ Bowden’s voice, clipped, easy, was vaguely reminiscent of a cricket commentator’s. ‘Estimates speed 24, repeat 24 knots.’

  His voice crackled into silence as the WT speaker came to life.

  ‘WT—bridge. WT—bridge. Signal from convoy: Stirling— Admiral. Understood. Wilco. Out.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent! From Jeffries,’ Tyndall explained. ‘I sent him a signal ordering the convoy to alter course to NNW. That should take ’em well clear of our approaching friend.’

  Vallery nodded. ‘How far ahead is the convoy, sir?’

  ‘Pilot!’ Tyndall called and leaned back expectantly.

  ‘Six—six and a half miles.’ The Kapok Kid’s face was expressionless.

  ‘He’s slipping,’ Tyndall said mournfully. ‘The strain’s telling. A couple of days ago he’d have given us the distance to the nearest yard. Six miles—far enough, Captain. He’ll never pick ’em up. Bowde
n says he hasn’t even picked us up yet, that the intersection of courses must be pure coincidence . . . I gather Lieutenant Bowden has a poor opinion of German radar.’

  ‘I know. I hope he’s right. For the first time the question is of rather more than academic interest.’ Vallery gazed to the South, his binoculars to his eyes: there was only the sea, the thinning snow. ‘Anyway, this came at a good time.’

  Tyndall arched a bushy eyebrow.

  ‘It was strange, down there on the poop.’ Vallery was hesitant. ‘There was something weird, uncanny in the air. I didn’t like it, sir. It was desperately—well, almost frightening. The snow, the silence, the dead men—thirteen dead men—I can only guess how the men felt, about Etherton, about anything. But it wasn’t good—don’t know how it would have ended—’ ‘Five miles,’ the loudspeaker cut in. ‘Repeat, five miles. Course, speed, constant.’

  ‘Five miles,’ Tyndall repeated in relief. Intangibles bothered him. ‘Time to trail our coats a little, Captain. We’ll soon be in what Bowden reckons is his radar range. Due east, I think—it’ll look as if we’re covering the tail of the convoy and heading for the North Cape.’

  ‘Starboard 10,’ Vallery ordered. The cruiser came gradually round, met, settled on her new course: engine revolutions were cut down till the Ulysses was cruising along at 26 knots.

  One minute, five passed, then the loudspeaker blared again.

  ‘Radar—bridge. Constant distance, altering on interception course.’

  ‘Excellent! Really excellent!’ The Admiral was almost purring. ‘We have him, gentlemen. He’s missed the convoy . . . Commence firing by radar!’

  Vallery reached for the Director handset.

  ‘Director? Ah, it’s you, Courtney . . . good, good . . . you just do that.’

  Vallery replaced the set, looked across at Tyndall.

  ‘Smart as a whip, that boy. He’s had “X” and “Y” lined up, tracking for the past ten minutes. Just a matter of pressing a button, he says.’