H. M. S. Ulysses

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘Pilot! Haven’t I seen gauntlets hanging in your charthouse?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Right away!’ The Kapok Kid hurried off the bridge.

  Turner looked up at the Admiral again.

  ‘Your head, sir—you’ve nothing on. Wouldn’t you like a duffel coat, a hood, sir?’

  ‘A hood?’ Tyndall was amused. ‘What in the world for? I’m not cold . . . If you’ll excuse me, Commander?’ He turned the binoculars full into the glare of the blazing Vytura. Turner looked at him again, looked at Vallery, hesitated, then walked aft.

  Carpenter was on his way back with the gloves when the WT loudspeaker clicked on.

  ‘WT—bridge. WT—bridge. Signal from Viking: “Lost contact. Am continuing search.”’

  ‘Lost contact!’ Vallery exclaimed. Lost contact—the worst possible thing that could have happened! A U-boat out there, loose, unmarked, and the whole of FR77 lit up like a fairground. A fairground, he thought bitterly, clay pipes in a shooting gallery and with about as much chance of hitting back once contact had been lost. Any second now . . .

  He wheeled round, clutched at the binnacle for support. He had forgotten how weak he was, how the tilting of the shattered bridge affected balance.

  ‘Bentley! No reply form the Vytura yet?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Bentley was as concerned as the Captain, as aware of the desperate need for speed. ‘Maybe his power’s gone—no, no, no, there he is now, sir!’

  ‘Captain, sir.’

  Vallery looked round. ‘Yes, Commander, what is it? Not more bad news, I hope?’

  ‘Fraid so, sir. Starboard tubes won’t train—jammed solid.’

  ‘Won’t train,’ Vallery snapped irritably. ‘That’s nothing new, surely. Ice, frozen snow. Chip it off, use boiling water, blowlamps, any old—’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ Turner shook his read regretfully. ‘Not that. Rack and turntable buckled. Must have been either the shell that got the bosun’s store or Number 3 Lower Power Room—immediately below. Anyway—kaput!’

  ‘Very well, then!’ Vallery was impatient. ‘It’ll have to be the port tubes.’

  ‘No bridge control left, sir,’ Turner objected. ‘Unless we fire by local control?’

  ‘No reason why not, is there?’ Vallery demanded. ‘After all, that’s what torpedo crews are trained for. Get on to the port tubes—I assume the communication line there is still intact—tell them to stand by.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And Turner?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘As old Giles used to say of himself, I’m just a crusty old curmudgeon. Bear with me, will you?’

  Turner grinned sympathetically, then sobered quickly. He jerked his head forward.

  ‘How is he, sir?’

  Vallery looked at the Commander for a long second, shook his head, almost imperceptibly. Turner nodded heavily and was gone.

  ‘Well, Bentley? What does he say?’

  ‘Bit confused, sir,’ Bentley apologized. ‘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 the 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!’ Turner snorted. ‘Telling me what to do!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The LTO 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 . . . 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 to evident. ‘Off 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.

  ‘WT 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, highlighted 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 his 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!’ 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!’ He fairly spat the words out.

  Ralston didn’t move.

  ‘There are other LTOs, sir!’ His arms lifted high in appeal, something in the voice cut through Turner’s blind anger: he realized, 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. 1. 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.

  Carrington followed the pointing finger. The lifeboat, dimly visible through the thickening snow, had slipped her falls while the Vytura was still under way. Crammed with men, she was dropping quickly astern under the great twisting column of flame—dropping far too quickly astern as the First Lieutenant suddenly realized. He turned round, found Vallery’s eyes, bleak and tired and old, on his own. Carrington nodded slowly.

  ‘She’s picking up, sir. Under way, under comand . . . What are you going to do, sir?

  ‘God help me, I’ve no choice. Nothing from the Viking, nothing from the Sirrus, nothing from our Asdic—and that U-boat’s still out there . . . Tell Turner what’s happened. Bentley!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Signal the Vytura.’ The mouth, whitely compressed, belied the eyes—eyes dark and filled with pain. ‘“Abandon ship. Torpedoing you in three minutes. Last signal.” Port 20, Pilot!’

  ‘Port 20 it is, sir.’

  The Vytura was breaking off tangentially, heading north. Slowly, the Ulysses came round, almost paralleling her course, now a little astern of her.

  ‘Half-ahead, Pilot!’

  ‘Half-ahead it is, sir.’

  ‘Pilot!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘What’s Admiral Tyndall saying? Can you make it out?’

  Carpenter bent forward, listened, shook his head. Little flurries of snow fell off his fur helmet.

  ‘Sorry, sir. Can’t make him out—too much noise from the Vytura . . . I think he’s humming, sir.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Vallery bent his head, looked up again, slowly, painfully. Even so slight an effort was labour intolerable.

  He looked across to the Vytura, stiffened to attention. The red Aldis was winking again. He tried to read it, but it was too fast: or perhaps his eyes were just too old, or tired: or perhaps he just couldn’t think any more . . . There was something weirdly hypnotic about that tiny crimson light flickering between these fantastic curtains of flame, curtains sweeping slowly, ominously together, majestic in their inevitability. And then the little red light had died, so unexpectedly, so abruptly, that Bentley’s voice reached him before the realization.

  ‘Signal from the Vytura, sir.’

  Vallery tightened his grip on the binnacle. Bentley guessed the nod, rather than saw it.

  ‘Message reads: “Why don’t you—off. Nuts to the Senior Service.

  Tell him I send all my love.”’ The voice died softly away, and there was only the roaring of the flames, the lost pinging of the Asdic.

  ‘All my love.’ Vallery shook his head in silent wonderment. ‘All my love! He’s crazy! He must be. “All my love,” and I’m going to destroy him . . . Number One!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Tell the Commander to stand by!’

  Turner repeated the message from the bridge, turned to Ralston. ‘Stand by, LTO!’ He looked out over the side, saw that the Vytura was slightly ahead now, that the Ulysses was still angling in on an interception course. ‘About two minutes now, I should say.’ He felt the vibration beneath his feet dying away, knew the Ulysses was slowing down. Any second now, and she’d start slewing away to starboard. The receiver crackled again in his ear, the sound barely audible above the roaring of the flames. He listened, looked up. ‘“X” and “Y” only. Medium settings. Target 11 knots.’ He spoke into the phone. ‘How long?’

  ‘How long, sir?’ Carrington repeated.

  ‘Ninety seconds,’ Vallery said huskily. ‘Pilot—starboard 10.’ He jumped, startled, as he heard the crash of falling bin
oculars, saw the Admiral slump forward, face and neck striking cruelly on the edge of the windscreen, the arms dangling loosely from the shoulders.

  ‘Pilot!’

  But the Kapok Kid was already there. He slipped an arm under Tyndall, took most of the dead weight off the biting edge of the screen.

  ‘What’s the matter, sir?’ His voice was urgent, blurred with anxiety. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Tyndall stirred slightly, his cheek lying along the edge of the screen.

  ‘Cold, cold, cold,’ he intoned. The quavering tones were those of an old, a very old man.

  ‘What? What did you say, sir?’ the Kapok Kid begged.

  ‘Cold. I’m cold. I’m terribly cold! My feet, my feet!’ The old voice wandered away, and the body slipped into a corner of the bridge, the grey face upturned to the falling snow.

  Intuition, an intuition amounting to a sudden sick certainty, sent the Kapok Kid plunging to his knees. Vallery heard the muffled exclamation, saw him straighten up and swing round, his face blank with horror.

  ‘He’s—he’s got nothing on, sir,’ he said unsteadily. ‘He’s barefoot! They’re frozen—frozen solid!’

  ‘Barefoot?’ Vallery repeated unbelievingly. ‘Barefoot! It’s not possible!’

  ‘And pyjamas, sir! That’s all he’s wearing!’

  Vallery lurched forward, peeling off his gloves. He reached down, felt his stomach turn over in shocked nausea as his fingers closed on ice-chilled skin. Bare feet! And pyjamas! Bare feet—no wonder he’d padded so silently across the duckboards! Numbly, he remembered that the last temperature reading had shown 35° of frost. And Tyndall, feet caked in frozen snow and slush, had been sitting there for almost five minutes! . . . He felt great hands under his armpits, felt himself rising effortlessly to his feet. Petersen. It could only be Petersen, of course. And Nicholls behind him.

  ‘Leave this to me, sir. Right, Petersen, take him below.’ Nicholls’s brisk, assured voice, the voice of a man competent in his own element, steadied Vallery, brought him back to the present, and the demands of the present, more surely than anything else could have done. He became aware of Carrington’s clipped, measured voice, reeling off course, speed, directions, saw the Vytura 50° off the port bow, dropping slowly, steadily aft. Even at that distance, the blast of heat was barely tolerable—what in the name of heaven was it like on the bridge of the Vytura?