No one knew what had happened. It seemed likely-certain, indeed-that acid spilt from the batteries by the tremendous pitching had eaten through the lashings. Then a battery must have broken loose and smashed another, and another, and another, and then the jars and carboys until the entire floor-fortunately of acid-resisting material-was awash to a depth of five or six inches in sulphuric acid.
A young torpedoman, on a routine check, had opened the door and seen the splashing sea of acid inside. Panicking, and recalling vaguely that caustic soda, stored in quantities just outside, was a neutraliser for sulphuric, he had emptied a forty-pound carton of it into the battery-room: he was in the Sick Bay now, blinded. The acid fumes saturated the capstan flat, making entry impossible without breathing equipment, and was seeping back, slowly, insidiously, into the mess-deck: more deadly still hundreds of gallons of salt water from sprung deck-plates and broken capstan speaking tubes were surging crazily around the flat: already the air was tainted with the first traces of chlorine gas. On the deck immediately above, Hartley and two seamen, belayed with ropes, had made a brief, hopelessly gallant attempt to plug the gaping holes: all three, battered into near senselessness by the great waves pounding the fo'c'sle, were dragged off within a minute.
For the men below, it was discomfort, danger and desperate physical illness: for the bare handful of men above, the officers and ratings on the bridge, it was pure undiluted hell. But a hell not of our latter-day imagining, a strictly Eastern and Biblical conception, but the hell of our ancient North-European ancestors, of the Vikings, the Danes, the Jutes, of Beowulf and the monster-haunted meres-the hell of eternal cold.
True, the temperature registered a mere 10ø below zero, 42ø of frost.
Men have been known to live, even to work in the open, at far lower temperatures. What is not so well known, what is barely realised at all, is that when freezing point has been passed, every extra mile per hour of wind is equivalent, in terms of pure cold as it reacts on a human being, to a 1ø drop in temperature. Not once, but several times that night, before it had finally raced itself to destruction, the anemometer had recorded gusts of over 125 m.p.h., wave-flattening gusts that sundered stays and all but tore the funnels off. For minutes on end, the shrieking, screaming wind held steady at 100 m.p.h. and above, the total equivalent, for these numbed, paralysed creatures on the bridge, of something well below a 100ø below zero.
Five minutes at a time was enough for any man on the bridge, then he had to retire to the Captain's shelter. Not that manning the bridge was more than a gesture anyway, it was impossible to look into that terrible wind: the cold would have seared the eyeballs blind, the ice would have gouged them out. And it was impossible even to see through the Kent Clear-view windscreens. They still spun at high speed, but uselessly: the ice-laden storm, a gigantic sand-blaster, had starred and abraded the plate glass until it was completely opaque.
It was not a dark night. It was possible to see above, abeam and astern.
Above, patches of night-blue sky and handfuls of stars could be seen at fleeting intervals, obscured as soon as seen by the scudding, shredded cloud-wrack. Abeam and astern, the sea was an inky black, laced with boiling white. Gone now were the serried ranks of yesterday, gone, too, the decorative white-caps: here now were only massive mountains of water, broken and confused, breaking this way and that, but always tending south. Some of these moving ranges of water-by no stretch of the imagination, only by proxy, could they be called waves-were small, insignificant-in size of a suburban house: others held a million tons of water, towered seventy to eighty feet, looming terrifyingly against the horizon, big enough to drown a cathedral... As the Kapok Kid remarked, the best thing to do with these waves was to look the other way. More often than not, they passed harmlessly by, plunging the Ulysses into the depths: rarely, they curled over and broke their tops into the bridge, soaking the unfortunate Officer of the Watch. He had then to be removed at once or he would literally have frozen solid within a minute.
So far they had survived, far beyond the expectation of any man. But, as they were blind ahead, there was always the worry of what would come next. Would the next sea be normal-for that storm, that was-or some nameless juggernaut that would push them under for ever? The suspense never lifted, a suspense doubled by the fact that when the Ulysses reared and crashed down, it did so soundlessly, sightlessly. They could judge its intensity only by movement and vibration: the sound of the sea, everything, was drowned in the Satanic cacophony of that howling wind in the upper works and rigging.
About two in the morning-it was just after the depth-charge explosions-some of the senior officers had staged their own private mutiny. The Captain, who had been persuaded to go below less than an hour previously, exhausted and shaking uncontrollably with cold, had been wakened by the depth-charging and had returned to the bridge. He found his way barred by the Commander and Commander Westcliffe, who bundled him quietly but firmly into the shelter. Turner heaved the door to, switched on the light. Vallery was more puzzled than angry.
"What, what in the world does this mean?" he demanded.
"Mutiny!" boomed Turner happily. His face was covered in blood from flying splinters of ice. "On the High Seas, is the technical term, I believe. Isn't that so, Admiral?"
"Exactly," the Admiral agreed. Vallery swung round, startled: Tyndall was lying in state on the bunk. "Mind you, I've no jurisdiction over a Captain in his own ship; but I can't see a thing."
He lay back on the bunk, eyes elaborately closed in seeming exhaustion.
Only Tyndall knew that he wasn't pretending.
Vallery said nothing. He stood there clutching a handrail, his face grey and 'haggard, his eyes blood-red and drugged with sleep. Turner felt a knife twist inside him as he looked at him. When he spoke, his voice was low and earnest, so unusual for him that he caught and held Vallery's attention.
"Sir, this is no night for a naval captain. Danger from any quarter except the sea itself just doesn't exist. Agreed?"
Vallery nodded silently.
"It's a night for a seaman, sir. With all respect, I suggest that neither of us is in the class of Carrington, he's just a different breed of man."
"Nice of you to include yourself, Commander," Vallery murmured. "And quite unnecessary."
"The first Lieutenant will remain on the bridge all night So will Westcliffe here. So will I."
"Me, too," grunted Tyndall. "But I'm going to sleep." He looked almost as tired, as haggard as Vallery.
Turner grinned. "Thank you, sir. Well, Captain, I'm afraid it's going to be a bit overcrowded here tonight... Well see you after breakfast."
"But------"
"But me no buts," Westcliffe murmured.
"Please," Turner insisted. "You will do us a favour."
Vallery looked at him. "As Captain of the Ulysses... "His voice tailed off. "I don't know what to say."
"I do," said Turner briskly, his hand on Vallery's elbow. "Let's go below."
"Don't think I can manage by myself, eh?" Vallery smiled faintly.
"I do. But I'm taking no chances. Come along, sir."
"All right, all right." He sighed tiredly. "Anything for a quiet life... and a night's sleep I"
Reluctantly, with a great effort, Lieutenant Nicholls dragged himself up from the mist-fogged depths of exhausted sleep. Slowly, reluctantly, he opened his eyes. The Ulysses, he realised, was still rolling as heavily, plunging as sickeningly as ever. The Kapok Kid, forehead swathed in bandages, the rest of his face pocked with blood, was bending over him. He looked disgustingly cheerful.
"Hark, hark, the lark, etcetera," the Kapok Kid grinned. "And how are we this morning?" he mimicked unctuously. The Hon. Carpenter held the medical profession in low esteem.
Nicholls focused blurred eyes on him. "What's the matter, Andy?
Anything wrong?" "With Messrs. Carrington and Carpenter in charge," said the Kapok Kid loftily, "nothing could be wrong. Want to come up top, see Carrington do his stuff?
He's going to turn the ship round. In this little lot, it should be worth seeing!"
"What! Dammit to belli Have you woken me just------"
"Brother, when this ship turns, you would wake up anyway, probably on the deck with a broken neck. But as it so happens, Jimmy requires your assistance. At least, he requires one of these heavy plate-glass squares which I happen to know you have in great numbers in the dispensary. But the dispensary's locked, I tried it," he added shamelessly. "But what I mean plate glass" "Come and see for yourself," the Kapok Kid invited.
It was dawn now, a wild and terrible dawn, fit epilogue for a nightmare.
Strange, trailing bands of misty-white vapour swept by barely at mast-top level, but high above the sky was clear. The seas, still gigantic, were shorter now, much shorter, and even steeper: the Ulysses was slowed right down, with barely enough steerage way to keep her head up, and even then, taking severe punishment in the precipitous head seas. The wind had dropped to a steady fifty knots, gale force: even at that, it seared like fire in Nicholls's lungs as he stepped out on the flap-deck, blinded him with ice and cold. Hastily he wrapped scarves over 'his entire face, clambered up to the bridge by touch and instinct.
The Kapok Kid followed with the glass. As they climbed, they heard the loudspeakers crackling some unintelligible message.
Turner and Carrington were alone on the twflit bridge, swathed like mummies. Not even their eyes were visible, they wore goggles.
"'Morning, Nicholls," boomed the Commander. "It is Nicholls, isn't it?" He pulled off his goggles, his back turned to the bitter wind, threw them away in disgust. "Can't see damn' all through these bloody things... Ah, Number One, he's got the glass."
Nicholls crouched in the for'ard lee of the compass platform. In a corner, the duckboards were littered with goggles, eye-shields and gas-masks. He jerked his head towards them.
"What's this, a clearance sale?"
"We're turning round, Doc." It was Carrington who answered, his voice calm and precise as ever, without a trace of exhaustion. "But we've got to see where we're going, and as the Commander says, all these damn' things there are useless, mist up immediately they're put on, it's too cold. If you'll just hold it, so, and if you would wipe it, Andy?"
Nicholls looked at the great seas. He shuddered.
"Excuse my ignorance, but why turn round at all?"
"Because it will be impossible very shortly," Carrington answered briefly. Then he chuckled. "This is going to make me the most unpopular man in the ship. We've just broadcast a warning. Ready, sir?"
"Stand by, engine-room: stand by, wheelhouse. Ready, Number One."
For thirty seconds, forty-five, a whole minute, Carrington stared steadily, unblinkingly through the glass. Nicholls's hands froze. The Kapok Kid rubbed industriously. Then:
"Half-ahead, port!"
"Half-ahead, port!" Turner echoed.
"Starboard 20!"
"Starboard 20!"
Nicholls risked a glance over his shoulder. In the split second before bis eyes blinded, filled with tears, he saw a huge wave bearing down on them, the bows already swinging diagonally away from it. Good Godl Why hadn't Carrington waited until that was past?
The great wave flung the bows up, pushed the Ulysses far over to starboard, then passed under. The Ulysses staggered over the top, corkscrewed wickedly down the other side, her masts, great gleaming tree trunks thick and heavy with ice, swinging in a great arc as she rolled over, burying her port rails in the rising shoulder of the next sea.
"Fullahead port!"
"Full ahead port!"
"Starboard 30!"
"Starboard 30!"
The next sea, passing beneath, merely straightened the Ulysses up. And then, at last, Nicholls understood. Incredibly, because it had been impossible to see so far ahead, Carrington had known that two opposing wave systems were due to interlock in an area of comparative calm: how he had sensed it, no one knew, would ever know, not even Carrington himself: but he was a great seaman, and he had known. For fifteen, twenty seconds, the sea was a seething white mass of violently disturbed, conflicting waves-of the type usually found, on a small scale, in tidal races and overfalls-and the Ulysses curved gratefully through. And then another great sea, towering almost to bridge height, caught her on the far turn of the quarter circle. It struck the entire length of the Ulysses, for the first time that night, with tremendous weight. It threw her far over on her side, the lee rails vanishing. Nicholls was flung off his feet, crashed heavily into the side of the bridge, the glass shattering. He could have sworn he heard Carrington laughing. He clawed his way back to the middle of the compass platform.
And still the great wave had not passed. It towered high above the trough into which the Ulysses, now heeeled far over to 40ø, had been so contemptuously flung, bore down remorselessly from above and sought, in a lethal silence and with an almost animistic savagery, to press her under. The inclinometer swung relentlessly over-45ø, 50ø, 53ø, and hung there an eternity, while men stood on the side of the ship, braced with their hands on the deck, numbed minds barely grasping the inevitable.
This was the end. The Ulysses could never come back.
A lifetime ticked agonisingly by. Nicholls and Carpenter looked at each other, blank-faced, expressionless. Tilted at that crazy angle, the bridge was sheltered from the wind. Carrington's voice, calm, conversational, carried with amazing clarity.
"She'd go to 65 and still come back," he said matter-of-factly.
"Hang on to your hats, gentlemen. This is going to be interesting."
Just as he finished, the Ulysses shuddered, then imperceptibly, then slowly, then with vicious speed lurched back and whipped through an arc of 90ø, then back again. Once more Nicholls found himself in the corner of the bridge. But the Ulysses was almost round.
The Kapok Kid, grinning with relief, picked himself up and tapped Carrington on the shoulder.
"Don't look now, sir, but we have lost our mainmast."
It was a slight exaggeration, but the top fifteen feet, Which had carried the after radar scanner, were undoubtedly gone. That, wicked, double whip-lash, with the weight of the ice, had been too much.
"Slow ahead both! Midships!"
"Slow ahead both! Midships!"
"Steady as she goes!"
The Ulysses was round.
The Kapok Kid caught Nicholls's eye, nodded at the First Lieutenant.
"See what I mean, Johnny?"
"Yes." Nicholls was very quiet. "Yes, I see what you mean." Then he grinned suddenly. "Next time you make a statement, I'll just take your word for it, if you don't mind. These demonstrations of proof take too damn' much out of a person!"
Running straight before the heavy stern sea, the Ulysses was amazingly steady. The wind, too, was dead astern now, the bridge in magical shelter. The scudding mist overhead had thinned out, was almost gone.
Far away to the southeast a dazzling white sun climbed up above a cloudless horizon. The long night was over.
An hour later, with the wind down to thirty knots, radar reported contacts to the west. After another hour, with the wind almost gone and only a heavy swell running, smoke plumes tufted above the horizon. At 1030, in position, on time, the Ulysses rendezvoused with the convoy from Halifax.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WEDNESDAY NIGHT
THE CONVOY came steadily up from the west, rolling heavily in cross seas, a rich argosy, a magnificent prize for any German wolf-pack.
Eighteen ships in this argosy, fifteen big, modern cargo ships, three 16,000-ton tankers, carrying a freight far more valuable, infinitely more vital, than any fleet of quinqueremes or galleons had ever known.
Tanks, planes and petrol-what were gold and jewels, silks and the rarest of spices compared to these? œ10,000,000, œ20,000,000-the total worth of that convoy was difficult to estimate: in any event, its real value was not to be measured in terms of money.
Aboard the merchant ships, crews lined the decks as the Ulysses steamed
up between the port and centre lines. Lined the decks and looked and wondered-and thanked their Maker they had been wide of the path of that great storm. The Ulysses, seen from another deck, was a strange sight: broken-masted, stripped of her rafts, with her boat falls hauled taut over empty cradles, she glistened like crystal in the morning light: the great wind had blown away all snow, had abraded and rubbed and polished the ice to a satin-smooth, transparent gloss: but on either side of the bows and before the bridge were huge patches of crimson, where the hurricane sand-blaster of that long night had stripped off camouflage and base coats, exposing the red lead below.
The American escort was small, a heavy cruiser with a seaplane for spotting, two destroyers and two near frigates of the coastguard type.
Small, but sufficient: there was no need of escort carriers (although these frequently sailed with the Atlantic convoys) because the Luftwaffe could not operate so far west, and the wolf-packs, in recent months, had moved north and east of Iceland: there, they were not only nearer base-they could more easily lie astride the converging convoy routes to Murmansk.
ENE. they sailed in company, freighters, American warships and the Ulysses until, late in the afternoon, the box-like silhouette of an escort carrier bulked high against the horizon. Half an hour later, at 1600, the American escorts slowed, dropped astern and turned, winking farewell messages of good luck. Aboard the Ulysses, men watched them depart with mixed feelings. They knew these ships had to go, that another convoy would already be mustering off the St. Lawrence. There was none of the envy, the bitterness one might expect-and had indeed been common enough only a few weeks ago-among these exhausted men who carried the brunt of the war. There was instead a careless acceptance of things as they were, a quasi-cynical bravado, often a queer, high nameless pride that hid itself beneath twisted jests and endless grumbling.
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