HMS Ulysses

by Alistair MacLean

  "You carry this damned ship on your back!" Unbidden, old Socrates's phrase came into his mind and he smiled faintly. Well, if ever they needed him, it was now. And if he waited any longer, he knew he could never be able to go.

  He sat up, sweating with the effort, swung his legs carefully over the side. As his feet touched the deck, the Ulysses pitched suddenly, steeply, and he fell forward against a chair, sliding helplessly to the floor. It took an eternity of time, an infinite effort to drag himself to his feet again: another effort like that, he knew, would surely kill him.

  And then there was the door, that heavy, steel door. Somehow he had to open it, and he knew he couldn't. But he laid hold of the handle and the door opened, and suddenly, miraculously, he was outside, gasping as the cruel, sub-zero wind seared down through his throat and wasted lungs.

  He looked fore and aft. The fires were dying, he saw, the fires on the Stirling and on his own poop-deck. Thank God for that at least. Beside him, two men had just finished levering the door off the Asdic cabinet, were flashing a torch inside. But he couldn't bear to look: he averted his head, staggered with outstretched hands for the gate of the compass platform.

  Turner saw him coming, hurried to meet him, helped him slowly to his chair.

  "You've no right to be here," he said quietly. He looked at Vallery for a long moment. "How are you feeling, sir?"

  "I'm a good deal better, now, thanks," Vallery replied. He smiled and went on: "We Rear-Admirals have our responsibilities, you know, Commander: it's time I began to earn my princely salary."

  "Stand back, there!" Carrington ordered curtly. "Into the wheelhouse or up on the ladder, all of you. Let's have a look at this."

  He looked down at the great, steel hatch cover. Looking at it, he realised he'd never before appreciated just how solid, how massive that cover was. The hatch cover, open no more than an inch, was resting on a tommy-bar. He noticed the broken, stranded pulley, the heavy counterweight lying against the sill of the wheelhouse. So that's off, he thought: thank the Lord for that, anyway.

  "Have you tried a block and tackle?" he asked abruptly.

  "Yes, sir," the man nearest him replied. He pointed to a tangled heap in a corner. "No use, sir. The ladder takes the strain all right, but we can't get the hook under the hatch, except sideways, and then it slips off all the time." He gestured to the hatch. "And every clip's either bent, they were opened by sledges, or at the wrong angle.... I think I know how to use a block and tackle, sir."

  "I'm sure you do," Carrington said absently. "Here, give me a hand, will you?"

  He hooked his fingers under the hatch, took a deep breath. The seaman at one side of the cover, the other side was hard against the after bulkhead, did the same. Together they strained, thighs and backs quivering under the strain. Carrington felt his face turning crimson with effort, heard the blood pounding in his ears, and relaxed. They were only killing themselves and that damned cover hadn't shifted a fraction, someone had done remarkably well to open it even that far. But even though they were tired and anything but fit, Carrington thought, two men should have been able to raise an edge of that hatch. He suspected that the hinges were jammed, or the deck buckled. If that were so, he mused, even if they could hook on a tackle, it would be of little help. A tackle was of no use when a sudden, immediate application of force was required; it always yielded that fraction before tightening up.

  He sank to his knees, put his mouth to the edge of the hatch.

  "Below there!" he called. "Can you hear me?"

  "We can hear you." The voice was weak, muffled. "For God's sake get us out of here. We're trapped like rats!". "Is that you, Brierley? Don't worry, we'll get you out. How's the water down there?"

  "Water? More bloody oil than water! There must be a fracture right through the port oil tank. I think the ring main passage must be flooded, too."

  "How deep is it?"

  "Three quarters way up already! We're standing on generators, hanging on to switchboards. One of our boys is gone already, we couldn't hold him."

  Even muffled by the hatch, the strain, the near desperation in the voice was all too obvious. "For pity's sake, hurry up!"

  "I said we'd get you out!" Carrington's voice was sharp, authoritative.

  The confidence was in his voice only, but he knew how quickly panic could spread down there. "Can you push from below at all?"

  "There's room for only one on the ladder," Brierley shouted. "It's impossible to get any pressure, any leverage upwards." There was a sudden silence, then a series of muffled oaths.

  "What's up?" Carrington called sharply.

  "It's difficult to hang on," Brierley shouted. "There are waves two feet high down there. One of the men was washed off there.... I think he's back again. It's pitch dark down here."

  Carrington heard the clatter of heavy footsteps above him, and straightened up. It was Petersen. In that narrow space, the blond Norwegian stoker looked gigantic. Carrington looked at him, looked at the immense span of shoulder, the great depth of chest, one enormous hand hanging loosely by his side, the other negligently holding three heavy crowbars and a sledge as if they were so many lengths of cane.

  Carrington looked at him, looked at the still, grave eyes so startlingly blue under the flaxen hair, and all at once he felt oddly confident, reassured.

  "We can't open this, Petersen," Carrington said baldly. "Can you?"

  "I will try, sir." He laid down his tools, stooped, caught the end of the tommy-bar projecting beneath the corner of the cover. He straightened quickly, easily: the hatch lifted a fraction, then the bar, putty, like in its apparent malleability, bent over almost to a right angle.

  "I think the hatch is jammed." Petersen wasn't even breathing heavily.

  "It will be the hinges, sir."

  He walked round the hatch, peered closely at the hinges, then grunted in satisfaction. Three times the heavy sledge, swung with accuracy and all the power of these great shoulders behind them, smashed squarely into the face of the outer hinge. On the third stroke the sledge snapped.

  Petersen threw away the broken shaft in disgust, picked up another, much heavier crowbar.

  Again the bar bent, but again the hatch cover lifted an inch this time.

  Petersen picked up the two smaller sledges that had been used to open clips, hammered at the hinges till these sledges, too, were broken and useless.

  This time he used the last two crowbars together, thrust under the same corner of the hatch. For five, ten seconds he remained bent over them, motionless. He was breathing deeply, quickly, now, then suddenly the breathing stopped. The sweat began to pour off his face, his whole body to quiver under the titanic strain: then slowly, incredibly, both crowbars began to bend.

  Carrington watched, fascinated. He had never seen anything remotely like this before: he was sure no one else had either. Neither of these bars, he would have sworn, would have bent under less than half a ton of pressure. It was fantastic, but it was happening: and as the giant straightened, they were bending more and more. Then suddenly, so unexpectedly that everyone jumped, the hatch sprang open five or six inches and Petersen crashed backwards against the bulkhead, the bars falling from his hand and splashing into the water below.

  Petersen flung himself back at the hatch, tigerish in his ferocity. His fingers hooked under the edge, the great muscles of his arms and shoulders lifted and locked as he tugged and pulled at that massive hatch cover. Three times he heaved, four times, then on the fifth the hatch almost literally leapt up with a screech of tortured metal and smashed shudderingly home into the retaining latch of the vertical stand behind. The hatch was open. Petersen just stood there smiling, no one had seen Petersen smile for a long time, his face bathed in sweat, his great chest rising and falling rapidly as his starved lungs sucked in great draughts of air.

  The water level in the Low Power Room was within two feet of the hatch: sometimes, when the Ulysses plunged into a heavy sea, the dark, oily liquid splashed over the hatch
coaming into the flat above. Quickly, the trapped men were hauled to safety. Soaked in oil from head to foot, their eyes gummed and blinded, they were men overcome by reaction, utterly spent and on the verge of collapse, so far gone that even their fear could not overcome their exhaustion. Three, in particular, could do no more than cling helplessly to the ladder, would almost certainly have slipped back into the surging blackness below; but Petersen bent over and plucked them clean out of the Low Power Room as if they had been little children.

  "Take these men to the Sick Bay at once!" Carrington ordered. He watched the dripping, shivering men being helped up the ladder, then turned to the giant stoker with a smile. "We'll all thank you later, Petersen.

  We're not finished yet. This hatch must be closed and battened down."

  "It will be difficult, sir," Petersen said gravely.

  "Difficult or not, it must be done." Carrington was emphatic.

  Regularly, now, the water was spilling over the coaming, was lapping the sill of the wheelhouse. "The emergency steering position is gone: if the wheelhouse is flooded, we're finished."

  Petersen said nothing. He lifted the retaining latch, pulled the protesting hatch cover down a foot. Then he braced his shoulder against the latter, planted his feet on the cover and straightened his back convulsively: the cover screeched down to 45ø. He paused, bent his back like a bow, his hands taking his weight on the ladder, then pounded his feet again and again on the edge of the cover. Fifteen inches to go.

  "We need heavy hammers, sir," Petersen said urgently.

  "No time!" Carrington shook his head quickly. "Two more minutes and it'll be impossible to shut the hatch cover against the water pressure. Hell!" he said bitterly. "If it were only the other way round, closing from below. Even I could lever it shut!"

  Again Petersen said nothing. He squatted down by the side of the hatch, gazed into the darkness beneath his feet.

  "I have an idea, sir," he said quickly. "If two of you would stand on the hatch, push against the ladder. Yes, sir, that way, but you could push harder if you turned your back to me."

  Carrington laid the heels of his hands against the iron steps of the ladder, heaved with all his strength. Suddenly he heard a splash, then a metallic clatter, whirled round just in time to see a crowbar clutched in an enormous hand disappear below the edge of the hatch. There was no sign of Petersen. Like many big, powerful men, he was lithe and cat like in his movements: he'd gone down over the edge of that hatch without a sound.

  "Petersen!" Carrington was on his knees by the hatch. "What the devil do you think you're doing? Come out of there, you bloody fool Do you want to drown?"

  There was no reply. Complete silence below, a silence deepened by the gentle sussuration of the water. Suddenly the quiet was broken by the sound of metal striking against metal, then by a jarring screech as the hatch dropped six inches. Before Carrington had time to think, the hatch cover dropped farther still. Desperately, the First Lieutenant seized a crowbar, thrust it under the hatch cover: a split second later the great steel cover thudded down on top of it. Carrington had his mouth to the gap now.

  "In the name of God, Petersen," he shouted, "Are you sane? Open up, open up at once, do you hear?"

  "I can't." The voice came and went as the water surged over the stoker's head. "I won't. You said yourself... there is no time... this was the only way."

  "But I never meant------"

  "I know. It does not matter... it is better this way." It was almost impossible to make out what he was saying. "Tell Captain Vallery that Petersen says he is very sorry.... I tried to tell the Captain yesterday."

  "Sorry I Sorry for what?" Madly Carrington flung all his strength against the iron bar: the hatch cover did not even quiver.

  "The dead marine in Scapa Flow... I did not mean to kill him, I could never kill any man... But he angered me," the big Norwegian said simply. "He killed my friend."

  For a second, Carrington stopped straining at the bar. Petersen! Of course, who but Petersen could have snapped a man's neck like that.

  Petersen, the big, laughing Scandinavian, who had so suddenly changed overnight into a grave unsmiling giant, who stalked the deck, the mess decks and alleyways by day and by night, who was never seen to smile or sleep. With a sudden flash of insight, Carrington saw clear through into the tortured mind of that kind and simple man.

  "Listen, Petersen," he begged. "I don't give a damn about that. Nobody shall ever know, I promise you. Please, Petersen, just------"

  "It is better this way." The muffled voice was strangely content.

  "It is not good to kill a man... it is not good to go on living.... I know... Please, it is important, you will tell my Captain Petersen is sorry and filled with shame... I do this for my Captain." Without warning, the crowbar was plucked from Carrington's hand. The cover clanged down in position. For a minute the wheelhouse flat rang to a succession of muffled, metallic blows. Suddenly the clamour ceased and there was only the rippling surge of the water outside the wheelhouse and the creak of the wheel inside as the Ulysses steadied on course.

  The clear sweet voice soared high and true above the subdued roar of the engine-room fans, above the whine of a hundred electric motors and the sound of the rushing of the waters. Not even the metallic impersonality of the loudspeakers could detract from the beauty of that singing voice.... It was a favourite device of Vallery's when the need for silence was not paramount, to pass the long, dark hours by coupling up the record player to the broadcast system.

  Almost invariably, the musical repertoire was strictly classical, or what is more often referred to, foolishly and disparagingly, as the popular classics. Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovski, Lehar, Verdi, Delius, these were the favourites.

  "No. in B flat minor," "Air on a G string,"

  "Moonlight on the Alster," "Claire de Lune," "The Skater's Waltz", the crew of the Ulysses could never have enough of these. "Ridiculous," "impossible", it is all too easy to imagine the comments of those who equate the matelot's taste in music with the popular conception of his ethics and morals; but those same people have never heard the hushed, cathedral silence in the crowded hangar of a great aircraft carrier in Scapa Flow as Yehudi Menuhin's magic bow sang across the strings of the violin, swept a thousand men away from the harsh urgencies of reality, from the bitter memories of the last patrol or convoy, into the golden land of music.

  But now a girl was singing. It was Deanna Durbin, and she was singing

  "Beneath the Lights of Home," that most heartbreakingly nostalgic of all songs. Below decks and above, bent over the great engines or huddled by their guns, men listened to the lovely voice as it drifted through the darkened ship and the falling snow, and turned their minds inwards and thought of home, thought of the bitter contrast and the morning that would not come. Suddenly, half-way through, the song stopped.

  "Do you hear there?" the 'speakers boomed. "Do you hear there? This, this is the Commander speaking." The voice was deep and grave and hesitant: it caught and held the attention of every man in the ship.

  "I have bad news for you." Turner spoke slowly, quietly. "I am sorry, I..." He broke off, then went on more slowly still. "Captain Vallery died five minutes ago." For a moment the 'speaker was silent, then crackled again. "He died on the bridge, in his chair. He knew he was dying and I don't think he suffered at all.... He insisted, he insisted that I thank you for the way you all stood by him. 'Tell them', these were his words, as far as I remember, 'tell them,' he said, 'that I couldn't have carried on without them, that they are the best crew that God ever gave a Captain.' Then he said, it was the last thing he said:' Give them my apologies. After all they've done for me, well, well, tell them I'm terribly sorry to let them down like this.' That was all he said, just' Tell them I'm sorry.' And then he died."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SATURDAY NIGHT

  RICHARD VALLERY was dead. He died grieving, stricken at the thought that he was abandoning the crew of the Ulysses, leaving them behind,
leaderless. But it was only for a short time, and he did not have to wait long. Before the dawn, hundreds more, men in the cruisers, the destroyers and the merchantmen, had died also. And they did not die as he had feared under the guns of the Tirpitz, another grim parallel with PQ17, for the Tirpitz had not left Alta Fjord. They died, primarily, because the weather had changed.

  Richard Vallery was dead, and with his death a great change had come over the men of the Ulysses. When Vallery died, other things died also, for he took these things with him. He took with him the courage, the kindliness, the gentleness, the unshakable faith, the infinitely patient and understanding endurance, all these things which had been so peculiarly his own. And now these things were gone and the Ulysses was left without them and it did not matter. The men of the Ulysses no longer needed courage and all the adjuncts of courage, for they were no longer afraid. Vallery was dead and they did not know how much they respected and loved that gentle man until he was gone. But then they knew. They knew that something wonderful, something that had become an enduring part of their minds and memories, something infinitely fine and good, was gone and they would never know it again, and they were mad with grief. And, in war, a grief-stricken man is the most terrible enemy there is. Prudence, caution, fear, pain-for the grief-stricken man these no longer exist. He lives only to lash out blindly at the enemy, to destroy, if he can, the author of his grief.

  Rightly or wrongly, the Ulysses never thought to blame the Captain's death on any but the enemy. There Was only, for them, the sorrow and the blind hate. Zombies, Nicholls had called them once, and the Ulysses was more than ever a ship manned by living zombies, zombies who prowled restlessly, incessantly, across the snow and ice of the heaving decks, automatons living only for revenge.