H.M.S. Ulysses Part 12

For the little s.h.i.+ps, already burying their bows every fifteen seconds in a creaming smother of cascading white, this was bad enough, but another, a more dangerous and insidious enemy was at work-the cold. The temperature had long sunk below freezing point, and the mercury was still shrinking down, close towards the zero mark.

The cold was now intense: ice formed in cabins and mess decks: fresh-water systems froze solid: metal contracted, hatch covers jammed, door hinges locked in frozen immobility, the oil in the searchlight controls gummed up and made them useless. To keep a watch, especially a watch on the bridge, was torture: the first shock of that bitter wind seared the lungs, left a man fighting for breath: if he had forgotten to don gloves-first the silk gloves, then the woollen mittens, then the sheepskin gauntlets-and touched a handrail, the palms of the hands seared off, the skin burnt as by white-hot metal: on the bridge, if he forgot to duck when the bows smashed down into a trough, the flying spray, solidified in a second into hurtling slivers of ice, lanced cheek and forehead open to the bone: hands froze, the very marrow of the bones numbed, the deadly chill crept upwards from feet to calves to thighs, nose and chin turned white with frostbite and demanded immediate attention: and then, by far the worst of all, the end of the watch, the return below deck, the writhing, excruciating agony of returning circulation. But, for all this, words are useless things, pale shadows of reality. Some things lie beyond the knowledge and the experience of the majority of mankind, and here imagination finds itself in a world unknown.

But all these things were relatively trifles, personal inconveniences to be shrugged aside. The real danger lay elsewhere. It lay in the fact of ice.

There were over three hundred tons of it already on the decks of the Ulysses, and more forming every minute. It lay in a thick, even coat over the main deck, the fo'c'sle, the gun-decks and the bridges: it hung in long, jagged icicles from coamings and turrets and rails: it trebled the diameter of every wire, stay and halliard, and turned slender masts into monstrous trees, ungainly and improbable. It lay everywhere, a deadly menace, and much of the danger lay in the slippery surface it presented-a problem much more easily overcome on a coal-fired merchant s.h.i.+p with clinker and ashes from its boilers, than in the modern, oil-fired wars.h.i.+ps. On the Ulysses, they spread salt and sand and hoped for the best.

But the real danger of the ice lay in its weight. A s.h.i.+p, to use technical terms, can be either stiff or tender. If she's stiff, she has a low centre of gravity, rolls easily, but whips back quickly and is extremely stable and safe. If she's tender, with a high centre of gravity, she rolls reluctantly but comes back even more reluctantly, is unstable and unsafe. And if a s.h.i.+p were tender, and hundreds of tons of ice piled high on its decks, the centre of gravity rose to a dangerous height. It could rise to a fatal height...

The escort carriers and the destroyers, especially the Port-patrick, were vulnerable, terribly so. The carriers, already unstable with the great height and weight of their reinforced flight-decks, provided a huge, smooth, flat surface to the falling snow, ideal conditions for the formation of ice. Earlier on, it had been possible to keep the flight-decks relatively clear-working parties had toiled incessantly with brooms and sledges, salt and steam hoses. But the weather had deteriorated so badly now that to send out a man on that wildly pitching, staggering flight-deck, gla.s.sy and infinitely treacherous, would be to send him to his death. The Wrestler and Blue Ranger had modified heating systems under the flight-decks-modified, because, unlike the British s.h.i.+ps, these Mississippi carriers had planked flight-decks: in such extreme conditions, they were hopelessly inefficient.

Conditions aboard the destroyers were even worse. They had to contend not only with the ice from the packed snow, but with ice from the sea itself. As regularly as clockwork, huge clouds of spray broke over the destroyers' fo'c'sles as the bows crashed solidly, shockingly into the trough and rising shoulder of the next wave: the spray froze even as it touched the deck, even before it touched the deck, piling up the solid ice, in places over a foot thick, from the stem aft beyond the breakwater. The tremendous weight of the ice was pus.h.i.+ng the little s.h.i.+ps down by their heads; deeper, with each successive plunge ever deeper, they Buried their noses in the sea, and each time, more and more sluggishly, more and more reluctantly, they staggered laboriously up from the depths. Like the carrier captains, the destroyer skippers could only look down from their bridges, helpless, hoping.

Two hours pa.s.sed, two hours in which the temperature fell to zero, hesitated, then shrank steadily beyond it, two hours in which the barometer tumbled crazily after it. Curiously, strangely, the snow still held off, the livid sky to the northwest was as far away as ever, and the sky to the south and east had cleared completely. The squadron presented a fantastic picture now, little toy-boats of sugar-icing, dazzling white, gleaming and sparkling in the pale, winter suns.h.i.+ne, pitching crazily through the ever-lengthening, ever-deepening valleys of grey and green of the cold Norwegian Sea, pus.h.i.+ng on towards that far horizon, far and weird and purply glowing, the horizon of another world. It was an incredibly lovely spectacle.

Rear-Admiral Tyndall saw nothing beautiful about it. A man who was wont to claim that he never worried, he was seriously troubled now. He was gruff, to those on the bridge, gruff to the point of discourtesy and the old geniality of the Farmer Giles of even two months ago was all but gone. Ceaselessly his gaze circled the fleet; constantly, uncomfortably, he twisted in his chair. Finally he climbed down, pa.s.sed through the gate and went into the Captain's shelter.

Vallery had no light on and the shelter was in semi-darkness. He lay there on his settee, a couple of blankets thrown over him. In the half-light, his face looked ghastly, corpse-like. His right hand clutched a balled handkerchief, spotted and stained: he made no attempt to hide it. With a painful effort, and before Tyndall could stop him, he had swung his legs over the edge of the settee and pulled forward a chair. Tyndall choked off his protest, sank gracefully into the seat.

"I think your curtain's just about to go up, d.i.c.k... What on earth ever induced me to become a squadron commander?"

Vallery grinned sympathetically. "I don't particularly envy you, sir. What are you going to do now?"

"What would you do?" Tyndall countered dolefully.

Vallery laughed. For a moment his face was transformed, boyish almost, then the laugh broke down into a bout of harsh, dry coughing. The stain spread over his handkerchief. Then he looked up and smiled.

"The penalty for laughing at a superior officer. What would I do? Heave to, sir. Better still, tuck my tail between my legs and run for it."

Tyndall shook his head.

"You never were a very convincing liar, d.i.c.k."

Both men sat in silence for a moment, then Vallery looked up.

"How far to go, exactly, sir?"

"Young Carpenter makes it 170 miles, more or less."

"One hundred and seventy." Vallery looked at his watch. "Twenty hours to go, in this weather. We must make it!"

Tyndall nodded heavily. "Eighteen s.h.i.+ps sitting out there, nineteen, counting the sweeper from Hvalfjord, not to mention old Starr's blood pressure..."

He broke off as a hand rapped on the door and a head looked in.

"Two signals, Captain, sir."

"Just read them out, Bentley, will you?"

"First is from the Portpatrick: 'Sprung bow-plates: making water fast: pumps coming: fear further damage: please advise.'"

Tyndall swore. Vallery said calmly: "And the other?"

"From the Gannet, sir. 'Breaking up.'"

"Yes, yes. And the rest of the message?"

"Just that, sir. 'Breaking up.'"

"Ha I One of these taciturn characters," Tyndall growled. "Wait a minute, Chief, will you?" He sank back in his chair, hand rasping his chin, gazing at his feet, forcing his tired mind to think.

Vallery murmured something in a low voice, and Tyndall looked up, his eyebrows arched.

"Troubled waters, sir. Perhaps the carriers------"

Tyndall slapped his knee. "Two minds with but a single thought.

Bentley, make two signals. One to all screen vessels, tell 'em to take position-astern-close astern, of the carriers. Other to the carriers. Oil hose, one each through port and starboard loading ports, about-ah-how much would you say, Captain?"

"Twenty gallons a minute, sir?"

"Twenty gallons it is. Understand, Chief? Right-o, get 'em off at once. And Chief, tell the Navigator to bring his chart here." Bentley left, and he turned to Vallery. "We've got to fuel later on, and we can't do it here. Looks as if this might be the last chance of shelter this side of Murmansk.... And if the next twenty-four hours are going to be as bad as Carrington forecasts, I doubt whether some of the little s.h.i.+ps could live through it anyway... Ah! Here you are, Pilot. Let's see where we are. How's the wind, by the way?"

"Force 10, sir." Bracing himself against the wild lurching of the Ulysses, the Kapok Kid smoothed out the chart on the Captain's bunk.

"Backing slightly."

"North-west, would you say, Pilot?" Tyndall rubbed his hands.

"Excellent. Now, my boy, our position?"

"12.40 west. 66.15 north," said the Kapok Kid precisely. He didn't even trouble to consult the chart. Tyndall lifted his eyebrows but made no comment.

"Course?"

"310, sir."

"Now, if it were necessary for us to seek shelter for fuelling-----"

"Course exactly 290, sir. I've pencilled it in, there. Four and a half hours' steaming, approximately."

"How the devil------" Tyndall exploded. "Who told you to-to------" He spluttered into a wrathful silence.

"I worked it out five minutes ago, sir. It-er-seemed inevitable. 290 would take us a few miles inside the Langanes peninsula. There should be plenty shelter there." Carpenter was grave, unsmiling.

"Seemed inevitable!" Tyndall roared. "Would you listen to him, Captain Vallery? Inevitable! And it's only just occurred to me! Of all the... Get out! Take yourself and that d.a.m.ned comic-opera fancy dress elsewhere!"

The Kapok Kid said nothing. With an air of injured innocence he gathered up his charts and left. Tyndall's voice halted him at the door.