H.M.S. Ulysses Part 17

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 cla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+p round. In this little lot, it should be worth seeing!"

"What! Dammit to belli Have you woken me just------"

"Brother, when this s.h.i.+p turns, you would wake up anyway, probably on the deck with a broken neck. But as it so happens, Jimmy requires your a.s.sistance. At least, he requires one of these heavy plate-gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s" "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 gla.s.s. 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 d.a.m.n' all through these b.l.o.o.d.y things... Ah, Number One, he's got the gla.s.s."

Nicholls crouched in the for'ard lee of the compa.s.s platform. In a corner, the duckboards were littered with goggles, eye-s.h.i.+elds 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 d.a.m.n' 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 s.h.i.+p. 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 gla.s.s. 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 G.o.dl Why hadn't Carrington waited until that was past?

The great wave flung the bows up, pushed the Ulysses far over to starboard, then pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sing 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 ma.s.s 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 vanis.h.i.+ng. Nicholls was flung off his feet, crashed heavily into the side of the bridge, the gla.s.s shattering. He could have sworn he heard Carrington laughing. He clawed his way back to the middle of the compa.s.s platform.

And still the great wave had not pa.s.sed. It towered high above the trough into which the Ulysses, now heeeled far over to 40, 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-45, 50, 53, and hung there an eternity, while men stood on the side of the s.h.i.+p, braced with their hands on the deck, numbed minds barely grasping the inevitable.

This was the end. The Ulysses could never come back.