H.M.S. Ulysses Part 33

Nicholls gazed back at him, sorry to his heart for this fresh burden for a dying man, and nodded slowly, in reluctant agreement with the unspoken thought in Vallery's eyes.

"Afraid you're right, sir. Torpedo. Somebody's stopped a packet."

"Do you hear there!" The capstan flat speaker was hurried, intense, unnaturally loud in the aftermath of silence. "Do you hear there!

Captain on the bridge: urgent. Captain on the bridge: urgent. Captain on the bridge: urgent.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

FRIDAY EVENING.

BENT ALMOST double, Captain Vallery clutched the handrail of the port ladder leading up to the fo'c'sle deck. Desperately, he tried to look out over the darkened water, but he could see nothing. A mist, a dark and swirling and roaring mist flecked with blood, a mist shot through with dazzling light swam before his eyes and he was blind. His breath came in great whoopings gasps that racked his tortured lungs: his lower ribs were clamped in giant pincers, pincers that were surely crus.h.i.+ng him. That stumbling, lurching run from the forepeak, he dimly realised, had all but killed him. Close, too d.a.m.n' close, he thought. I must be more careful In future....

Slowly his vision cleared, but the brilliant light remained. Heavens above, Vallery thought, a blind man could have seen all there was to see here. For there was nothing to be seen but the tenebrous silhouette, so faint as to be almost imagined, of a tanker deep, deep in the water-and a great column of flame, hundreds of feet in height, streaking upwards from the heart of the dense mushroom of smoke that obscured the bows of the torpedoed s.h.i.+p. Even at the distance of half a mile, the roaring of the flames was almost intolerable. Vallery watched appalled. Behind him he could hear Nicholls swearing, softly, bitterly, continuously.

Vallery felt Petersen's hand on his arm. "Does the Captain wish to go up to the bridge?"

"In a moment, Petersen, in a moment. Just hang on." His mind was functioning again, his eyes, conditioned by forty years' training, automatically sweeping the horizon. Funny, he thought, you can hardly see the tanker-the Vytura, it must be-she's s.h.i.+elded by that thick pall of smoke, probably; but the other s.h.i.+ps in the convoy, white, ghost-like, sharply etched against the indigo blue of the sky, were bathed in that deadly glare. Even the stars had died.

He became aware that Nicholls was no longer swearing in repet.i.tious monotony, that he was talking to him.

"A tanker, isn't it, sir? Hadn't we better take shelter? Remember what happened to that other one!"

"What one?" Vallery was hardly listening.

"The Coch.e.l.la. A few days ago, I think it was. Good G.o.d, no! It was only this morning!"

"When tankers go up, they go up, Nicholls." Vallery seemed curiously far away. "If they just burn, they may last long enough. Tankers die hard, terribly hard, my boy: they live where any other s.h.i.+p would sink."

"But-but she must have a hole the size of a house in her side!"

Nicholls protested.

"No odds," Vallery replied. He seemed to be waiting, watching for something. "Tremendous reserve buoyancy in these s.h.i.+ps. Maybe 27 sealed tanks, not to mention cofferdams, pump-rooms, engine-rooms... Never heard of the Nelson device for pumping compressed air into a tanker's oil tanks to give it buoyancy, to keep it afloat? Never heard of Captain Dudley Mason and the Ohiot Never heard of..." He broke off suddenly, and when he spoke again, the dreaming lethargy of the voice was gone.

"I thought so!" he exclaimed, his voice sharp with excitement. "I thought so! The Vytura's still under way, still under command! Good G.o.d, she must still be doing almost 15 knots! The bridge, quick!"

Vallery's feet left the deck, barely touched it again till Petersen set him down carefully on the duckboards in front of the startled Commander.

Vallery grinned faintly at Turner's astonishment, at the bushy eyebrows lifting over the dark, lean buccaneer's face, leaner, more recklessly chiselled than ever in the glare of the blazing tanker. If ever a man was born 400 years too late, Vallery thought inconsequentially ; but what a man to have around!

"It's all right, Commander." He laughed shortly. "Brooks thought I needed a Man Friday. That's Stoker Petersen. Over-enthusiastic, maybe a trifle apt to take orders too literally... But he was a G.o.dsend to me tonight... But never mind me." He jerked his thumb towards the tanker, blazing even more whitely now, difficult to look at, almost, as the noonday sun. "How about him?"

"Makes a b.l.o.o.d.y fine lighthouse for any German s.h.i.+p or plane that happens to be looking for us," Turner growled. "Might as well send a signal to Trondheim giving our lat. and long."

"Exactly," Vallery nodded. "Besides setting up some beautiful targets for the sub that got the Vytura just now. A dangerous fellow, Commander. That was a brilliant piece of work-in almost total darkness, too."

"Probably a scuttle somebody forgot to shut. We haven't the s.h.i.+ps to keep checking them all the time. And it wasn't so d.a.m.ned brilliant, at least not for him. The Viking's in contact right now, sitting over the top of him.... I sent her right away."

"Good man!" Vallery said warmly. He turned to look at the burning tanker, looked back at Turner, his face set. "She'll have to go, Commander."

Turner nodded slowly. "She'll have to go," he echoed.

"It is the Vytura, isn't it?"

"That's her. Same one that caught it this morning."

"Who's the master?"

"Haven't the foggiest," Turner confessed. "Number One, Pilot? Any idea where the sailing list is?"

"No, sir." The Kapok Kid was hesitant, oddly unsure of himself.

"Admiral had them, I know. Probably gone, now."

"What makes you think that?" Vallery asked sharply.

"Spicer, his pantry steward, was almost choked with smoke this afternoon, found him making a whacking great fire in his bath," the Kapok Kid said miserably. "Said he was burning vital doc.u.ments that must not fall into enemy hands. Old newspapers, mostly, but I think the list must have been among them. It's nowhere else."

"Poor old..." Turner remembered just in time that he was speaking of the Admiral, broke off, shook bis head in compa.s.sionate wonder. "Shall I send a signal to Fletcher on the Cape Hatterasl"

"Never mind." Vallery was impatient. "There's no time. Bentley-to the master, Vytura:' Please abandon s.h.i.+p immediately : we are going to sink you.'"

Suddenly Vallery stumbled, caught hold of Turner's arm.

"Sorry," he apologised. "I'm afraid my legs are going. Gone, rather."

He smiled up wryly at the anxious faces. "No good pretending any longer, is there? Not when your legs start a mutiny on their own. Oh, dear G.o.d, I'm done!"

"And no b.l.o.o.d.y wonder!" Turner swore. "I wouldn't treat a mad dog the way you treat yourself! Come on, sir. Admiral's chair for you-now. If you don't, I'll get Petersen to you," he threatened, as Vallery made to protest. The protest died in a smile, and Vallery meekly allowed himself to be helped into a chair. He sighed deeply, relaxed into the G.o.d-sent support of the back and arms of the chair. He felt ghastly, powerless, his wasted body a wide sea of pain, and deadly cold; all these things, but also proud and grateful, Turner had never even suggested that he go below.

He heard the gate crash behind him, the murmur of voices, then Turner was at his side.

"The Master-at-Arms, sir. Did you send for him?"

"I certainly did." Vallery twisted in his chair, his face grim.

"Come"here, Hastings!"

The Master-at-Arms stood at attention before him. As always, his face was a mask, inscrutable, expressionless, almost inhuman in that fierce light.

"Listen carefully." Vallery had to raise his voice above the roar of the flames: the effort even to speak was exhausting. "I have no time to talk to you now. I will see you in the morning. Meantime, you will release Leading Seaman Ralston immediately. You will then hand over your duties, your papers and your keys to Regulating Petty Officer Perrat.

Twice, now, you have overstepped the limits of your authority: that is insolence, but it can be overlooked. But you have also kept a man locked in cells during Action Stations. The prisoner would have died like a rat in a trap. You are no longer Master-At-Arms of the Ulysses. That is all."

For a couple of seconds Hastings stood rigidly in shocked unbelieving silence, then the iron discipline snapped. He stepped forward, arms raised in appeal, the mask collapsed in contorted bewilderment.