H.M.S. Ulysses Part 36

"If you wish, sir." Nicholls hesitated, nodded forward towards Tyndall.

"I thought, perhaps------"

"Perhaps you're right, perhaps you're right." Vallery shook his head in weary perplexity. "We'll see. Just wait a bit, will you?" He raised his voice. "Pilot!"

"Sir?"

"Slow ahead both!"

"Slow ahead both, sir!"

Gradually, then more quickly, way fell off the Ulysses and she dropped slowly astern of the convoy. Soon, even the last s.h.i.+ps in the lines were ahead of her, thras.h.i.+ng their way to the north-east. The snow was falling more thickly now, but still the s.h.i.+ps were bathed in that savage glare, frighteningly vulnerable in their naked helplessness.

Seething with anger, Turner brought up short at the port torpedoes. The tubes were out, their evil, gaping mouths, high-lighted by the great flames, pointing out over the intermittent refulgence of the rolling swell. Ralston, perched high on the unprotected control position above the central tube, caught hi's eye at once.

"Ralston!" Turner's voice was harsh, imperious. "I want to speak to you!"

Ralston turned round quickly, rose, jumped on to the deck. He stood facing the Commander. They were of a height, their eyes on a level, Ralston's still, blue, troubled, Turner's dark and stormy with anger.

"What the h.e.l.l's the matter with you, Ralston?" Turner ground out.

"Refusing to obey orders, is that it?"

"No, sir." Ralston's voice was quiet, curiously strained. "That's not true."

"Not true!" Turner's eyes were narrowed, his fury barely in check.

"Then what's all this b.l.o.o.d.y claptrap about not wanting to man the tubes? Are you thinking of emulating Stoker Riley? Or have you just taken leave of your senses, if any?"

Ralston said nothing.

The silence, a silence all too easily interpreted as dumb insolence, infuriated Turner. His powerful hands reached out, grasped Ralston's duffel coat. He pulled the rating towards him, thrust his face close to the other's.

"I asked a question, Ralston," he said softly. "I haven't had an answer. I'm waiting. What is all this?"

"Nothing, sir." Distress in his eyes, perhaps, but no fear. "I-I just don't want to, sir. I hate to do it-to send one of our own s.h.i.+ps to the bottom!" The voice was pleading now, blurred with overtones of desperation: Turner was deaf to them. "Why does she have to go, sir I"

he cried. "Why? Why? Why?"

"None of your b.l.o.o.d.y business-but as it so happens she's endangering the entire convoy!" Turner's face was still within inches of Ralston's.

"You've got a job to do, orders to obey. Just get up there and obey them! Go on!" he roared, as Ralston hesitated. "Get up there I He fairly spat the words out.

Ralston didn't move.

"There are other L.T.O.s, sir!" His arms lifted high in appeal, something in the voice cut through Turner's blind anger: he realised, almost with shock, that this boy was desperate. "Couldn't they------?"

"Let someone else do the dirty work, eh? That's what you mean, isn't it?" Turner was bitingly contemptuous. "Get them to do what you won't do yourself, you-you contemptible young b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Communications Number?

Give me your set. I'll take over from the bridge." He took the phone, watched Ralston climb slowly back up and sit hunched forward, head bent over the Dumaresq.

"Number One? Commander speaking. All set here. Captain there?"

"Yes, sir. I'll call him." Carrington put down the phone, walked through the gate.

"Captain, sir. Commander's on the------"

"Just a moment!" The upraised hand, the tenseness of the voice stopped him. "Have a look, No. I. What do you think?" Vallery pointed towards the Vytura, past the oil-skinned figure of the Admiral. Tyndall's head was sunk on his chest, and he was muttering incoherently to himself.

Carrington followed the pointing finger. The lifeboat, dimly visible through the thickening snow, had slipped her falls while the Vytura was still under way. Crammed with men, she was dropping quickly astern under the great twisting column of flame-dropping far too quickly astern as the First Lieutenant suddenly realised. He turned round, found Vallery's eyes, bleak and tired and old, on his own. Carrington nodded slowly.

"She's picking up, sir. Under way, under command... What are you going to do, sir?"

"G.o.d help me, I've no choice. Nothing from the Viking, nothing from the Sirrus, nothing from our Asdic-and that U-boat's still out there.... Tell Turner what's happened. Bentley!"

"Sir?"

"Signal the Vytura." The mouth, whitely compressed, belied the eyes-eyes dark and filled with pain. "' Abandon s.h.i.+p. Torpedoing you in three minutes. Last signal.' Port 20, Pilot!"

"Port 20 it is, sir."

The Vytura was breaking off tangentially, heading north. Slowly, the Ulysses came round, almost paralleling her course, now a little astern of her.

"Half-ahead, Pilot!"

"Half-ahead it is, sir."

"Pilot!"

"Sir?"

"What's Admiral Tyndall saying? Can you make it out?"

Carpenter bent forward, listened, shook his head. Little flurries of snow fell off his fur helmet.

"Sorry, sir. Can't make him out, too much noise from the Vytura... I think he's humming, sir."

"Oh, G.o.d!" Vallery bent his head, looked up again, slowly, painfully.

Even so slight an effort was labour intolerable.

He looked across to the Vytura, stiffened to attention. The red Aldis was winking again. He tried to read it, but it was too fast: or perhaps his eyes were just too old, or tired: or perhaps he just couldn't think any more... There was something weirdly hypnotic about that tiny crimson light flickering between these fantastic curtains of flame, curtains sweeping slowly, ominously together, majestic in their inevitability. And then the little red light had died, so unexpectedly, so abruptly, that Bentley's voice reached him before the realisation.

"Signal from the Vytura, sir."

Vallery tightened his grip on the binnacle. Bentley guessed the nod, rather than saw it.

"Message reads:' Why don't you------off. Nuts to the Senior Service. Tell him I send all my love.'" The voice died softly away, and there was only the roaring of the flames, the lost pinging of the Asdic.