H.M.S. Ulysses Part 43

"McQuater?"

"Hallo!"

"Perhaps we could shut off the sprinklers outside, if it's safe. Do you think the temperature...?"

He broke off, unable to complete the sentence. The silence stretched out, taut and tangible, heavy with decision. Vallery wondered numbly what McQuater was thinking, what he himself would have thought in McQuater's place.

"Hing on a minute," the speaker boomed abruptly. "Ah'll have a look up top."

Again that silence, again that tense unnatural silence lay heavily over the bridge. Vallery started as the speaker boomed again.

"Jings, Ah'm b------d. Ah couldna climb that ladder again for twenty-four points in the Treble Chance... Ah'm on the ladder now, but Ah'm thinkin' Ah'll no" be on it much longer."

"Never mind..." Vallery checked himself, aghast at what he had been about to say. If McQuater fell off, he'd drown like a rat in that flooded magazine.

"Oh, aye. The magazine." In the intervals between the racked bouts of coughing, the voice was strangely composed. "The sh.e.l.ls up top are just aboot meltin'. Worse than ever, sir."

"I see." Vallery could think of nothing else to say. His eyes were closed and he knew he was swaying on his feet. With an effort, he spoke again. "How's Williamson?" It was all he could think of.

"Near gone. Up to his neck and hangin' on to the racks." McQuater coughed again. "Says he's a message for the Commander and Carslake."

"A-a message?"

"Uh-huh! Tell old Blackbeard to take a turn to himself and lay off the bottle," he said with relish. The message for Carslake was unprintable.

Vallery didn't even feel shocked.

"And yourself, McQuater?" he said. "No message, nothing you would like..." He stopped, conscious of the grotesque inadequacy, the futility of what he was saying.

"Me? Ach, there's naething Ah'd like... Well, maybe a "transfer to the Spartiate, but Ah'm thinking maybe it's a wee bit ower late for that. "Williamson!" The voice had risen to a sudden urgent shout.

"Williamson! Hang on, boy, Ah'm coming!" They heard the booming clatter in the speaker as McQuater's phone crashed against metal, and then there was only the silence.

"McQuater!" Vallery shouted into the phone. "McQuater! Answer me, man. Can you hear me? McQuater!"

H.M.S. Spartiate was a sh.o.r.e establishment. Naval H.Q. for the West of Scotland, It was at St. Enoch's Hotel, Glasgow.

But the speaker above him remained dead, finally, irrevocably dead.

Vallery s.h.i.+vered in the icy wind. That magazine, that flooded magazine... less than twenty-four hours since he had been there. He could see it now, see it as clearly as he had seen it last night. Only now he saw it dark, cavernous with only the pin-points of emergency lighting, the water welling darkly, slowly up the sides, saw that little, pitifully wasted Scots boy with the thin shoulders and pain-filled eyes, struggling desperately to keep his mate's head above that icy water, exhausting his tiny reserves of strength with the pa.s.sing of every second. Even now, the tune must be running out and Vallery knew hope was gone. With a sudden clear certainty he knew that when those two went down, they would go down together. McQuater would never let go. Eighteen years old, just eighteen years old. Vallery turned away, stumbling blindly through the gate on to the shattered compa.s.s platform. It was beginning to snow again and the darkness was falling all around them.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

SAt.u.r.dAY EVENING I.

THE Ulysses rolled on through the Arctic twilight. She rolled heavily, awkwardly, in seas of the wrong critical length, a strange and stricken sight with both masts gone, with all boats and rafts gone, with shattered fore-and-aft superstructure, with a crazily tilted bridge and broken, mangled after turret, half-buried in the skeleton of the Condor's fuselage. But despite all that, despite, too, the great garish patches of red lead and gaping black holes in fo'c'sle and p.o.o.p-the latter welling with dark smoke laced with flickering lances of flame-she still remained uncannily ghost-like and graceful, a creature of her own element, inevitably at home in the Arctic. Ghost-like, graceful, and infinitely enduring... and still deadly. She still had her guns-and her engines. Above all, she had these great engines, engines strangely blessed with endless immunity. So, at least, it seemed...

Five minutes dragged themselves interminably by, five minutes during which the sky grew steadily darker, during which reports from the p.o.o.p showed that the firefighters were barely holding their own, five minutes during which Vallery recovered something of his normal composure. But he was now terribly weak.

A bell shrilled, cutting sharply through the silence and the gloom.

Chrysler answered it, turned to the bridge.

"Captain, sir. After engine-room would like to speak to you."

Turner looked at the Captain, said quickly: "Shall I take it, sir?"

"Thank you." Vallery nodded his head gratefully. Turner nodded in turn, crossed to the phone.

"Commander speaking. Who is it?... Lieutenant Grier-son. What is it, Grierson? Couldn't be good news for a change?"

For almost a minute Turner remained silent. The others on the bridge could hear the faint crackling of the earpiece, sensed rather than saw the taut attention, the tightening of the mouth.

"Will it hold?" Turner asked abruptly. "Yes, yes, of course... Tell him we'll do our best up here... Do that. Half-hourly, if you please."

"It never rains, et cetera," Turner growled, replacing the phone.

"Engine running rough, temperature hotting up. Distortion in inner starboard shaft. Dodson himself is in the shaft tunnel right now. Bent like a banana, he says."

Vallery smiled faintly. "Knowing Dodson, I suppose that means a couple of thou out of alignment."

"Maybe." Turner was serious. "What does matter is that the main shaft bearing's damaged and the lubricating line fractured."

"As bad as that?" Vallery asked softly.

"Dodson is pretty unhappy. Says the damage isn't recent, thinks it began the night we lost our depth-charges." Turner shook his head. "Lord knows what stresses that shaft's undergone since.... I suppose tonight's performance brought it to a head... The bearing will have to be lubricated by hand. Wants engine revs, at a minimum or engine shut off altogether. They'll keep us posted."

"And no possibility of repair?" Vallery asked wryly.

"No, sir. None."

"Very well, then. Convoy speed. And Commander?"

"Sir?"

"Hands to stations all night. You needn't tell 'em so-but, well, I think it would be wise. I have a feeling------"

"What's that!" Turner shouted. "Look! What the h.e.l.l's she doing?" His finger was stabbing towards the last freighter in the starboard line: her guns were blazing away at some unseen target, the tracers lancing whitely through the twilight sky. Even as he dived for the broadcaster, he caught sight of the Viking's main armament belching smoke and jagged flame.

"All guns! Green 1101 Aircraft! Independent fire, independent targets!

Independent fire, independent targets!" He heard Vallery ordering starboard helm, knew he was going to bring the for'ard turrets to bear.

They were too late. Even as the Ulysses began to answer her helm, the enemy planes were pulling out of their approach dives. Great, clumsy shapes, these planes, forlorn and insubstantial in the murky gloom, but identifiable in a sickening flash by the clamour of suddenly racing engines. Condors, without a shadow of doubt. Condors that had outguessed them again, that gliding approach, throttles cut right back, muted roar of the engines drifting downwind, away from the convoy. Their timing, their judgment of distance, had been superb.

The freighter was bracketed twice, directly hit by at least seven bombs: