H.M.S. Ulysses Part 51

Petersen said nothing. He lifted the retaining latch, pulled the protesting hatch cover down a foot. Then he braced his shoulder against the latter, planted his feet on the cover and straightened his back convulsively: the cover screeched down to 45. He paused, bent his back like a bow, his hands taking his weight on the ladder, then pounded his feet again and again on the edge of the cover. Fifteen inches to go.

"We need heavy hammers, sir," Petersen said urgently.

"No time!" Carrington shook his head quickly. "Two more minutes and it'll be impossible to shut the hatch cover against the water pressure. h.e.l.l!" he said bitterly. "If it were only the other way round, closing from below. Even I could lever it shut!"

Again Petersen said nothing. He squatted down by the side of the hatch, gazed into the darkness beneath his feet.

"I have an idea, sir," he said quickly. "If two of you would stand on the hatch, push against the ladder. Yes, sir, that way, but you could push harder if you turned your back to me."

Carrington laid the heels of his hands against the iron steps of the ladder, heaved with all his strength. Suddenly he heard a splash, then a metallic clatter, whirled round just in time to see a crowbar clutched in an enormous hand disappear below the edge of the hatch. There was no sign of Petersen. Like many big, powerful men, he was lithe and cat like in his movements: he'd gone down over the edge of that hatch without a sound.

"Petersen!" Carrington was on his knees by the hatch. "What the devil do you think you're doing? Come out of there, you b.l.o.o.d.y fool Do you want to drown?"

There was no reply. Complete silence below, a silence deepened by the gentle sussuration of the water. Suddenly the quiet was broken by the sound of metal striking against metal, then by a jarring screech as the hatch dropped six inches. Before Carrington had time to think, the hatch cover dropped farther still. Desperately, the First Lieutenant seized a crowbar, thrust it under the hatch cover: a split second later the great steel cover thudded down on top of it. Carrington had his mouth to the gap now.

"In the name of G.o.d, Petersen," he shouted, "Are you sane? Open up, open up at once, do you hear?"

"I can't." The voice came and went as the water surged over the stoker's head. "I won't. You said yourself... there is no time... this was the only way."

"But I never meant------"

"I know. It does not matter... it is better this way." It was almost impossible to make out what he was saying. "Tell Captain Vallery that Petersen says he is very sorry.... I tried to tell the Captain yesterday."

"Sorry I Sorry for what?" Madly Carrington flung all his strength against the iron bar: the hatch cover did not even quiver.

"The dead marine in Scapa Flow... I did not mean to kill him, I could never kill any man... But he angered me," the big Norwegian said simply. "He killed my friend."

For a second, Carrington stopped straining at the bar. Petersen! Of course, who but Petersen could have snapped a man's neck like that.

Petersen, the big, laughing Scandinavian, who had so suddenly changed overnight into a grave unsmiling giant, who stalked the deck, the mess decks and alleyways by day and by night, who was never seen to smile or sleep. With a sudden flash of insight, Carrington saw clear through into the tortured mind of that kind and simple man.

"Listen, Petersen," he begged. "I don't give a d.a.m.n about that. n.o.body shall ever know, I promise you. Please, Petersen, just------"

"It is better this way." The m.u.f.fled voice was strangely content.

"It is not good to kill a man... it is not good to go on living.... I know... Please, it is important, you will tell my Captain Petersen is sorry and filled with shame... I do this for my Captain." Without warning, the crowbar was plucked from Carrington's hand. The cover clanged down in position. For a minute the wheelhouse flat rang to a succession of m.u.f.fled, metallic blows. Suddenly the clamour ceased and there was only the rippling surge of the water outside the wheelhouse and the creak of the wheel inside as the Ulysses steadied on course.

The clear sweet voice soared high and true above the subdued roar of the engine-room fans, above the whine of a hundred electric motors and the sound of the rus.h.i.+ng of the waters. Not even the metallic impersonality of the loudspeakers could detract from the beauty of that singing voice.... It was a favourite device of Vallery's when the need for silence was not paramount, to pa.s.s the long, dark hours by coupling up the record player to the broadcast system.

Almost invariably, the musical repertoire was strictly cla.s.sical, or what is more often referred to, foolishly and disparagingly, as the popular cla.s.sics. Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovski, Lehar, Verdi, Delius, these were the favourites.

"No. in B flat minor," "Air on a G string,"

"Moonlight on the Alster," "Claire de Lune," "The Skater's Waltz", the crew of the Ulysses could never have enough of these. "Ridiculous," "impossible", it is all too easy to imagine the comments of those who equate the matelot's taste in music with the popular conception of his ethics and morals; but those same people have never heard the hushed, cathedral silence in the crowded hangar of a great aircraft carrier in Scapa Flow as Yehudi Menuhin's magic bow sang across the strings of the violin, swept a thousand men away from the harsh urgencies of reality, from the bitter memories of the last patrol or convoy, into the golden land of music.

But now a girl was singing. It was Deanna Durbin, and she was singing

"Beneath the Lights of Home," that most heartbreakingly nostalgic of all songs. Below decks and above, bent over the great engines or huddled by their guns, men listened to the lovely voice as it drifted through the darkened s.h.i.+p and the falling snow, and turned their minds inwards and thought of home, thought of the bitter contrast and the morning that would not come. Suddenly, half-way through, the song stopped.

"Do you hear there?" the 'speakers boomed. "Do you hear there? This, this is the Commander speaking." The voice was deep and grave and hesitant: it caught and held the attention of every man in the s.h.i.+p.

"I have bad news for you." Turner spoke slowly, quietly. "I am sorry, I..." He broke off, then went on more slowly still. "Captain Vallery died five minutes ago." For a moment the 'speaker was silent, then crackled again. "He died on the bridge, in his chair. He knew he was dying and I don't think he suffered at all.... He insisted, he insisted that I thank you for the way you all stood by him. 'Tell them', these were his words, as far as I remember, 'tell them,' he said, 'that I couldn't have carried on without them, that they are the best crew that G.o.d ever gave a Captain.' Then he said, it was the last thing he said:' Give them my apologies. After all they've done for me, well, well, tell them I'm terribly sorry to let them down like this.' That was all he said, just' Tell them I'm sorry.' And then he died."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

SAt.u.r.dAY NIGHT.

RICHARD VALLERY was dead. He died grieving, stricken at the thought that he was abandoning the crew of the Ulysses, leaving them behind, leaderless. But it was only for a short time, and he did not have to wait long. Before the dawn, hundreds more, men in the cruisers, the destroyers and the merchantmen, had died also. And they did not die as he had feared under the guns of the Tirpitz, another grim parallel with PQ17, for the Tirpitz had not left Alta Fjord. They died, primarily, because the weather had changed.

Richard Vallery was dead, and with his death a great change had come over the men of the Ulysses. When Vallery died, other things died also, for he took these things with him. He took with him the courage, the kindliness, the gentleness, the unshakable faith, the infinitely patient and understanding endurance, all these things which had been so peculiarly his own. And now these things were gone and the Ulysses was left without them and it did not matter. The men of the Ulysses no longer needed courage and all the adjuncts of courage, for they were no longer afraid. Vallery was dead and they did not know how much they respected and loved that gentle man until he was gone. But then they knew. They knew that something wonderful, something that had become an enduring part of their minds and memories, something infinitely fine and good, was gone and they would never know it again, and they were mad with grief. And, in war, a grief-stricken man is the most terrible enemy there is. Prudence, caution, fear, pain-for the grief-stricken man these no longer exist. He lives only to lash out blindly at the enemy, to destroy, if he can, the author of his grief.

Rightly or wrongly, the Ulysses never thought to blame the Captain's death on any but the enemy. There Was only, for them, the sorrow and the blind hate. Zombies, Nicholls had called them once, and the Ulysses was more than ever a s.h.i.+p manned by living zombies, zombies who prowled restlessly, incessantly, across the snow and ice of the heaving decks, automatons living only for revenge.

The weather changed just before the end of the middle watch. The seas did not change-FR77 was still b.u.t.ting into the heavy, rolling swell from the north, still piling up fresh sheets of glistening ice on their labouring fo'c'sles. But the wind dropped, and almost at once the snowstorm blew itself out, the last banks of dark, heavy cloud drifting away to the south. By four o'clock the sky was completely clear.

There was no moon that night, but the stars were out, keen and sharp and frosty as the icy breeze that blew steadily out of the north.

Then, gradually, the sky began to change. At first there was only a barely perceptible lightening on the northern rim then, slowly, a pulsating flickering band of light began to broaden and deepen and climb steadily above the horizon, climbing higher to the south with the pa.s.sing of every minute. Soon that pulsating ribbon of light was paralleled by others, streamers in the most delicate pastel shades of blue and green and violet, but always and predominantly white. And always, too, these lanes of multi-coloured light grew higher and stronger and brighter: at the climax, a great band of white stretched high above the convoy, extending from horizon to horizon... These were the Northern Lights, at any time a spectacle of beauty and wonder, and this night surpa.s.sing lovely: down below, in s.h.i.+ps clearly illumined against the dark and rolling seas, the men of FR77 looked up and hated them.

On the bridge of the Ulysses, Chrysler, Chrysler of the uncanny eyesight and super-sensitive hearing, was the first to hear it. Soon everyone else heard it too, the distant roar, throbbing and intermittent, of a Condor approaching from the south. After a time they became aware that the Condor was no longer approaching, but sudden hope died almost as it was born. There was no mistaking it now-the deeper, heavier note of a Focke-Wulf in maximum climb. The Commander turned wearily to Carrington.

"It's Charlie, all right," he said grimly. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d's spotted us.

He'll already have radioed Alta Fjord and a hundred to one in anything you like that he's going to drop a marker flare at 10,000 feet or so.

It'll be seen fifty miles away."

"Your money's sake." The First Lieutenant was withering. "I never bet against dead certs... And then, by and by, maybe a few flares at a couple of thousand?"

"Exactly!" Turner nodded. "Pilot, how far do you reckon we're from Alta Fjord-in flying time, I mean?"

"For a 200-knot plane, just over an hour," the Kapok Kid said quietly. His ebullience was gone: he had been silent and dejected since Vallery had died two hours previously.

"An hour!" Carrington exclaimed. "And they'll be here. My G.o.d, sir,"

he went on wonderingly, "they're really out to get us. We've never been bombed nor torpedoed at night before. We've never had the Tirpitz after us before. We never------"

"The Tirpitz," Turner interrupted. "Just where the h.e.l.l is that s.h.i.+p? She's had time to come up with us. Oh, I know it's dark and we've changed course," he added, as Carrington made to object, "but a fast destroyer screen would have picked us-Preston!" He broke off, spoke sharply to the Signal Petty Officer. "Look alive, man! That s.h.i.+p's flas.h.i.+ng us."

"Sorry, sir." The signalman, swaying on his feet with exhaustion, raised his Aldis, clacked out an acknowledgment. Again the light on the merchantman began to wink furiously.

"'Transverse fracture engine bedplate,'" Preston read out. "'Damage serious: shall have to moderate speed.'"

"Acknowledge," said Turner curtly. "What s.h.i.+p is that, Preston?"

"The Ohio Freighter, sir."