H. M. S. Ulysses

by Alistair MacLean

  The merchant ships, big, clumsy, relatively slow, were less fortunate. Two ships in the port line, a tanker and a freighter, were struck: miraculously, both just staggered under the numbing shock, then kept on coming. Not so the big freighter immediately behind them, her holds crammed with tanks, her decks lined with them. She was torpedoed three times in three seconds: there was no smoke, no fire, no spectacular after-explosion: sieved and ripped from stern to stem, she sank quickly, quietly, still on even keel, dragged down by the sheer weight of metal. No one below decks had even the slightest chance of escaping.

  A merchantman in the centre line, the Belle Isle, was torpedoed amidships. There were two separate explosions—probably she had been struck twice—and she was instantly on fire. Within seconds, the list to port was pronounced, increasing momentarily: gradually her rails dipped under, the outslung lifeboats almost touching the surface of the sea. A dozen, fifteen men were seen to be slipping, sliding down the sheering decks and hatch-covers, already half-submerged, towards the nearest lifeboat. Desperately they hacked at bellyband securing ropes, piled into the lifeboat in grotesquely comical haste, pushed it clear of the dipping davits, seized the oars and pulled frantically away. From beginning to end, hardly a minute had elapsed.

  Half a dozen powerful strokes had them clear beyond their ship’s counter: two more took them straight under the swinging bows of the Walter A. Baddeley, her companion tankcarrier in the starboard line. The consummate seamanship that had saved the Baddeley could do nothing to save the lifeboat: the little boat crumpled and splintered like a matchwood toy, catapulting screaming men into the icy sea.

  As the big, grey hull of the Baddeley slid swiftly by them, they struck out with insane strength that made nothing of their heavy Arctic-clothing. At such times, reason vanishes: the thought that if, by some God-given miracle, they were to escape the guillotine of the Baddeley’s single great screw, they would do so only to die minutes later in the glacial cold of the Arctic, never occurred to them. But, as it happened, death came by neither metal nor cold. They were still struggling, almost abreast the poop, vainly trying to clear the rushing, sucking vortex of water, when the torpedoes struck the Baddeley, close together and simultaneously, just for’ard of the rudder.

  For swimming men who have been in the close vicinity of an underwater high explosion there can be no shadow of hope: the effect is inhuman, revolting, shocking beyond conception: in such cases, experienced doctors, pathologists even, can with difficulty bring themselves to look upon what were once human beings . . . But for these men, as so often in the Arctic, death was kind, for they died unknowing.

  The Walter A. Baddeley’s stern had been almost completely blown off. Hundreds of tons of water were already rushing in the gaping hole below the counter, racing through cross-bulkheads fractured by the explosion, smashing open engine-boiler room watertight doors buckled by the blast, pulling her down by the stern, steadily, relentlessly, till her taffrail dipped salute to the waiting Arctic. For a moment, she hung there. Then, in quick succession from deep inside the hull, came a muffled explosion, the ear-shattering, frightening roar of escaping high-pressure steam and the thunderous crash of massive boilers rending away from their stools as the ship upended. Almost immediately the shattered stern lurched heavily, sank lower and lower till the poop was completely gone, till the dripping forefoot was tilted high above the sea. Foot by foot the angle of tilt increased, the stern plunged a hundred, two hundred feet under the surface of the sea, the bows rearing almost as high against the blue of the sky, buoyed up by half a million cubic feet of trapped air.

  The ship was exactly four degrees off the vertical when the end came. It was possible to establish this angle precisely, for it was just at that second, half a mile away aboard the Ulysses, that the shutter clicked, the shutter of the camera in Lieutenant Nicholls’s gauntleted hands.

  A camera that captured an unforgettable picture—a stark, simple picture of a sinking ship almost vertically upright against a pale-blue sky. A picture with a strange lack of detail, with the exception only of two squat shapes, improbably suspended in mid-air: these were 30-ton tanks, broken loose from their foredeck lashings, caught in midflight as they smashed down on the bridge structure, awash in the sea. In the background was the stern of the Bell Isle, the screw out of the water, the Red Duster trailing idly in the peaceful sea.

  Bare seconds after the camera had clicked, the camera was blown from Nicholls’s hands, the case crumpling against a bulkhead, the lens shattering but the film still intact. Panic-stricken the seamen in the lifeboat may have been, but it wasn’t unreasoning panic: in No 2 hold, just for’ard of the fire, the Belle Isle had been carrying over 1,000 tons of tank ammunition . . . Broken cleanly in two, she was gone inside a minute: the Baddeley’s bows, riddled by the explosion, slide gently down behind her.

  The echoes of the explosion were still rolling out over the sea in ululating diminuendo when they were caught up and flung back by a series of muffled reports from the South. Less than two miles away, the Sirrus, Vectra and Viking, dazzling white in the morning sun, were weaving a crazily intricate pattern over the sea, depth-charges cascading from either side of their poop-decks. From time to time, one or other almost disappeared behind towering mush- rooms of erupting water and spray, reappearing magically as the white columns fell back into the sea.

  To join in the hunt, to satisfy the flaming, primitive lust for revenge—that was Tyndall’s first impulse. The Kapok Kid looked at him furtively and wondered, wondered at the hunched rigidity, the compressed lipless mouth, the face contorted in white and bitter rage—a bitterness directed not least against himself. Tyndall twisted suddenly in his seat.

  ‘Bentley! Signal the Sterling—ascertain damage.’ The Stirling was more than a mile astern now, but coming round fast, her speed at least twenty knots.

  ‘Making water after engine-room,’ Bentley read eventually. ‘Store-rooms flooded, but hull damage slight. Under control. Steering gear jammed. On emergency steering. Am all right.’

  ‘Thank God for that! Signal, “Take over: proceed east.” Come on, Captain, let’s give Orr a hand to deal with these murdering hounds!’

  The Kapok Kid looked at him in sudden dismay.

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Yes, yes, Pilot! What is it?’ Tyndall was curt, impatient.

  ‘How about that first U-boat?’ Carpenter ventured. ‘Can’t be much more than a mile to the south, sir. Shouldn’t we—?’

  ‘God Almighty!’ Tyndall swore. His face was suffused with anger. ‘Are you trying to tell me . . . ?’ He broke off abruptly, stared at Carpenter for a long moment. ‘What did you say, Pilot?’

  ‘The boat that sunk the tanker, sir,’ the Kapok Kid said carefully. ‘She could have reloaded by now and she’s in a perfect position—’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Tyndall muttered. He passed a hand across his eyes, flickered a glance at Vallery. The Captain had his head averted. Again the hand passed across the tired eyes. ‘You’re quite right, Pilot, quite right.’ He paused, then smiled. ‘As usual, damn you!’

  The Ulysses found nothing to the north. The U-boat that had sunk the Cochella and sprung the trap had wisely decamped. While they were quartering the area, they heard the sound of gun-fire, saw the smoke erupting from the Sirrus’s 4.7s.

  ‘Ask him what all the bloody fuss is about,’ Tyndall demanded irritably. The Kapok Kid smiled secretly: the old man had life in him yet.

  ‘Vectra and Viking damaged, probably destroyed U-boat,’ the message read. ‘Vectra and self sunk surfaced boat. How about you?’

  ‘How about you!’ Tyndall exploded. ‘Damn his confounded insolence! How about you? He’ll have the oldest, bloody minesweeper in Scapa for his next command . . . This is all your fault, Pilot!’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Maybe he’s only asking in a spirit of—ah— anxious concern.’

  ‘How would you like to be his Navigator in his next command?’ said Tyndall dangerously. The Kapok K
id retired to his charthouse.

  ‘Carrington!’

  ‘Sir?’ The First Lieutenant was his invariable self, clear-eyed, freshly shaven, competent, alert. The sallow skin—hall-mark of all men who have spent too many years under tropical suns—was unshadowed by fatigue. He hadn’t slept for three days.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ He pointed to the northwest. Curiously woolly grey clouds were blotting out the horizon; before them the sea dusked to indigo under wandering catspaws from the north.

  ‘Hard to say, sir,’ Carrington said slowly. ‘Not heavy weather, that’s certain . . . I’ve seen this before, sir—low, twisting cloud blowing up on a fine morning with a temperature rise. Very common in the Aleutians and the Bering Sea, sir—and there it means fog, heavy mist.’

  ‘And you, Captain?’

  ‘No idea, sir.’ Vallery shook his head decisively. The plasma transfusion seemed to have helped him. ‘New to me—never seen it before.’

  ‘Thought not,’ Tyndall grunted. ‘Neither have I—that’s why I asked Number One first . . . If you think it’s fog that’s coming up, Number One, let me know, will you? Can’t afford to have convoy and escorts scattered over half the Arctic if the weather closes down. Although, mind you,’ he added bitterly, ‘I think they’d be a damned sight safer without us!’

  ‘I can tell you now, sir.’ Carrington had that rare gift—the ability to make a confident, quietly unarguable assertion without giving the slightest offence. ‘It’s fog.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Tyndall never doubted him. ‘Let’s get the hell out of it. Bentley—signal the destroyers: “Break off engagement. Rejoin convoy.” And Bentley—add the word “Immediate”.’ He turned to Vallery. ‘For Commander Orr’s benefit.’

  Within the hour, merchant ships and escorts were on station again, on a north-east course at first to clear any further packs on latitude 70. To the south-east, the sun was still bright: but the first thick, writhing tendrils of the mist, chill and dank, were already swirling round the convoy. Speed had been reduced to six knots: all ships were streaming fog-buoys.

  Tyndall shivered, climbed stiffly from his chair as the stand-down sounded. He passed through the gate, stopped in the passage outside. He laid a glove on Chrysler’s shoulder, kept it there as the boy turned round in surprise.

  ‘Just wanted a squint at these eyes of yours, laddie,’ he smiled. ‘We owe them a lot. Thank you very much—we will not forget.’ He looked a long time into the young face, forgot his own exhaustion and swore softly in sudden compassion as he saw the red-rimmed eyes, the white, maculated cheeks stained with embarrassed pleasure.

  ‘How old are you, Chrysler?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘Eighteen, sir . . . in two days’ time.’ The soft West Country voice was almost defiant.

  ‘He’ll be eighteen—in two days’ time!’ Tyndall repeated slowly to himself. ‘Good God! Good God above!’ He dropped his hand, walked wearily aft to the shelter, entered, closed the door behind him.

  ‘He’ll be eighteen—in two days’ time,’ he repeated, like a man in a daze.

  Vallery propped himself up on the settee. ‘Who? Young Chrysler?’

  Tyndall nodded unhappily.

  ‘I know.’ Vallery was very quiet. ‘I know how it is . . . He did a fine job today.’

  Tyndall sagged down in a chair. His mouth twisted in bitterness.

  ‘The only one . . . Dear God, what a mess!’ He drew heavily on a cigarette, stared down at the floor. ‘Ten green bottles, hanging on a wall,’ he murmured absently.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

  ‘Fourteen ships left Scapa, eighteen St John—the two components of FR77,’ Tyndall said softly. ‘Thirty-two ships in all. And now’—he paused—‘now there are seventeen—and three of these damaged. I’m counting the Tennessee Adventurer as a dead duck.’ He swore savagely. ‘Hell’s teeth, how I hate leaving ships like that, sitting targets for any murdering . . . ’ He stopped short, drew on his cigarette again, deeply. ‘Doing wonderfully, ain’t I?’

  ‘Ah, nonsense, sir!’ Vallery interrupted, impatient, almost angry. ‘It wasn’t any fault of yours that the carriers had to return.’

  ‘Meaning that the rest was my fault?’ Tyndall smiled faintly, lifted a hand to silence the automatic protest. ‘Sorry, Dick, I know you didn’t mean that—but it’s true, it’s true. Six merchant boys gone in ten minutes—six! And we shouldn’t have lost one of them.’ Head bent, elbows on knees, he screwed the heels of his palms into exhausted eyes. ‘Rear-Admiral Tyndall, master strategist,’ he went on softly. ‘Alters convoy course to run smack into the biggest wolf-pack I’ve ever known—and just where the Admiralty said they would be . . . No matter what old Starr does to me when I get back, I’ve no kick coming. Not now, not after this.’

  He rose heavily to his feet. The light of the single lamp caught his face. Vallery was shocked at the change.

  ‘Where to now, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘The bridge. No, no, stay where you are, Dick.’ He tried to smile, but the smile was a grimace that flickered only to die. ‘Leave me in peace while I ponder my next miscalculation.’

  He opened the door; stopped dead as he heard the unmistakable whistling of shells close above, heard the EAS signal screaming urgently through the fog. Tyndall turned his head slowly, looked back into the shelter.

  ‘It looks,’ he said bitterly, ‘as if I’ve already made it.’

  NINE

  Friday Morning

  The fog, Tyndall saw, was all around them now. Since that last heavy snowfall during the night, the temperature had risen steadily, quickly. But it had beguiled only to deceive: the clammy, ice feathers of the swirling mist now struck doubly chill.

  He hurried through the gate, Vallery close behind him. Turner, steel helmet trailing, was just leaving for the After Tower. Tyndall stretched out his hand, stopped him.

  ‘What is it, Commander?’ he demanded. ‘Who fired? Where? Where did it come from?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. Shells came from astern, more or less. But I’ve a damned good idea who it is.’ His eyes rested on the Admiral a long, speculative moment. ‘Our friend of last night is back again.’ He turned abruptly, hurried off the bridge.

  Tyndall looked after him, perplexed, uncomprehending. Then he swore, softly, savagely, and jumped for the radar handset.

  ‘Bridge. Admiral speaking. Lieutenant Bowden at once!’ The loudspeaker crackled into immediate life.

  ‘Bowden speaking, sir.’

  ‘What the devil are you doing down there?’ Tyndall’s voice was low, vicious. ‘Asleep, or what? We are being attacked, Lieutenant Bowden. By a surface craft. This may be news to you.’ He broke off, ducked low as another salvo screamed overhead and crashed into the water less than half a mile ahead: the spray cascaded over the decks of a merchantman, glimpsed momentarily in a clear lane between two rolling fog-banks. Tyndall straightened up quickly, snarled into the mouthpiece. ‘He’s got our range, and got it accurately. In God’s name, Bowden, where is he?’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ Bowden was cool, unruffled. ‘We can’t seem to pick him up. We still have the Adventurer on our screens, and there appears to be a very slight distortion on his bearing, sir—approximately 300 . . . I suggest the enemy ship is still screened by the Adventurer or, if she’s closer, is on the Adventurer’s direct bearing.’

  ‘How near?’ Tyndall barked.

  ‘Not near, sir. Very close to the Adventurer. We can’t distinguish either by size or distance.’

  Tyndall dangled the transmitter from his hand. He turned to Vallery.

  ‘Does Bowden really expect me to believe that yarn?’ he asked angrily. ‘A million to one coincidence like that—an enemy ship accidentally chose and holds the only possible course to screen her from our radar. Fantastic!’

  Vallery looked at him, his face without expression.

  ‘Well?’ Tyndall was impatient. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Vallery answered quietly. ‘It’s n
ot. Not really. And it wasn’t accidental. The U-pack would have radioed her, given our bearing and course. The rest was easy.’

  Tyndall gazed at him through a long moment of comprehension, screwed his eyes shut and shook his head in short fierce jerks. It was a gesture compounded of self-criticism, the death of disbelief, the attempt to clear a woolly, exhausted mind. Hell, a six-year-old could have seen that . . . A shell whistled into the sea a bare fifty yards to port. Tyndall didn’t flinch, might never have seen or heard it.

  ‘Bowden?’ He had the transmitter to his mouth again.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Any change in the screen?’

  ‘No, sir. None.’

  ‘And are you still of the same opinion?’

  ‘Yes, sir! Can’t be anything else.’

  ‘And close to the Adventurer, you say?’

  ‘Very close, I would say.’

  ‘But, good God, man, the Adventurer must be ten miles astern by now!’

  ‘Yes, sir. I know. So is the bandit.’

  ‘What! Ten miles! But, but—’

  ‘He’s firing by radar, sir,’ Bowden interrupted. Suddenly the metallic voice sounded tired. ‘He must be. He’s also tracking by radar, which is why he’s keeping himself in line with our bearing on the Adventurer. And he’s extremely accurate . . . I’m afraid, Admiral, that his radar is at least as good as ours.’

  The speaker clicked off. In the sudden strained silence on the bridge, the crash of breaking ebonite sounded unnaturally loud as the transmitter slipped from Tyndall’s hand, fractured in a hundred pieces. The hand groped forward, he clutched at a steam pipe as if to steady himself. Vallery stepped towards him, arms outstretched in concern, but Tyndall brushed by unseeingly. Like an old spent man, like a man from whose ancient bones and muscles all the pith has long since drained, he shuffled slowly across the bridge, oblivious of a dozen mystified eyes, dragged himself up on to his high stool.