H. M. S. Ulysses

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘BMA in secret session eh?’ he queried. ‘Never mind, Nicholls, and don’t worry. I’m the one who should be worrying.’

  ‘Indeed, sir? Why!’

  Vallery shook his head again. ‘Rum in the gun turrets, cigarettes in the TS, and now a fine old whisky in a “Lysol” bottle. Though Commander Brooks was going to poison me—and what a glorious death! Excellent stuff, and the Surgeon Commander’s apologies to you for broaching your private supplies.’

  Nicholls flushed darkly, began to stammer an apology but Vallery cut him off.

  ‘Forget it, boy, forget it. What does it matter? But it makes me wonder what we’re going to find next. An opium den in the Capstan Flat, perhaps, or dancing girls in “B” turret?’

  But they found nothing in these or any other places, except cold, misery and hunger-haunted exhaustion. As ever, Nicholls saw, they—or rather, Vallery—left the men the better of their coming. But they themselves were now in a pretty bad state, Nicholls realized. His own legs were made of rubber, he was exhausted by continuous shivering: where Vallery found the strength to carry on, he couldn’t even begin to imagine. Even Petersen’s great strength was flagging, not so much from half-carrying Vallery as from the ceaseless hammering of clips frozen solid on doors and hatches.

  Leaning against a bulkhead, breathing heavily after the ascent from ‘A’ magazine, Nicholls looked hopefully at the Captain. Vallery saw the look, interpreted it correctly, and shook his head, smiling.

  ‘Might as well finish it, boy. Only the Capstan Flat. Nobody there anyway, I expect, but we might as well have a look.’

  They walked slowly round the heavy machinery in the middle of the Capstan Flat, for’ard past the Battery Room and Sailmaker’s Shop, past the Electrical Workshop and cells to the locked door of the Painter’s Shop, the most for’ard compartment in the ship.

  Vallery reached his hand forward, touched the door symbolically, smiled tiredly and turned away. Passing the cell door, he casually flicked open the inspection port, glanced in perfunctorily and moved on. Then he stopped dead, wheeled round and flung open the inspection port again.

  ‘What in the name of—Ralston! What on earth are you doing here?’ he shouted.

  Ralston smiled. Even through the thick plate glass it wasn’t a pleasant smile and it never touched the blue eyes. He gestured to the barred grille, indicating that he could not hear.

  Impatiently, Vallery twisted the grille handle.

  ‘What are you doing here, Ralston?’ he demanded. The brows were drawn down heavily over blazing eyes. ‘In the cells—and at this time! Speak up, man! Tell me!’ Nicholls looked at Vallery in slow surprise. The old man—angry! It was unheard of! Shrewdly, Nicholls decided that he’d rather not be the object of Vallery’s fury.

  ‘I was locked up here, sir.’ The words were innocuous enough, but their tone said, ‘What a damned silly question.’ Vallery flushed faintly.

  ‘When?’

  ‘At 1030 this morning, sir.’

  ‘And by whom, may I inquire?’

  ‘By the Master-At-Arms, sir.’

  ‘On what authority?’ Vallery demanded furiously.

  Ralston looked at him a long moment without speaking. His face was expressionless. ‘On yours, sir.’

  ‘Mine!’ Vallery was incredulous. ‘I didn’t tell him to lock you up!’

  ‘You never told him not to,’ said Ralston evenly. Vallery winced: the oversight, the lack of consideration was his, and that hurt badly.

  ‘Where’s your night Action Station?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘Port tubes, sir.’ That, Vallery realized, explained why only the starboard crew had been closed up.

  ‘And why—why have you been left here during Action Stations? Don’t you know it’s forbidden, against all regulations?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Again the hint of the wintry smile. ‘I know. But does the Master-At-Arms know?’ He paused a second, smiled again. ‘Or maybe he just forgot,’ he suggested.

  ‘Hartley!’ Vallery was on balance again, his tone level and grim. ‘The Master-At-Arms here, immediately: see that he brings his keys!’ He broke into a harsh bout of coughing, spat some blood into the towel, looked at Ralston again.

  ‘I’m sorry about this, my boy,’ he said slowly. ‘Genuinely sorry.’

  ‘How’s the tanker?’ Ralston asked softly,

  ‘What? What did you say?’ Vallery was unprepared for the sudden switch. ‘What tanker?’

  ‘The one that was damaged this morning, sir.’

  ‘Still with us.’ Vallery was puzzled. ‘Still with us, but low in the water. Any special reason for asking?’

  ‘Just interested, sir.’ The smile was wry, but this time it was a smile. ‘You see—’

  He stopped abruptly as a deep, muffled roar crashed through the silent night, the pressure blast listing the Ulysses sharply to starboard. Vallery lurched, staggered and would have fallen but for Petersen’s sudden arm. He braced himself against the righting roll, looked at Nicholls in sudden dismay. The sound was all too familiar.

  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 . . .’

  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 whooping gasps that racked his tortured lungs: his lower ribs were clamped in giant pincers, pincers that were surely crushing him. That stumbling, lurching run from the forepeak, he dimly realized, had all but killed him. Close, too damn 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 ship. 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 shielded by that thick pall of smoke, probably; but the other ships 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 repetitious 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 Cochella. A few days ago, I think it was. Good God, 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 ship would sink.’

  ‘But—but she must have a hole the size of a house in her side!’ Nicholls pro
tested.

  ‘No odds,’ Vallery replied. He seemed to be waiting, watching for something. ‘Tremendous reserve buoyancy in these ships. 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 Ohio? 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 God, she must still be going 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 Godsend 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 bloody fine lighthouse for any German ship 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 ships to keep checking them all the time. And it wasn’t so damned brilliant, at least not for 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 documents 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 his head in compassionate wonder. ‘Shall I send a signal to Fletcher on the Cape Hatteras?’

  ‘Never mind.’ Vallery was impatient. ‘There’s no time. Bentley— to the master, Vytura: “Please abandon ship immediately: we are going to sink you.”’

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

  ‘Sorry,’ he apologized. ‘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 God, I’m done!’

  ‘And no bloody 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 God-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.

  ‘Relieved of my duties? Relieved of my duties! But, sir, you can’t do that! You can’t . . . ’

  His voice broke off in a gasp of pain as Turner’s iron grip closed over his elbow.

  ‘Don’t say “can’t” to the Captain,’ he whispered silkily in his ear. ‘You heard him? Get off the bridge!’

  The gate clicked behind him. Carrington said, conversationally: ‘Somebody’s using his head aboard the Vytura—fitted a red filter to his Aldis. Couldn’t see it otherwise.’

  Immediately the tension eased. All eyes were on the winking red light, a hundred feet aft of the flames, and even then barely distinguishable. Suddenly it stopped.

  ‘What does he say, Bentley?’ Vallery asked quickly.

  Bentley coughed apologetically. ‘Message reads: “Are you hell. Try it and I will ram you. Engine intact. We can make it.”’

  Vallery closed his eyes for a moment. He was beginning to appreciate how old Giles must have felt. When he looked up again, he made made his decision.

  ‘Signal: “You are endangering entire convoy. Abandon ship at once. Repeat, at once.”’He turned to the Commander, his mouth bitter. ‘I take off my hat to him. How would you like to sit on top of enough fuel to blow you to Kingdom Come . . . Must be oil in some of his tanks . . . God, how I hate to have to threaten a man like that!’

  ‘I know, sir,’ Turner murmured. ‘I know how it is . . . Wonder what the Viking’s doing out there? Should be hearing from her now?’

  ‘Send a signal,’ Vallery ordered. ‘Ask for information.’ He peered aft, searched briefly for the Torpedo Lieutenant. ‘Where’s Marshall?’

  ‘Marshall?’ Turner was surprised. ‘In the Sick Bay, of course. Still on the injured list, remember—four ribs gone?’

  ‘Of course, of course!’ Vallery shook his head tiredly, angry with himself. ‘And the Chief Torpedo Gunner’s Mate—Noyes, isn’t it?— he was killed yesterday in Number 3. How about Vickers?’

  ‘He was in the FDR’

  ‘In the FDR,’ Vallery repeated slowly. He wondered why his heart didn’t stop beating. He was long past the stage of chilled bone and coagulating blood. His whole body was a great block of ice . . . He had never known that such cold could exist. It was very strange, he thought, that he was no longer shivering . . .

  ‘I’ll do it myself, sir,’ Turner interrupted his wandering. ‘I’ll take over the bridge Torpedo Control—used to be the worst Torps officer on the China Station.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Perhaps the hand has not lost what little cunning it ever possessed
!’

  ‘Thank you.’ Vallery was grateful. ‘You just do that.’

  ‘We’ll have to take him from starboard,’ Turner reminded him. ‘Port control was smashed this morning—foremast didn’t do it any good . . . I’ll go check the Dumaresq1 . . . Good God!’ His hand gripped Vallery’s shoulder with a strength that made him wince. ‘It’s the Admiral, sir! He’s coming on the bridge!’

  Incredulously, Vallery twisted round in his chair. Turner was right. Tyndall was coming through the gate, heading purposefully towards him. In the deep shadow cast by the side of the bridge, he seemed disembodied. The bare head, sparsely covered with thin, straggling wisps of white, the grey, pitifully-shrunken face, the suddenly stooped shoulders, unaccountably thin under black oilskins, all these were thrown into harsh relief by the flames. Below, nothing was visible. Silently, Tyndall padded his way across the bridge, stood waiting at Vallery’s side.

  Slowly, leaning on Turner’s ready arm, Vallery climbed down. Unsmiling, Tyndall looked at him, nodded gravely, hoisted himself into his seat. He picked up the binoculars from the ledge before him, slowly quartered the horizon.

  It was Turner who noticed it first.

  ‘Sir! You’ve no gloves on, sir!’

  ‘What? What did you say?’ Tyndall replaced the glasses, looked incredulously at his bloodstained, bandaged hands. ‘Ah! Do you know, I knew I had forgotten something. That’s the second time. Thank you, Commander.’ He smiled courteously, picked up the binoculars again, resumed his quartering of the horizon. All at once Vallery felt another, deadlier chill pass through him, and it had nothing to do with the bitter chill of the Arctic night.

  Turner hesitated helplessly for a second, then turned quickly to the Kapok Kid.