H. M. S. Ulysses

  Nicholls climbed inside. There had been no need to worry about that racket outside, he thought wryly. Every man in the turret was stone dead. Colour-Sergeant Evans was sitting bolt upright in his seat, rigid and alert in death as he had been in life: beside him lay Foster, the dashing, fiery Captain of Marines, whom death became so ill. The rest were all sitting or lying quietly at their stations, apparently unharmed and quite unmarked except for an occasional tiny trickle of blood from ear and mouth, trickles already coagulated in the intense cold—the speed of the Ulysses had carried the flames aft, away from the turret. The concussion must have been tremendous, death instantaneous. Heavily, Nicholls bent over the communications number, gently detached his headset, and called the bridge.

  Vallery himself took the message, turned back to Turner. He looked old, defeated.

  ‘That was Nicholls,’ he said. Despite all he could do, the shock and sorrow showed clearly in every deeply-etched line in that pitiably wasted face. ‘“Y” turret is gone—no survivors. “X” turret seems intact—but everyone inside is dead. Concussion, he says. Fires in the after mess-deck still not under control . . . Yes, boy, what is it?’

  ‘“Y” magazine, sir,’ the seaman said uncertainly. ‘They want to speak to the gunnery officer.’

  ‘Tell them he’s not available,’ Vallery said shortly. ‘We haven’t time . . . ’ He broke off, looked up sharply. ‘Did you say “Y” magazine? Here, let me have that phone.’

  He took the receiver, pushed back the hood of his duffel coat.

  ‘Captain speaking, “Y” magazine. What is it? . . . What? Speak up man, I can’t hear you . . . Oh, damn!’ He swung round on the bridge LTO ‘Can you switch this receiver on to the relay amplifier? I can’t hear a . . . Ah, that’s better.’

  The amplifier above the chart-house crackled into life—a pecularily throaty, husky life, doubly difficult to understand under the heavy overlay of a slurred Glasgow accent.

  ‘Can ye hear me now?’ the speaker boomed.

  ‘I can hear you.’ Vallery’s own voice echoed loudly over the amplifier. ‘McQuater, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye, it’s me, sir. How did ye ken?’ Even through the speaker the surprise was unmistakable. Shocked and exhausted though he was, Vallery found himself smiling.

  ‘Never mind that now, McQuater. Who’s in charge down there— Gardiner, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Gardiner.’

  ‘Put him on, will you?’ There was a pause.

  ‘Ah canna, sir. Gardiner’s deid.’

  ‘Dead!’ Vallery was incredulous. ‘Did you say “dead”, McQuater?’

  ‘Aye, and he’s no’ the only one.’ The voice was almost truculent, but Vallery’s ear caught the faint tremor below. ‘Ah was knocked oot masel’, but Ah’m fine now.’

  Vallery paused, waited for the boy’s bout of hoarse, harsh coughing to pass.

  ‘But—but—what happened?’

  ‘How should Ah know—Ah mean, Ah dinna ken—Ah don’t know, sir. A helluva bang and then—ach, Ah’m no’ sure whit happened . . . Gardiner’s mooth’s all blood.’

  ‘How—how many of you are left?’

  ‘Just Barker, Williamson and masel’, sir. Naebody else—just us.’

  ‘And—and they’re all right, McQuater?’

  ‘Ach, they’re fine. But Barker thinks he’s deein’. He’s in a gey bad wey. Ah think he’s gone clean aff his trolley, sir.’

  ‘He’s what?’

  ‘Loony, sir,’ McQuater explained patiently. ‘Daft. Some bluidy nonsense aboot goin’ to meet his Maker, and him wi’ naething behind him but a lifetime o’ swindlin’ his fellowman.’ Vallery heard Turner’s sudden chuckle, remembered that Barker was the canteen manager. ‘Williamson’s busy shovin’ cartridges back into the racks—floor’s littered with the bluidy things.’

  ‘McQuater!’ Vallery’s voice was sharp, automatic in reproof.

  ‘Aye, Ah’m sorry, sir. Ah clean forgot . . . Whit’s to be done, sir?’

  ‘Done about what?’ Vallery demanded impatiently.

  ‘This place, sir. “Y” magazine. Is the boat on fire ootside? It’s bilin’ in here—hotter than the hinges o’hell!’

  ‘What! What did you say?’ Vallery shouted. This time he forgot to reprimand McQuater. ‘Hot, did you say? How hot? Quickly, boy!’

  ‘Ah canna touch the after bulkheid, sir,’ McQuater answered simply. ‘It ’ud tak ‘the fingers aff me.’

  ‘But the sprinklers—what’s the matter with them?’ Vallery shouted. ‘Aren’t they working? Good God, boy, the magazine will go up any minute!’

  ‘Aye.’ McQuater’s voice was noncommittal. ‘Aye, Ah kinna thought that might be the wey o’ it. No, sir, the sprinklers arena workin’—and it’s already 20 degrees above the operatin’ temperature, sir.’

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ Vallery said desperately. ‘Turn them on by hand! The water in the sprinklers can’t possibly be frozen if it’s hot as you say it is. Hurry, man, hurry. If the mag goes up, the Ulysses is finished. For God’s sake, hurry!’

  ‘Ah’ve tried them, sir,’ McQuater said softly. ‘It’s nae bluidy use. They’re solid!’

  ‘Then break them open! There must be a tommy bar lying about somewhere. Smash them open, man! Hurry!’

  ‘Aye, richt ye are, sir. But—but if Ah do that, sir, how am Ah to shut the valves aff again?’ There was a note almost of quiet desperation in the boy’s voice—some trick of reproduction in the amplifier, Vallery guessed.

  ‘You can’t! It’s impossible! But never mind that!’ Vallery said impatiently, his voice ragged with anxiety. ‘We’ll pump it all out later. Hurry, McQuater, hurry!’

  There was a brief silence followed by a muffled shout and a soft thud, then they heard a thin metallic clanging echoing through the amplifier, a rapid, staccato succession of strokes. McQuater must have been raining a veritable hail of blows on the valve handles. Abruptly, the noise ceased.

  Vallery waited until he heard the phone being picked up, called anxiously: ‘Well, how is it? Sprinklers all right?’

  ‘Goin’ like the clappers, sir.’ There was a new note in his voice, a note of pride and satisfaction. ‘Ah’ve just crowned Barker wi’ the tommy bar,’ he added cheerfully.

  ‘You’ve what?’

  ‘Laid oot old Barker,’ said McQuater distinctly. ‘He tried to stop me. Windy auld bastard . . . Ach, he’s no’ worth mentionin’ . . . My they sprinklers are grand things, sir. Ah’ve never seen them working’ before. Place is ankle deep a’ready. And the steam’s fair sizzlin’ aff the bulkheid!’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Vallery’s voice was sharp. ‘Get out at once—and make sure that you take Barker with you.’

  ‘Ah saw a picture once. In the Paramount in Glasgow, Ah think. Ah must’ve been flush.’ The tone was almost conversational, pleasurably reminiscent. Vallery exchanged glances with Turner, saw that he too, was fighting off the feeling of unreality. ‘Rain, it was cried. But it wasnae hauf as bad as this. There certainly wisnae hauf as much bluidy steam! Talk aboot the hothouse in the Botanic Gardens!’

  ‘McQuater!’ Vallery roared. ‘Did you hear me? Leave at once, I say! At once, do you hear?’

  ‘Up to ma knees a’ready!’ McQuater said admiringly. ‘It’s gey cauld . . . Did you say somethin’ sir?’

  ‘I said, “Leave at once!”’ Vallery ground out. ‘Get out!’

  ‘Aye, Ah see. “Get oot.” Aye. Ah thought that was what ye said. Get oot. Well, it’s no that easy. As a matter o’fact, we canna. Hatchway’s buckled and the hatch-cover, too—jammed deid solid, sir.’

  The echo from the speaker boomed softly over the shattered bridge, died away in frozen silence. Unconsciously, Vallery lowered the telephone, his eyes wandering dazedly over the bridge. Turner, Carrington, the Kapok Kid, Bentley, Chrysler and the others—they were all looking at him, all with the same curiously blank intensity blurring imperceptibly into the horror of understanding—and he knew that their eyes and faces only
mirrored his own. Just for a second, as if to clear his mind, he screwed his eyes tightly shut, then lifted the phone again.

  ‘McQuater! McQuater! Are you still there?’

  ‘Of course Ah’m here!’ Even through the speaker, the voice was peevish, the asperity unmistakable. ‘Where the hell—?’

  ‘Are you sure it’s jammed, boy?’ Vallery cut in desperately. ‘Maybe if you took a tommy-bar to the clips—’

  ‘Ah could take a stick o’ dynamite to the bluidy thing and it ’ud make no difference,’ McQuater said matter-of-factly. ‘Onywey, it’s just aboot red-hot a’ready—the hatch, Ah mean. There must be a bluidy great fire directly ootside it.’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ Vallery called. He turned round. ‘Commander, have Dodson send a stoker to the main magazine flooding valve aft: stand by to shut off.’

  He crossed over to the nearest communication number.

  ‘Are you on to the poop phone just now? Good! Give it to me . . . Hallo, Captain here. Is—ah, it’s you, Hartley. Look, give me a report on the state of the mess-deck fires. It’s desperately urgent. There are ratings trapped in “Y” magazine, the sprinklers are on and the hatch-cover’s jammed . . . Yes, yes, I’ll hold on.’

  He waited impatiently for the reply, gloved hand tapping mechanically on top of the phone box. His eyes swept slowly over the convoy, saw the freighters steaming in to take up position again. Suddenly he stiffened, eyes unseeing.

  ‘Yes, Captain speaking . . . Yes . . . Yes. Half an hour, maybe an hour . . . Oh, God, no! You’re quite certain? . . . No, that’s all.’

  He handed the receiver back, looked up slowly, his face drained of expression.

  ‘Fire in the seamen’s mess is under control,’ he said dully. ‘The marines’ mess is an inferno—directly on top of “Y” magazine. Hartley says there isn’t a chance of putting it out for an hour at least . . . I think you’d better get down there, Number One.’

  A whole minute passed, a minute during which there was only the pinging of the Asdic, the regular crash of the sea as the Ulysses rolled in the heavy troughs.

  ‘Maybe the magazine’s cool enough now,’ the Kapok Kid suggested at length. ‘Perhaps we could shut off the water long enough . . . ’ His voice trailed away uncertainly.

  ‘Cool enough?’ Turner cleared his throat noisly. ‘How do we know? Only McQuater could tell us . . . ’ He stopped abruptly, as he realized the implications of what he was saying.

  ‘We’ll ask him,’ Vallery said heavily. He picked up the phone again. ‘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 shells 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.1 ‘Williamson!’ The voice had risen to a sudden urgent shout.

  ‘Williamson! Hing 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!’

  But the speaker above him remained dead, finally, irrevocably dead. Vallery shivered 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 passing of every second. Even now, the time 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 compass platform. It was beginning to snow again and the darkness was falling all around them.

  1. HMS Spartiate was a shore establishment. Naval HQ for the West of Scotland. It was at St Enoch’s Hotel, Glasgow.

  FOURTEEN

  Saturday 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 poop—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 poop 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 Grierson. 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 pleas
e.’

  ‘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 depthcharges.’ 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 hell’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.