‘Excellent, young Chrysler, excellent! You have the gift. Torps, an eye on the ship, if you please. Must see where we are.’
He retired to the chart-room on the port side, just aft of the compass platform, and closed the black-out door. Relaxed in his chair, he put his mug on the chart-table and his feet beside it, drew the first deep inhalation of cigarette smoke into his lungs. Then he was on his feet, cursing: the crackle of the WT loudspeaker was unmistakable.
This time it was the Portpatrick. For one reason and another, her reports were generally treated with a good deal of reserve, but this time she was particularly emphatic. Commander Turner had no option; again he reached for the EAS switch.
Twenty minutes later the stand-down sounded again, but the Commander was to have no cocoa that night. Three times more during the hours of darkness all hands closed up to Action Stations, and only minutes, it seemed, after the last stand-down, the bugle went for dawn stations.
There was no dawn as we know it. There was a vague, imperceptible lightening in the sky, a bleak, chill greyness, as the men dragged themselves wearily back to their action stations. This, then, was war in the northern seas. No death and glory heroics, no roaring guns and spitting Oerlikons, no exaltation of the spirit, no glorious defiance of the enemy: just worn-out sleepless men, numbed with cold and sodden duffels, grey and drawn and stumbling on their feet with weakness and hunger and lack of rest, carrying with them the memories, the tensions, the cumulative physical exhaustion of a hundred such endless nights.
Vallery, as always, was on the bridge. Courteous, kind and considerate as ever, he looked ghastly. His face was haggard, the colour of putty, his bloodshot eyes deep-sunk in hollowed sockets, his lips bloodless. The severe hæmorrhage of the previous night and the sleepless night just gone had taken terrible toll of his slender strength.
In the half-light, the squadron came gradually into view. Miraculously, most of them were still in position. The frigate and minesweeper were together and far ahead of the fleet—during the night they had been understandably reluctant to have their tails tramped on by a heavy cruiser or a carrier. Tyndall appreciated this and said nothing. The Invader had lost position during the night, and lay outside the screen on the port quarter. She received a very testy signal indeed, and came steaming up to resume station, corkscrewing violently in the heavy cross seas.
Stand-down came at 0800. At 0810 the port watch was below, making tea, washing, queueing up at the galley for breakfast trays, when a muffled explosion shook the Ulysses. Towels, soap, cups, plates and trays went flying or were left where they were: blasphemous and bitter, the men were on their way before Vallery’s hand closed on the Emergency switch.
Less than half a mile away the Invader was slewing round in a violent half-circle, her flight-deck tilted over at a crazy angle. It was snowing heavily again now, but not heavily enough to obscure the great gouts of black oily smoke belching up for’ard of the Invader’s bridge. Even as the crew of the Ulysses watched, she came to rest, wallowing dangerously in the troughs between the great waves.
‘The fools, the crazy fools!’ Tyndall was terribly bitter, unreasonably so; even to Vallery, he would not admit how much he was now feeling the burden, the strain of command that sparked off his now almost chronic irritability. ‘This is what happens, Captain, when a ship loses station! And it’s as much my fault as theirs—should have sent a destroyer to escort her back.’ He peered through his binoculars, turned to Vallery. ‘Make a signal please: “Estimate of damage—please inform.”…That damned U-boat must have trailed her from first light, waiting for a line-up.’
Vallery said nothing. He knew how Tyndall must feel to see one of his ships heavily damaged, maybe sinking. The Invader was still lying over at the same unnatural angle, the smoke rising in a steady column now. There was no sign of flames.
‘Going to investigate, sir?’ Vallery inquired.
Tyndall bit his lip thoughtfully and hesitated.
‘Yes, I think we’d better do it ourselves. Order squadron to proceed, same speed, same course. Signal the Baliol and the Nairn to stand by the Invader.’
Vallery, watching the flags fluttering to the yardarm, was aware of someone at his elbow. He half-turned.
‘That was no U-boat, sir.’ The Kapok Kid was very sure of himself. ‘She can’t have been torpedoed.’
Tyndall overheard him. He swung round in his chair, glared at the unfortunate navigator.
‘What the devil do you know about it, sir?’ he growled. When the Admiral addressed his subordinates as ‘sir’, it was time to take to the boats. The Kapok Kid flushed to the roots of his blond hair, but he stood his ground.
‘Well, sir, in the first place the Sirrus is covering the Invader’s port side, though well ahead, ever since your recall signal. She’s been quartering that area for some time. I’m sure Commander Orr would have picked her up. Also, it’s far too rough for any sub to maintain periscope depth, far less line up a firing track. And if the U-boat did fire, it wouldn’t only fire one—six more likely, and, from that firing angle, the rest of the squadron must have been almost a solid wall behind the Invader. But no one else has been hit…I did three years in the trade, sir.’
‘I did ten,’ Tyndall growled. ‘Guesswork, Pilot, just guesswork.’
‘No, sir,’ Carpenter persisted. ‘It’s not. I can’t swear to it’—he had his binoculars to his eyes—‘but I’m almost sure the Invader is going astern. Could only be because her bows—below the waterline, that is—have been damaged or blown off. Must have been a mine, sir, probably acoustic.’
‘Ah, of course, of course!’ Tyndall was very acid. ‘Moored in 6,000 feet of water, no doubt?’
‘A drifting mine, sir,’ the Kapok Kid said patiently. ‘Or an old acoustic torpedo—spent German torpedoes don’t always sink. Probably a mine, though.’
‘Suppose you’ll be telling me next what mark it is and when it was laid,’ Tyndall growled. But he was impressed in spite of himself. And the Invader was going astern, although slowly, without enough speed to give her steerage way. She still wallowed helplessly in the great troughs.
An Aldis clacked acknowledgement to the winking light on the Invader. Bentley tore a sheet off a signal pad, handed it to Vallery.
‘“Invader to Admiral,”’ the Captain read. ‘“Am badly holed, starboard side for’ard, very deep. Suspect drifting mine. Am investigating extent of damage. Will report soon.”’
Tyndall took the signal from him and read it slowly. Then he looked over his shoulder and smiled faintly.
‘You were dead right, my boy, it seems. Please accept an old curmudgeon’s apologies.’
Carpenter murmured something and turned away, brick-red again with embarrassment. Tyndall grinned faintly at the Captain, then became thoughtful.
‘I think we’d better talk to him personally, Captain. Barlow, isn’t it? Make a signal.’
They climbed down two decks to the Fighter Direction room. Westcliffe vacated his chair for the Admiral.
‘Captain Barlow?’ Tyndall spoke into the handpiece.
‘Speaking.’ The sound came from the loudspeaker above his head.
‘Admiral here, Captain. How are things?’
‘We’ll