HMS Ulysses Read online

  "What in the world------?" Tyndall broke off and scanned the sky. "Not a plane, not a paratrooper in sight, no radar reports, no Asdic contacts, no sign of the German Grand Fleet steaming through the boom------"

  "She's signalling us, sir!" It was Bentley speaking, Bentley, the Chief Yeoman of Signals. He paused and went on slowly: "Proceed to our anchorage at once. Make fast to north buoy."

  "Ask them to confirm," Vallery snapped. He took the fo'c'sle phone from the communication rating.

  "Captain here, Number One. How is she? Up and down? Good." He turned to the officer of the watch. "Slow ahead both: Starboard 10.", He looked over at Tyndall's corner, brows wrinkled in question.

  "Search me," Tyndall growled. "Could be the latest in parlour games, a sort of nautical musical chairs, you know.... Wait a minute, though!

  Look! The Cumberland, all her 5.25's are at maximum depression!"

  Vallery's eyes met his.

  "No, it can't be! Good God, do you think------?"

  The blare of the Asdic loudspeaker, from the cabinet immediately abaft of the bridge, gave him his answer. The voice of Leading Asdic Operator Chrysler was clear, unhurried.

  "Asdic-bridge. Asdic-bridge. Echo, Red 30. Repeat, Red 30. Strengthening. Closing."

  The captain's incredulity leapt and died in the same second.

  "Alert Director Control! Red 30. All A.A. guns maximum depression. Underwater target. Torps ", this to Lieutenant Marshall, the Canadian Torpedo Officer, "depth charge stations."

  He turned back to Tyndall.

  "It can't be, sir, it just can't! A U-boat, I presume it is, in Scapa Flow. Impossible!"

  "Prien didn't think so," Tyndall grunted.

  "Prien?"

  "Kapitan-Leutnant Prien-gent who scuppered the Royal Oak."

  "It couldn't happen again. The new boom defences------"

  "Would keep out any normal submarines," Tyndall finished. His voice dropped to a murmur. "Remember what we were told last month about our midget two-man subs, the chariots? The ones to be taken over to Norway by Norwegian fishing-boats operating from the Shetlands. Could be that the Germans have hit on the same idea."

  "Could be," Vallery agreed. He nodded sardonically. "Just look at the Cumberland go, straight for the boom." He paused for a few seconds, his eyes speculative, then looked back at Tyndall. "How do you like it, sir?"

  "Like what, Captain?"

  "Playing Aunt Sally at the fair." Vallery grinned crookedly. "Can't afford to lose umpteen million pounds worth of capital ship. So the old Duke hares out to sea and safety, while we moor near her anchor berth.

  You can bet German Naval Intelligence has the bearing of her anchorage down to a couple of inches. These midget subs carry detachable warheads and if there's going to be any fitted, they're going to be fitted to us."

  Tyndall looked at him. His face was expressionless. Asdic reports were continuous, reporting steady bearing to port and closing distances.

  "Of course, of course," the Admiral murmured. "We're the whipping boy. Gad, it makes me feel bad!" His mouth twisted and he laughed mirthlessly. "Me? This is the final straw for the crew. That hellish last trip, the mutiny, the marine boarding party from the Cumberland, action stations in harbour, and now this! Risking our necks for that-that..." He broke off, spluttering, swore in anger, then resumed quietly:

  "What are you going to tell the men, Captain? Good God, it's fantastic!

  I feel like mutiny myself..." He stopped short, looked inquiringly past Vallery's shoulder.

  The Captain turned round.

  "Yes, Marshall?"

  "Excuse me, sir. This-er-echo." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  "A sub, sir, possibly a pretty small one?" The transatlantic accent was very heavy.

  "Likely enough, Marshall. Why?"

  "Just how Ralston and I figured it, sir." He grinned. "We have an idea for dealing with it."

  Vallery looked out through the driving sleet, gave helm and engine orders, then turned back to the Torpedo Officer. He was coughing heavily, painfully, as he pointed to the glassed, in anchorage chart.

  "If you're thinking of depth-charging our stern off in these shallow waters------"

  "No, sir. Doubt whether we could get a shallow enough setting anyway. My idea, Ralston's to be correct, is that we take out the motor boat and a few 25-lb. scuttling charges, 18-second fuses and chemical igniters. Not much of a kick from these, I know, but a miniature sub ain't likely to have helluva-er-very thick hulls. And if the crews are sitting on top of the ruddy things instead of inside -- well, it's curtains for sure. It'll kipper "em."

  Vallery smiled.

  "Not bad at all, Marshall. I think you've got the answer there. What do you think, sir?"

  "Worth trying, anyway," Tyndall agreed. "Better than waiting around like a sitting duck."

  "Go ahead then, Torps." Vallery looked at him quizzically. "Who are your explosives experts?"

  "I figured on taking Ralston------"

  "Just what I thought. You're taking nobody, laddie," said Vallery firmly. "Can't afford to lose my torpedo officer."

  Marshall looked pained, then shrugged resignedly.

  "The Chief T.G.M. and Ralston, he's the senior L.T.O. Good men both."

  "Right. Bentley, detail a man to accompany them in the boat. We'll signal Asdic bearings from here. Have him take a portable Aldis with him." He dropped his voice. "Marshall?"

  "Sir?"

  "Ralston's young brother died in hospital this afternoon." He looked across at the Leading Torpedo Operator, a tall, blond, unsmiling figure dressed in faded blue overalls beneath his duffel. "Does he know yet?"

  The Torpedo Officer stared at Vallery, then looked round slowly at the L.T.O. He swore, softly, bitterly, fluently.

  "Marshall!" Vallery's voice was sharp, imperative, but Marshall ignored him, his face a mask, oblivious alike to the reprimand in the Captain's voice and the lashing bite of the sleet.

  "No, sir," he stated at length, "he doesn't know. But he did receive some news this morning. Croydon was pasted last week. His mother and three sisters live there, lived there. It was a land mine, sir, there was nothing left." He turned abruptly and left the bridge.

  Fifteen minutes later it was all over. The starboard whaler and the motorboat on the port side hit the water with the Ulysses still moving up to the mooring. The whaler, buoy-jumper aboard, made for the buoy, while the motor boat slid off at a tangent Four hundred yards away from the ship, in obedience to the flickering instructions from the bridge, Ralston fished out a pair of pliers from his overalls and crimped the chemical fuse. The Gunner's Mate stared fixedly at his stop-watch. On the count of twelve the scuttling charge went over the side.

  Three more, at different settings, followed it in close succession, while the motorboat cruised in a tight circle. The first three explosions lifted the stern and jarred the entire length of the boat, viciously-and that was all. But with the fourth, a great gout of air came gushing to the surface, followed by a long stream of viscous bubbles. As the turbulence subsided, a thin slick of oil spread over a hundred square yards of sea....

  Men, fallen out from Action Stations, watched with expressionless faces as the motorboat made it back to the Ulysses and hooked on to the falls just in time: the Hotchkiss steering-gear was badly twisted and she was taking in water fast under the counter.

  The Duke of Cumberland was a smudge of smoke over a far headland.

  Cap in hand, Ralston sat down opposite the Captain. Vallery looked at him for a long time in silence. He wondered what to say, how best to say it. He hated to have to do this.

  Richard Vallery also hated war. He always had hated it and he cursed the day it had dragged him out of his comfortable retirement. At least, "dragged" was how he put it; only Tyndall knew that he had volunteered his services to the Admiralty on 1st September, 1939, and had had them gladly accepted.

  But he hated war. Not because it interfered with his lifelong passion for music and literature, o
n both of which he was a considerable authority, not even because it was a perpetual affront to his asstheticism, to his sense of Tightness and fitness. He hated it because he was a deeply religious man, because it grieved him to see in mankind the wild beasts of the primeval jungle, because he thought the cross of life was already burden enough without the gratuitous infliction of the mental and physical agony of war, and, above all, because he saw war all too clearly as the wild and insensate folly it was, as a madness of the mind that settled nothing, proved nothing except the old, old truth that God was on the side of the big battalions.

  But some things he had to do, and Vallery had clearly seen that this war had to be his also. And so he had come back to the service, and had grown older as the bitter years passed, older and frailer, and more kindly and tolerant and understanding. Among Naval Captains, indeed among men, he was unique. In his charity, in his humility, Captain Richard Vallery walked alone. It was a measure of the man s greatness that this thought never occurred to him.

  He sighed. All that troubled him just now was what he ought to say to Ralston. But it was Ralston who spoke first.

  "It's all right, sir." The voice was a level monotone, the face very still. "I know. The Torpedo Officer told me."

  Vallery cleared his throat.

  "Words are useless, Ralston, quite useless. Your young brother and your family at home. All gone. I'm sorry, my boy, terribly sorry about it all." He looked up into the expressionless face and smiled wryly. "Or maybe you think that these are all words you know, something formal, just a meaningless formula."

  Suddenly, surprisingly, Ralston smiled briefly.

  "No, sir, I don't. I can appreciate how you feel, sir. You see, my father well, he's a captain too. He tells me he feels the same way."

  Vallery looked at him in astonishment.

  "Your father, Ralston? Did you say------"

  "Yes, sir." Vallery could have sworn to a flicker of amusement in the blue eyes, so quiet, so self-possessed, across the table. "In the Merchant Navy, sir a tanker captain 16,000 tons."

  Vallery said nothing. Ralston went on quietly:

  "And about Billy, sir my young brother. It's, it's just one of these things. It's nobody's fault but mine. I asked to have him aboard here.

  I'm to blame, sir-only me." His lean brown hands were round the brim of his hat, twisting it, crushing it. How much worse will it be when the shattering impact of the double blow wears off, Vallery wondered, when the poor kid begins to think straight again?

  "Look, my boy, I think you need a few days' rest, time to think things over." God, Vallery thought, what an inadequate, what a futile thing to say. "P.R.O. is making out your travelling warrant just now. You will start fourteen days' leave as from tonight."

  "Where is the warrant made out for, sir?" The hat was crushed now, crumpled between the hands. "Croydon?"

  "Of course. Where else------" Vallery stopped dead; the enormity of the blunder had just hit him.

  "Forgive me, my boy. What a damnably stupid thing to say!"

  "Don't send me away, sir," Ralston pleaded quietly. "I know it sounds, well, it sounds corny, self-pitying, but the truth is I've nowhere to go. I belong here, on the Ulysses. I can do things all the tune, I'm busy-working, sleeping, I don't have to talk about things, I can do things..." The self-possession was only the thinnest veneer, taut and frangible, with the quiet desperation immediately below.

  "I can get a chance to help pay 'em back," Ralston hurried on. "Like crimping these fuses today-it-well, it was a privilege. It was more than that-it was-oh, I don't know. I can't find the words, sir."

  Vallery knew. He felt sad, tired, defenceless. What could he offer this boy in place of this hate, this very human, consuming flame of revenge?

  Nothing, he knew, nothing that Ralston wouldn't despise, wouldn't laugh at. This was not the time for pious platitudes. He sighed again, more heavily this time.

  "Of course you shall remain, Ralston. Go down to the Police Office and tell them to tear up your warrant. If I can be of any help to you at any time-----"

  "I understand, sir. Thank you very much. Good night, sir."

  "Good night, my boy."

  The door closed softly behind him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MONDAY MORNING

  "CLOSE ALL water-tight doors and scuttles. Hands to stations for leaving harbour." Impersonally, inexorably, the metallic voice of the broadcast system reached into every farthest corner of the ship.

  And from every corner of the ship men came in answer to the call. They were cold men, shivering involuntarily in the icy north wind, sweating pungently as the heavy falling snow drifted under collars and cuffs, as numbed hands stuck to frozen ropes and metal. They were tired men, for fuelling, provisioning and ammunitioning had gone on far into the middle watch: few had had more than three hours' sleep.

  And they were still angry, hostile men. Orders were obeyed, to be sure, with the mechanical efficiency of a highly trained ship's company; but obedience was surly, acquiescence resentful, and insolence lay ever close beneath the surface. But Divisional Officers and N.C.O.s handled the men with velvet gloves: Vallery had been emphatic about that.

  Illogically enough, the highest pitch of resentment had not been caused by the Cumberland's prudent withdrawal. It had been produced the previous evening by the routine broadcast. "Mail will close at 2000 tonight." Mail! Those who weren't working non-stop round the clock were sleeping like the dead with neither the heart nor the will even to think of writing. Leading Seaman Doyle, the doyen of 'B' mess-deck and a venerable three-badger (thirteen years' undiscovered crime, as he modestly explained his good-conduct stripes) had summed up the matter succinctly: "If my old Missus was Helen of Troy and Jane Russell rolled into one, and all you blokes wot have seen the old dear's photo know that the very idea's a shocking libel on either of them ladies, I still wouldn't send her even a bleedin' postcard. You gotta draw a line somewhere. Me, for my scratcher." Whereupon he had dragged his hammock from the rack, slung it with millimetric accuracy beneath a hot-air louvre, seniority carries its privileges, and was asleep in two minutes. To a man, the port watch did likewise: the mail bag had gone ashore almost empty...

  At 0600, exactly to the minute, the Ulysses slipped her moorings and steamed slowly towards the boom. In the grey half-light, under leaden, lowering clouds, she slid across the anchorage like an insubstantial ghost, more often than not half-hidden from view under sudden, heavy flurries of snow.

  Even in the relatively clear spells, she was difficult to locate. She lacked solidity, substance, definition of outline. She had a curious air of impennanence, of volatility. An illusion, of course, but an illusion that accorded well with a legend, for a legend the Ulysses had become in her own brief lifetime. She was known and cherished by merchant seamen, by the men who sailed the bitter seas of the North, from St.

  John's to Archangel, from the Shetlands to Jan Mayen, from Greenland to far reaches of Spitsbergen, remote on the edge of the world. Where there was danger, where there was death, there you might look to find the Ulysses, materialising wraith-like from a fog-bank, or just miraculously, being there when the bleak twilight of an Arctic dawn brought with it only the threat, at times almost the certainty, of never seeing the next.

  A ghost-ship, almost, a legend. The Ulysses was also a young ship, but she had grown old in the Russian Convoys H.U.33B and on the Arctic patrols. She had been there from the beginning, and had known no other life. At first she had operated alone, escorting single ships or groups of two or three: later, she had operated with corvettes and frigates, and now she never moved without her squadron, the 14th Escort Carrier group.

  But the Ulysses had never really sailed alone. Death had been, still was, her constant companion. He laid his ringer on a tanker, and there was the erupting hell of a high-octane detonation; on a cargo liner, and she went to the bottom with her load of war supplies, her back broken by a German torpedo; on a destroyer, and she knifed her way into the grey-b
lack depths of the Barents Sea, her still racing engines her own executioners; on a U-boat, and she surfaced violently to be destroyed by gunfire, or slid down gently to the bottom of the sea, the dazed, shocked crew hoping for a cracked pressure hull and merciful instant extinction, dreading the endless gasping agony of suffocation in their iron tomb on the ocean floor. Where the Ulysses went, there also went death. But death never touched her. She was a lucky ship. A lucky ship and a ghost ship and the Arctic was her home.

  Illusion, of course, this ghostliness, but a calculated illusion. The Ulysses was designed specifically for one task, for one ocean, and the camouflage experts had done a marvellous job. The special Arctic camouflage, the broken, slanting diagonals of grey and white and washed out blues merged beautifully, imperceptibly into the infinite shades of grey and white, the cold, bleak grimness of the barren northern seas.

  And the camouflage was only the outward, the superficial indication of her fitness for the north.

  Technically, the Ulysses was a light cruiser. She was the only one of her kind, a 5,500 ton modification of the famous Dido type, a forerunner of the Black Prince class. Five hundred and ten feet long, narrow in her fifty-foot beam with a raked stem, square cruiser stern and long fo'c'sle deck extending well abaft the bridge, a distance of over two hundred feet, she looked and was a lean, fast and compact warship, dangerous and durable.

  "Locate: engage: destroy." These are the classic requirements of a naval ship in wartime, and to do each, and to do it with maximum speed and efficiency, the Ulysses was superbly equipped.

  Location, for instance. The human element, of course, was indispensable, and Vallery was far too experienced and battlewise a captain to underestimate the value of the unceasing vigil of look-outs and signalmen. The human eye was not subject to blackouts, technical hitches or mechanical breakdowns. Radio reports, too, had their place and Asdic, of course, was the only defence against submarines.

  But the Ulysses's greatest strength in location lay elsewhere. She was the first completely equipped radar ship in the world. Night and day, the radar scanners atop the fore and main tripod masts swept ceaselessly in a 360ø arc, combing the far horizons, searching, searching. Below, in the radar rooms, eight in all, and in the Fighter Direction rooms, trained eyes, alive to the slightest abnormality, never left the glowing screens. The radar's efficiency and range were alike fantastic. The makers, optimistically, as they had thought, had claimed a 40-45 mile operating range for their equipment. On the Ulysses's first trials after her refit for its installation, the radar had located a Condor, subsequently destroyed by a Blenheim, at a range of eighty-five miles.