the face contorted in white and bitter rage-a bitterness directed not least against himself. Tyndall twisted suddenly in his seat.
'Bentley! Signal the Stirling-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 gunfire, saw the smoke erupting from the Sinus'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 Kid 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 granted. '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, amn'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 meant 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 a heavy cruiser, alters it again to run straight 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 E.A.S. Signal screaming urgently through the fog. Tyndall turned his head slowly, looked back into the
