and Maine to the-far slopes of the Pacific. These families would never know that it was he, Tyndall, who had so criminally squandered the lives of husbands, brothers, sons-and that was worse than no consolation at all.
'Captain Vallery?' Tyndall's voice was only a husky whisper. Vallery crossed over, stood beside him, coughing painfully as the swirling fog caught nose and throat, incinated inflamed lungs. It was a measure of Tyndall's distressed preoccupation that Vallery's obvious suffering quite failed to register.
'Ah, there you are. Captain, this enemy cruiser must be destroyed.'
Vallery nodded heavily. 'Yes, sir. How?'
'How?' Tyndall's face, framed in the moisture-beaded hood of his duffel, was haggard and grey: but he managed to raise a ghost of a smile. 'As well hung for a sheep.... I propose to detach the escorts, including ourselves, and nail him.' He stared out blindly into the fog, his mouth bitter. 'A simple tactical exercise, maybe within even my limited compass.' He broke off suddenly, stared over the side then ducked hurriedly: a shell had exploded in the water-a rare thing-only yards away, erupting spray showering down on the bridge.
'We, the Stirling and ourselves, will take him from the south,' he continued, 'soak up his fire and radar. Orr and his death-or-glory boys will approach from the north. In this fog, they'll get very close before releasing their torpedoes. Conditions are all against a single ship, he shouldn't have much chance.'
'All the escorts,' Vallery said blankly. 'You propose to detach all the escorts?'
'That's exactly what I propose to do, Captain.'
'But, but, perhaps that's exactly what he wants,' Vallery protested.
'Suicide? A glorious death for the Fatherland? Don't you believe it!'
Tyndall scoffed. 'That sort of thing went out with Langesdorff and Middelmann.'
'No, sir!' Vallery was impatient. 'He wants to pull us off, to leave the convoy uncovered.'
'Well, what of it?' Tyndall demanded. 'Who's going to find them in this lot?' He waved an arm at the rolling, twisting fog-banks. 'Dammit, man, if it weren't for their fog-buoys, even our ships couldn't see each other. So I'm damned sure no one else could either.'
'No?' Vallery countered swiftly. 'How about another German cruiser fitted with radar? Or even another wolf-pack? Either could be in radio contact with our friend astern, and he's got our course to the nearest minute!'
'In radio contact? Surely to God our W.T. is monitoring all the time?'
'Yes, sir. They are. But I'm told it's not so easy on the V.H.F. ranges.'
Tyndall grunted non-committally, said nothing. He felt desperately tired and confused; he had neither the will nor the ability to pursue the argument further. But Vallery broke in on the silence, the vertical lines between his eyebrows etched deep with worry.
'And why's our friend sitting steadily on our tails, pumping the odd shell among us, unless he's concentrating on driving us along a particular course? It reduces his chance of a hit by 90 per cent, and cuts out half his guns.'
'Maybe he's expecting us to reason like that, to see the obvious.'
Tyndall was forcing himself to think, to fight his way through a mental fog no less nebulous and confusing than the dank mist that swirled around him. 'Perhaps he's hoping to panic us into altering course, to the north, of course, where a U-pack may very well be.'
'Possible, possible,' Vallery conceded. 'On the other hand, he may have gone a step further. Maybe he wants us to be too clever for our own good. Perhaps he expects us to see the obvious, to avoid it, to continue on our present course, and so do exactly what he wants us to do... He's no fool, sir, we know that now.'
What was it that Brooks had said to Starr back in Scapa, a lifetime ago?
'That fine-drawn feeling... that exquisite agony... every cell in the brain stretched taut to breaking point, pushing you over the screaming edge of madness.' Tyndall wondered dully how Brooks could have known, could have been so damnably accurate in his description. Anyway, he knew now, knew what it was to stand on the screaming edge...
Tyndall appreciated dimly that he was at the limit. That aching, muzzy forehead where to think was to be a blind man wading through a sea of molasses. Vaguely he realised that this must be the first, or was it the last?, symptom of a nervous breakdown... God only knew there had been plenty of them aboard the Ulysses during the past months...
But he was still the Admiral... He must do something, say something.
'It's no good guessing, Dick,' he said heavily. Vallery looked at him sharply-never before had old Giles called him anything but 'Captain' on the bridge. 'And we've got to do something. We'll leave the Vectra as a sop to our consciences. No more.' He smiled wanly. 'We must have at least two destroyers for the dirty work. Bentley, take this signal for W.T. 'To all escort vessels and Commander Fletcher on the Cape Hatteras...''
Within ten minutes, the four warships, boring south-east through the impenetrable wall of fog, had halved the distance that lay between them and the enemy. The Stirling, Viking and Sirrus were in constant radio communication with the Ulysses, they had to be, for they travelled as blind men in an invious world of grey and she was their eyes and their ears.
'Radar-bridge. Radar-bridge.' Automatically, every eye swung round, riveted on the loundspeaker. 'Enemy altering course to south: increasing speed.'
'Too late!' Tyndall shouted hoarsely. His fists were clenched, his eyes alight with triumph. 'He's left it too late!'
Vallery said nothing. The seconds ticked by, the Ulysses knifed her way through cold fog and icy sea. Suddenly, the loudspeaker called again.
'Enemy 180ш turn. Heading south-east. Speed 28 knots.'
'28 knots? He's on the run!' Tyndall seemed to have gained a fresh lease on life. 'Captain, I propose that the Sirrus and Ulysses proceed south-east at maximum speed, engage and slow the enemy. Ask W.T. to signal Orr. Ask Radar enemy's course.'
He broke off, waited impatiently for the answer.
'Radar-bridge. Course 312. Steady on course. Repeat, steady on course.'
'Steady on course,' Tyndall echoed. 'Captain, commence firing by radar. We have him, we have him!' he cried exultantly. 'He's waited too long! We have him, Captain!'
Again Vallery said nothing. Tyndall looked at him, half in perplexity, half in anger. 'Well, don't you agree?'
'I don't know, sir.' Vallery shook his head doubtfully. 'I don't know at all. Why did he wait so long? Why didn't he turn and run the minute we left the convoy?'
'Too damn' sure of himself!' Tyndall growled.
'Or too sure of something else,' Vallery said slowly. 'Maybe he wanted to make good and sure that we would follow him.'
Tyndall growled again in exasperation, made to speak then lapsed into silence as the Ulysses shuddered from the recoil of 'A' turret. For a moment, the billowing fog on the fo'c'sle cleared, atomised by the intense heat and flash generated by the exploding cordite. In seconds, the grey shroud had fallen once more.
Then, magically it was clear again. A heavy fog-bank had rolled over them, and through a gap in the next they caught a glimpse of the Sirrus, dead on the beam, a monstrous bone in her teeth, scything to the south-east at something better than 34 knots. The Stirling and the Viking were already lost in the fog astern.
'He's too close,' Tyndall snapped. 'Why didn't Bowden tell us? We can't bracket the enemy this way. Signal the Sirrus: 'Steam 317 five minutes.' Captain, same for us. 5 south, then back on course.'
He had hardly sunk back in his chair, and the Ulysses, mist-shrouded again, was only beginning to answer her helm when the W.T. loudspeaker switched on.
'W.T.-bridge. W.T.-bridge-----'
The twin 5.25s of 'B' turret roared in deafening unison, flame and smoke lancing out through the fog. Simultaneously, a tremendous crash and explosion heaved up the duck-boards beneath the feet of the men in the bridge catapulting them all ways, into each other, into flesh-bruising, bone-breaking metal, into the dazed confusion of numbed minds and bodies fighting to reorientate themselves under the crippling handicap of stunning shock, of eardrums rended by the blast, of throat and nostrils stung by acrid fumes, of eyes blinded by dense black smoke.
Throughout it all, the calm impersonal voice of the W.T. transmitter repeated its unintelligible
