later he had heard a clatter and the patter of running feet in the passage outside; but, when he had thrown the door open, the passage had been empty. Nothing there, nothing at all, except a file on the deck, below the case of Navy Colt.445s; the chain on the trigger guards was almost through. Vallery shook his head.
'No idea at all, sir.' His face was heavy with worry. 'Bad, really bad.'
Tyndall shivered in an icy flurry. He grinned crookedly. 'Real Captain Teach stuff, eh? Pistols and cutlasses and black eye-patches, storming the bridge...' Vallery shook his head impatiently. 'No, not that.
You know it, sir. Defiance, maybe, but, well, no more. The point is, a marine is on guard at the keyboard, just round the corner of that passage. Night and day. Bound to have seen him. He denies-----'
'The rot has gone that far?' Tyndall whistled softly. 'A black day, Captain. What does our fire-eating young Captain of Marines say to that?'
'Foster? Pooh-poohs the very idea, and just about twists the ends of his moustache off. Worried to hell. So's Evans, his Colour-Sergeant.'
'So am I!' said Tyndall feelingly. He glared into space. The Officer of the Watch, who happened to be in his direct line of vision, shifted uncomfortably. 'Wonder what old Socrates thinks of it all, now? Maybe only a pill- roller, but the wisest head we've got... Well, speak of the devil!'
The gate had just swung open, and a burly, unhappy-looking figure, duffel-coated, oilskinned and wearing a Russian beaverskin helmet, the total effect was of an elderly grizzly bear caught in a thunderstorm, shuffled across the duck boards of the bridge. He brought up facing the Kent screen, an inset, circular sheet of glass which revolved at high speed and offered a clear view in all weather conditions, rain, hail, snow. For half a minute he peered miserably through this and obviously didn't like what he saw.
He sniffed loudly and turned away, beating his arms against the cold.
'Ha! A deck officer on the bridge of H.M. Cruisers. The romance, the glamour! Hal' He hunched his oilskinned shoulders, and looked more miserable than ever. 'No place this for a civilised man like myself. But you know how it is, gentlemen, the clarion call of duty...'
Tyndall chuckled.
'Give him plenty of time, Captain. Slow starters, these medics, you know, but------'
Brooks cut in, voice and face suddenly serious.
'Some more trouble, Captain. Couldn't tell it over the phone. Don't know how much it's worth.'
'Trouble?' Vallery broke off, coughed harshly into his handkerchief.
'Sorry,' he apologised. 'Trouble? There's nothing else, old chap. Just had some ourselves.'
'That bumptious young fool, Carslake? Oh, I know all right. My spies are everywhere. Bloke's a bloody menace... However, my story. Young Nicholls was doing some path, work late last night in the dispensary, on T.B. specimens. Two, three hours in there. Lights out in the bay, and the patients either didn't know or had forgotten he was there. Heard Stoker Riley, a real trouble-maker, that Riley, and the others planning a locked door, sit-down strike in the boiler-room when they return to duty. A sit-down strike in a boiler-room. Good lord, it's fantastic! Anyway, Nicholls let it slide, pretended he hadn't heard.'
'What!' Vallery's voice was sharp, edged with anger. 'And Nicholls ignored it, didn't report it to me! Happened last night, you say. Why wasn't I told, immediately? Get Nicholls up here, now. No, never mind.' He reached out to pick up the bridge phone. 'I'll get him myself.'
Brooks laid a gauntieted hand on Vallery's arm.
'I wouldn't do that, sir. Nicholls is a smart boy, very smart indeed. He knew that if he let the men know they had been overheard, they would know that he must report it to you. And then you'd have been bound to take action, and open provocation of trouble is the last thing you want. You said so yourself in the wardroom last night.'
Vallery hesitated. 'Yes, yes, of course I said that, but, Well, Doc., this is different. It could be a focal point for spreading the idea to------'
'I told you, sir,' Brooks interrupted softly. 'Johnny Nicholls is a very smart boy. He's got a big notice, in huge red letters, outside the Sick Bay door: 'Keep clear: Suspected scarlet fever infection.' Kills me to watch 'em. Everybody avoids the place like the plague. Not a hope of communicating with their pals in the Stokers' Mess.'
Tyndall guffawed at him, and even Vallery smiled slightly.
'Sounds fine, Doc. Still, I should have been told last night.'
'Why should you be woken up and told every little thing in the middle of the night?' Brooks's voice was brusque. 'Sheer selfishness on my part, but what of it? When things get bad, you damn' well carry this ship on your back, and when we've all got to depend on you, we can't afford to have you anything less than as fit as possible. Agreed, Admiral?'
Tyndall nodded solemnly. 'Agreed, O Socrates. A very complicated way of saying that you wish the Captain to have a good night's sleep. But agreed.'
Brooks grinned amiably. 'Well, that's all, gentlemen. See you all at the court-martial, I hope.' He cocked a jaundiced eye over a shoulder, into the thickening snow. 'Won't the Med. be wonderful, gentlemen?' He sighed and slid effortlessly into his native Galway brogue. 'Malta in the spring. The beach at Sliema-wmi the white houses behind-where we picnicked, a hundred years ago. The soft winds, me darlin' boys, the warm winds, the blue skies and Chianti under a striped umbrella------'
'Off!' Tyndall roared. 'Get off this bridge, Brooks, or i'll------'
'I'm gone already,' said Brooks. 'A sit-down strike in the boiler-room! Ha! First tiling you know, there'll be a rash of male suffragettes chaining themselves to the guard rails I' The gate clanged shut behind him.
Vallery turned to the Admiral, his face grave.
'Looks as, if you were right about that comstack, sir.'
Tyndall grunted, non-committally.
'Maybe. Trouble is, the men have nothing to do right now except brood and curse and feel bitter about everything. Later on it'll be all right, perhaps.'
'When we get-ah-busier, you mean?'
'Mmm. When you're fighting for your life, to keep the ship afloat, well, you haven't much time for plots and pondering over the injustices of fate. Self-preservation is still the first law of nature... Speaking to the men tonight Captain?'
'Usual routine broadcast, yes. In the first dog, when we're all closed up to dusk action stations.' Vallery smiled briefly. 'Make sure that they're all awake.'
'Good. Lay it on, thick and heavy. Give 'em plenty to think about-and, if I'm any judge of Vincent Starr's hints, we're going to have plenty to think about this trip. It'll keep 'em occupied.'
Vallery laughed. The laugh transformed his thin sensitive face. He seemed genuinely amused.
Tyndall lifted an interrogatory eyebrow. Vallery smiled back at him.
'Just passing thoughts, sir. As Spencer Faggot would have said, things have come to a pretty pass... Things are bad indeed, when only the enemy can save us.'
CHAPTER THREE
MONDAY AFTERNOON
ALL DAY long the wind blew steadily out of the nor'-nor'-west. A strong wind, and blowing stronger. A cold wind, a sharp wind full of little knives, it carried with it snow and ice and the strange dead smell born of the forgotten ice caps that lie beyond the Barrier. It wasn't a gusty, blowy wind. It was a settled, steady kind of wind, and it stayed fine on the starboard bow from dawn to dusk. Slowly, stealthily, it was lifting a swell. Men like Carrington, who knew every sea and port in the world, like Vallery and Hartley, looked at it and were troubled and said nothing.
The mercury crept down and the snow lay where it fell. The tripods and yardarms were great, glistening Xmas trees, festooned with woolly stays and halliards. On the mainmast, a brown smear appeared now and then, daubed on by a wisp of smoke from the after funnel, felt rather than seen: in a moment, it would vanish. The snow lay on the deck and drifted. It softened the anchor-cables on the fo'c'sle deck into great, fluffy ropes of
