Alistair MacLean - HMS Ulysses

"Well?" Tyndall demanded. "Is he on his way?"

"No reply, sir." The boy hesitated. "I think the line's gone."

"Hell's teeth!" Tyndall roared. "What are you doing standing there, then? Go and get him. Take over, Number One, will you? Bentley-have the Commander come to the bridge."

"W.T.-bridge. W.T.-bridge." Tyndall glared up at the speaker in exasperation, then froze into immobility as the voice went on. "We have been hit aft. Damage Control reports coding-room destroyed. Number 6 and 7 Radar Offices destroyed. Canteen wrecked. After control tower severely damaged."

"The After control tower!" Tyndall swore, pulled off his gloves, wincing at the agony of his broken hand. Carefully, he pillowed Vallery's head on the gloves, rose slowly to his feet. "The After Tower. And Turner's there! I hope to God..."

He broke off, made for the after end of the bridge at a stumbling run.

Once there he steadied himself, his hand on the ladder rail, and peered apprehensively aft.

At first he could see nothing, not even the after funnel and mainmast.

The grey, writhing fog was too dense, too maddeningly opaque. Then suddenly, for a mere breath of time, an icy catspaw cleared away the mist, cleared away the dark, convoluted smoke-pall above the after superstructure. Tyndall's hand tightened convulsively on the rail, the knuckles whitening to ivory.

The after superstructure had disappeared. In its place was a crazy mass of jumbled twisted steel, with 'X' turret, normally invisible from the bridge, showing up clearly beyond, apparently unharmed. But the rest was gone-radar offices, coding-room, police office, canteen, probably most of the after galley. Nothing, nobody could have survived there.

Miraculously, the truncated main mast still stood, but immediately aft of it, perched crazily on top of this devil's scrap-heap, the After Tower, fractured and grotesquely askew, lay over at an impossible angle of 60ø, its range-finder gone. And Commander Turner had been in there...

Tyndall swayed dangerously on top of the steel ladder, shook his head again to fight off the fog clamping down on his mind. There was a heavy, peculiarly dull ache just behind his forehead, and the fog seemed to be spreading from there.... A lucky ship, they called the Ulysses. Twenty months on the worst run and in the worst waters in the world and never a scratch.... But Tyndall had always known that some time, some place, her luck would run out.

He heard hurried steps clattering up the steel ladder, forced his blurred eyes to focus themselves. He recognised the dark, lean face at once: it was Leading Signalman Davies, from the flag deck. His face was white, his breathing short and quick. He opened his mouth to speak, then checked himself, his eyes staring at the handrail.

"Your hand, sir I" He switched his startled gaze from the rail to Tyndall's eyes. "Your hand! You've no gloves on, sir!"

"No?" Tyndall looked down as if faintly astonished he had a hand. "No, I haven't, have I? Thank you, Davies." He pulled his hand off the smooth frozen steel, glanced incuriously at the raw, bleeding flesh. "It doesn't matter. What is it, boy?"

"The Fighter Direction Room, sir!" Davies's eyes were dark with remembered horror. "The shell exploded in there. It's, it's just gone, sir. And the Plot above..." He stopped short, his jerky voice lost in the crash of the guns of 'A'turret Somehow it seemed strangely unnatural that the main armament still remained effective. "I've just come from the F.D.R. and the Plot, sir," Davies continued, more calmly now. "They, well, they never had a chance."

"Including Commander Westcliffe?" Dimly, Tyndall realised the futility of clutching at straws. "I don't know, sir. It's-it's just bits and pieces in the F.D.R., if you follow me. But if he was there-----"

"He would be," Tyndall interrupted heavily. "He never left it during Action Stations..."

He stopped abruptly, broken hands clenched involuntarily as the high-pitched scream and impact explosion of H.E. shells blurred into shattering cacophony, appalling in its closeness.

"My God!" Tyndall whispered. "That was close Davies! What the hell!..."

His voice choked off in an agonised grunt, arms flailing wildly at the empty air, as his back crashed against the deck of the bridge, driving every last ounce of breath from his body. Wordlessly, convulsively, propelled by desperately thrusting feet and launched by the powerful back-thrust of arms pivoting on the handrails, Davies had just catapulted himself up the last three steps of the ladder, head and shoulders socketing into the Admiral's body with irresistible force. And now Davies, too, was down, stretched his length on the deck, spreadeagled across Tyndall's legs. He lay very still.

Slowly, the cruel breath rasping his tortured lungs, Tyndall surfaced from the black depths of unconsciousness. Blindly, instinctively he struggled to sit up, but his broken hand collapsed under the weight of his body. His legs didn't seem to be much help either: they were quite powerless, as if he were paralysed from the waist down. The fog was gone now, and blinding flashes of colour, red, green and white were coruscating brilliantly across the darkening sky. Starshells? Was the enemy using a new type of starshell? Dimly, with a great effort of will, he realised that there must be some connection between these dazzling flashes and the now excruciating pain behind his forehead. He reached up the back of his right hand: his eyes were still screwed tightly shut.... Then the realisation faded and was gone.

"Are you all right, sir? Don't move. We'll soon have you out of this!"

The voice, deep, authoritative, boomed directly above the Admiral's head. Tyndall shrank back, shook his head in imperceptible despair. It was Turner who was speaking, and Turner, he knew, was gone. Was this, then, what it was like to be dead, he wondered dully. This frightening, confused world of blackness and blinding light at the same time, a dark-bright world of pain and powerless-ness and voices from the past?

Then suddenly, of their own volition almost, his eyelids flickered and were open. Barely a foot above him were the lean, piratical features of the Commander, who was kneeling anxiously at his side.

"Turner? Turner?" A questioning hand reached out in tentative hope, clutched gratefully, oblivious to the pain, at the reassuring solidity of the Commander's arm. "Turner! It is you! I thought-----"

"The After Tower, eh?" Turner smiled briefly. "No, sir, I wasn't within a mile of it. I was coming here, just climbing up to the fo'c'sle deck, when that first hit threw me back down to the main deck... How are you, sir?"

"Thank God! Thank God! I don't know how I am. My legs... What in the name of heaven is that?"

His eyes focusing normally again, widened in baffled disbelief. Just above Turner's head, angling for'ard and upward to port, a great white tree trunk stretched as far as he could see in either direction.

Reaching up, he could just touch the massive bole with his hand.

"The foremast, sir," Turner explained. "It was sheared clean off by that last shell, just above the lower yardarm. The back blast flung it on to the bridge. Took most of the A.A. tower with it, I'm afraid-and caved in the Main Tower. I don't think young Courtney could have had much chance... Davies saw it coming, I was just below him at the time. He was very quick-----"

"Davies!" Tyndall's dazed mind had forgotten all about him. "Of course!

Davies!" It must be Davies who was pinioning his legs. He craned his neck forward, saw the huddled figure at his feet, the great weight of the mast lying across his back. "For God's sake, Commander, get him out of that!"

"Just lie down, sir, till Brooks gets here. Davies is all right."

"All right? All right!" Tyndall was almost screaming, oblivious to the silent figures who were gathering around him. "Are you mad, Turner? The poor bastard must be in agony!" He struggled frantically to rise, but several pairs of hands held him down, firmly, carefully.