Well, it's no that easy.
As a matter o' fact, we canna.
Hatchway's buckled and the hatch cover, too, jammed deid solid, sir."
The echo from the speaker boomed softly over the shattered bridge, died away in frozen silence.
Unconsciously, Vallery lowered the telephone, his eyes wandering dazedly over the bridge.
Turner, Carrington, the Kapok Kid, Bentley, Chrysler and the others-they were all looking at him, all with the same curiously blank intensity blurring imperceptibly into the horror of understanding-and he knew that their eyes and faces only mirrored his own.
Just for a second, as if to clear his mind, he screwed his eyes tightly shut, then lifted the phone again.
"McQuater! McQuater!
Are you still there?"
"Of course Ah'm here!" Even through the speaker, the voice was peevish, the asperity unmistakable. "Where the hell------?"
"Are you sure it's jammed, boy?" Vallery cut in desperately. "Maybe if you took a tommy-bar to the clips------"
"Ah could take a stick o' dynamite to the bluidy thing and it 'ud make no difference," McQuater said matter-of-factly. "Onywey, it's just aboot red-hot a'ready-the hatch, Ah mean.
There must be a bluidy great fire directly ootside it."
"Hold on a minute," Vallery called. He turned round. "Commander, have Dodson send a stoker to the main magazine flooding valve aft: stand by to shut off."
He crossed over to the nearest communication number.
"Are you on to the poop phone just now?
Good!
Give it to me... Hallo, Captain here.
Is-ah, it's you, Hartley.
Look, give me a report on the state of the mess-deck fires.
It's desperately urgent.
There are ratings trapped in' Y' magazine, the sprinklers are on and the hatch cover's jammed... Yes, yes, I'll hold on."
He waited impatiently for the reply, gloved hand tapping mechanically on top of the phone box.
His eyes swept slowly over the convoy, saw the freighters steaming in to take up position again.
Suddenly he stiffened, eyes unseeing.
"Yes, Captain speaking... Yes... Yes.
Half an hour, maybe an hour...
Oh, G®d, no!
You're quite certain?...
No, that's all."
He handed the receiver back, looked up slowly, his face drained of expression.
"Fire in the seamen's mess is under control," he said dully. "The marines' mess is an inferno-directly on top of 'Y' magazine.
Hartley says there isn't a chance of putting it out for an hour at least....
I think you'd better get down there, Number One."
A whole minute passed, a minute during which there was only the pinging of the Asdic, the regular crash of the sea as the Ulysses rolled in the heavy troughs.
"Maybe the magazine's cool enough now," the Kapok Kid suggested at length. "Perhaps we could shut off the water long enough..." His voice trailed away uncertainly.
"Cool enough?" Turner cleared his throat noisily. "How do we know?
Only McQuater could tell us..." He stopped abruptly, as he realised the implications of what he was saying.
"We'll ask him," Vallery said heavily. He picked up the phone again. "McQuater?"
"Hallo!"
"Perhaps we could shut off the sprinklers outside, if it's safe.
Do you think the temperature...?"
He broke off, unable to complete the sentence.
The silence stretched out, taut and tangible, heavy with decision.
Vallery wondered numbly what McQuater was thinking, what he himself would have thought in McQuater's place.
"Hing on a minute," the speaker boomed abruptly. "Ah'll have a look up top."
Again that silence, again that tense unnatural silence lay heavily over the bridge.
Vallery started as the speaker boomed again.
"Jings, Ah'm b------d.
Ah couldna climb that ladder again for twenty-four points in the Treble Chance... Ah'm on the ladder now, but Ah'm thinkin' Ah'll no" be on it much longer."