I'm sorry, my boy, terribly sorry about it all." He looked up into the expressionless face and smiled wryly. "Or maybe you think that these are all words you know, something formal, just a meaningless formula."
Suddenly, surprisingly, Ralston smiled briefly.
"No, sir, I don't.
I can appreciate how you feel, sir.
You see, my father well, he's a captain too.
He tells me he feels the same way."
Vallery looked at him in astonishment.
"Your father, Ralston?
Did you say------"
"Yes, sir."
Vallery could have sworn to a flicker of amusement in the blue eyes, so quiet, so self-possessed, across the table.
"In the Merchant Navy, sir a tanker captain 16,000 tons." Vallery said nothing.
Ralston went on quietly:
"And about Billy, sir my young brother. It's, it's just one of these things. It's nobody's fault but mine. I asked to have him aboard here.
I'm to blame, sir-only me."
His lean brown hands were round the brim of his hat, twisting it, crushing it.
How much worse will it be when the shattering impact of the double blow wears off, Vallery wondered, when the poor kid begins to think straight again?
"Look, my boy, I think you need a few days' rest, time to think things over."
God, Vallery thought, what an inadequate, what a futile thing to say.
"P.R.O. is making out your travelling warrant just now. You will start fourteen days' leave as from tonight."
"Where is the warrant made out for, sir?" The hat was crushed now, crumpled between the hands. "Croydon?"
"Of course. Where else------" Vallery stopped dead; the enormity of the blunder had just hit him.
"Forgive me, my boy.
What a damnably stupid thing to say!"
"Don't send me away, sir," Ralston pleaded quietly. "I know it sounds, well, it sounds corny, self-pitying, but the truth is I've nowhere to go.
I belong here, on the Ulysses.
I can do things all the tune, I'm busy-working, sleeping, I don't have to talk about things, I can do things..."
The self-possession was only the thinnest veneer, taut and frangible, with the quiet desperation immediately below.
"I can get a chance to help pay 'em back," Ralston hurried on. "Like crimping these fuses today-it-well, it was a privilege. It was more than that-it was-oh, I don't know. I can't find the words, sir."
Vallery knew.
He felt sad, tired, defenceless.
What could he offer this boy in place of this hate, this very human, consuming flame of revenge?
Nothing, he knew, nothing that Ralston wouldn't despise, wouldn't laugh at.
This was not the time for pious platitudes.
He sighed again, more heavily this time.
"Of course you shall remain, Ralston.
Go down to the Police Office and tell them to tear up your warrant.
If I can be of any help to you at any time-----"
"I understand, sir.
Thank you very much.
Good night, sir."
"Good night, my boy."
The door closed softly behind him.
CHAPTER TWO
MONDAY MORNING
"CLOSE ALL water-tight doors and scuttles.
Hands to stations for leaving harbour." Impersonally, inexorably, the metallic voice of the broadcast system reached into every farthest corner of the ship.
And from every corner of the ship men came in answer to the call.
They were cold men, shivering involuntarily in the icy north wind, sweating pungently as the heavy falling snow drifted under collars and cuffs, as numbed hands stuck to frozen ropes and metal.
They were tired men, for fuelling, provisioning and ammunitioning had gone on far into the middle watch: few had had more than three hours' sleep.