"Beneath the Lights of Home," that most heartbreakingly nostalgic of all songs.
Below decks and above, bent over the great engines or huddled by their guns, men listened to the lovely voice as it drifted through the darkened ship and the falling snow, and turned their minds inwards and thought of home, thought of the bitter contrast and the morning that would not come.
Suddenly, half-way through, the song stopped.
"Do you hear there?" the 'speakers boomed. "Do you hear there? This, this is the Commander speaking." The voice was deep and grave and hesitant: it caught and held the attention of every man in the ship.
"I have bad news for you." Turner spoke slowly, quietly. "I am sorry, I..." He broke off, then went on more slowly still. "Captain Vallery died five minutes ago." For a moment the 'speaker was silent, then crackled again. "He died on the bridge, in his chair.
He knew he was dying and I don't think he suffered at all.... He insisted, he insisted that I thank you for the way you all stood by him.
'Tell them', these were his words, as far as I remember, 'tell them,' he said, 'that I couldn't have carried on without them, that they are the best crew that God ever gave a Captain.'
Then he said, it was the last thing he said:' Give them my apologies.
After all they've done for me, well, well, tell them I'm terribly sorry to let them down like this.'
That was all he said, just' Tell them I'm sorry.'
And then he died."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SATURDAY NIGHT
RICHARD VALLERY was dead.
He died grieving, stricken at the thought that he was abandoning the crew of the Ulysses, leaving them behind, leaderless. But it was only for a short time, and he did not have to wait long.
Before the dawn, hundreds more, men in the cruisers, the destroyers and the merchantmen, had died also.
And they did not die as he had feared under the guns of the Tirpitz, another grim parallel with PQ17, for the Tirpitz had not left Alta Fjord. They died, primarily, because the weather had changed.
Richard Vallery was dead, and with his death a great change had come over the men of the Ulysses.
When Vallery died, other things died also, for he took these things with him. He took with him the courage, the kindliness, the gentleness, the unshakable faith, the infinitely patient and understanding endurance, all these things which had been so peculiarly his own.
And now these things were gone and the Ulysses was left without them and it did not matter.
The men of the Ulysses no longer needed courage and all the adjuncts of courage, for they were no longer afraid.
Vallery was dead and they did not know how much they respected and loved that gentle man until he was gone.
But then they knew.
They knew that something wonderful, something that had become an enduring part of their minds and memories, something infinitely fine and good, was gone and they would never know it again, and they were mad with grief.
And, in war, a grief-stricken man is the most terrible enemy there is.
Prudence, caution, fear, pain-for the grief-stricken man these no longer exist.
He lives only to lash out blindly at the enemy, to destroy, if he can, the author of his grief.
Rightly or wrongly, the Ulysses never thought to blame the Captain's death on any but the enemy.
There Was only, for them, the sorrow and the blind hate.
Zombies, Nicholls had called them once, and the Ulysses was more than ever a ship manned by living zombies, zombies who prowled restlessly, incessantly, across the snow and ice of the heaving decks, automatons living only for revenge.
The weather changed just before the end of the middle watch.
The seas did not change-FR77 was still butting into the heavy, rolling swell from the north, still piling up fresh sheets of glistening ice on their labouring fo'c'sles.
But the wind dropped, and almost at once the snowstorm blew itself out, the last banks of dark, heavy cloud drifting away to the south.
By four o'clock the sky was completely clear.
There was no moon that night, but the stars were out, keen and sharp and frosty as the icy breeze that blew steadily out of the north.
Then, gradually, the sky began to change. At first there was only a barely perceptible lightening on the northern rim then, slowly, a pulsating flickering band of light began to broaden and deepen and climb steadily above the horizon, climbing higher to the south with the passing of every minute.
Soon that pulsating ribbon of light was paralleled by others, streamers in the most delicate pastel shades of blue and green and violet, but always and predominantly white. And always, too, these lanes of multi-coloured light grew higher and stronger and brighter: at the climax, a great band of white stretched high above the convoy, extending from horizon to horizon...
These were the Northern Lights, at any time a spectacle of beauty and wonder, and this night surpassing lovely: down below, in ships clearly illumined against the dark and rolling seas, the men of FR77 looked up and hated them.
On the bridge of the Ulysses, Chrysler, Chrysler of the uncanny eyesight and super-sensitive hearing, was the first to hear it.
Soon everyone else heard it too, the distant roar, throbbing and intermittent, of a Condor approaching from the south.
After a time they became aware that the Condor was no longer approaching, but sudden hope died almost as it was born.
There was no mistaking it now-the deeper, heavier note of a Focke-Wulf in maximum climb.
The Commander turned wearily to Carrington.
"It's Charlie, all right," he said grimly. "The bastard's spotted us.
He'll already have radioed Alta Fjord and a hundred to one in anything you like that he's going to drop a marker flare at 10,000 feet or so.
It'll be seen fifty miles away."
"Your money's sake." The First Lieutenant was withering. "I never bet against dead certs... And then, by and by, maybe a few flares at a couple of thousand?"
"Exactly!" Turner nodded. "Pilot, how far do you reckon we're from Alta Fjord-in flying time, I mean?"
"For a 200-knot plane, just over an hour," the Kapok Kid said quietly.
His ebullience was gone: he had been silent and dejected since Vallery had died two hours previously.