Thank God!
Thank God!" Turner shouted exultantly. "From the north!
It must be them!
They're ahead of time.... I take it all back.
Can you see anything, Number One?"
"Not a thing, sir.
Too thick-but it's clearing a bit, I think... There's the Sirrus again."
"What does she say, Preston?" Turner asked anxiously.
"Contact.
Sub. contact.
Green 30.
Closing."
"Contact!
At this late hour!" Turner groaned, then smashed his fist down on the binnacle. He swore fiercely.
"By God, she's not going to stop us now!
Preston, signal the Sirrus to stay..."
He broke off, looked incredulously to the north.
Up there in the snow and gloom, stilettos of white flame had lanced out briefly, vanished again.
Carrington by his side now, he stared unwinkingly north, saw shells splashing whitely in the water under the bows of the Commodore's ship, the Cape Hatteras: then he saw the flashes again, stronger, brighter this time, flashes that lit up for a fleeting second the bows and superstructure of the ship that was firing.
He turned slowly, to find that Carrington, too, had turned, was gazing at him with set face and bitter eyes.
Turner, grey and haggard with exhaustion and the sour foretaste of ultimate defeat, looked in turn at his First Lieutenant in a long moment of silence.
"The answer to many questions," he said softly. "That's why they've been softening up the Stirling and ourselves for the past couple of days.
The fox is in among the chickens.
It's our old pal the Hipper cruiser come to pay us a social call."
"It is."
"So near and yet..." Turner shrugged. "We deserved better than this..." He grinned crookedly. "How would you like to die a hero's death?"
"The very idea appals me!" boomed a voice behind him.
Brooks had just arrived on the bridge.
"Me, too," Turner admitted.
He smiled: he was almost happy again. "Have we any option, gentlemen?"
"Alas, no," Brooks said sadly.
"Full ahead both!" Carrington called down the speaking-tube: it was by way of his answer.
"No, no," Turner chided gently. "Full power, Number One.
Tell them we're in a hurry: remind them of the boasts they used to make about the Abdiel and the Manxman... Preston!
General emergency signal:
'Scatter: proceed independently to Russian ports.'"
The upper deck was thick with freshly fallen snow, and the snow was still falling.
The wind was rising again and, after the warmth of the canteen where he had been operating, it struck at Johnny Nicholls's lungs with sudden, searing pain: the temperature, he guessed, must be about zero.
He buried his face in his duffel coat, climbed laboriously, haltingly up the ladders to the bridge.
He was tired, deadly weary, and he winced in agony every time his foot touched the deck: his splinted left leg was shattered just above the ankle-shrapnel from the bomb in the after mess-deck.
Peter Orr, commander of the Sirrus, was waiting for him at the gate of the tiny bridge.
"I thought you might like to see this, Doc." The voice was strangely high-pitched for so big a man. "Rather I thought you would want to see this," he corrected himself. "Look at her go!" he breathed. "Just look at her go!"
Nicholls looked out over the port side.
Half a mile away on the beam, the Cape Hatteras was blazing furiously, slowing to a stop.
Some miles to the north, through the falling snow, he could barely distinguish the vague shape of the German cruiser, a shape pinpointed by the flaming guns still mercilessly pumping shells into the sinking ship.
Every shot went home: the accuracy of their gunnery was fantastic. Half a mile astern on the port quarter, the Ulysses was coming up.
She was sheeted in foam and spray, the bows leaping almost clear of the water, then crashing down with a pistol-shot impact easily heard, even against the wind, on the bridge of the Sirrus, as the great engines thrust her through the water, faster, faster, with the passing of every second.
Nicholls gazed, fascinated.
This was the first time he'd seen the Ulysses since he'd left her and he was appalled.
The entire upperworks, fore and aft, were a twisted, unbelievable shambles of broken steel: both masts were gone, the smokestacks broken and bent, the Director Tower shattered and grotesquely askew: smoke was still pluming up from the great holes in fo'c'sle and poop, the after turrets, wrenched from their mountings, pitched crazily on the deck.