The waves were higher now, their troughs deeper, their shoulders steeper, and the bone chilling wind lashed the snow into a blinding curtain.
A bad night, a sleepless night, both above deck and below, on watch and off.
On the bridge, the First Lieutenant, the Kapok Kid, signalmen, the Searchlight L.T.O., look-outs and messengers peered out miserably into the white night and wondered what it would be like to be warm again.
Jerseys, coats, overcoats, duffels, oilskins, scarves, balaclavas, helmets-they wore them all, completely muffled except for a narrow eye-slit in the woollen cocoon, and still they shivered.
They wrapped arms and forearms round, and rested their feet on the steam pipes which circled the bridge, and froze.
Pom-pom crews huddled miserably in the shelter of their multiple guns, stamped their feet, swung their arms and swore incessantly.
And the lonely Oerlikon gunners, each jammed in his lonely cockpit, leaned against the built-in "black" heaters and fought off the Oerlikon gunner's most insidious enemy-sleep.
The starboard watch, in the mess-decks below, were little happier.
There were no bunks for the crew of the Ulysses, only hammocks, and these were never slung except in harbour.
There were good and sufficient reasons for this.
Standards of hygiene on a naval warship are high, compared even to the average civilian home: the average matelot would never consider climbing into his hammock fully dressed-and no one in his senses would have dreamed of undressing on the Russian Convoys.
Again, to an exhausted man, the prospect and the actual labour of slinging and then lashing a hammock were alike appalling.
And the extra seconds it took to climb out of a hammock in an emergency could re-present the margin between life and death, while the very existence of a slung hammock was a danger to all, in that it impeded quick movement.
And finally, as on that night of a heavy head sea, there could be no more uncomfortable place than a hammock slung fore and aft.
And so the crew slept where it could, fully clothed even to duffel coats and gloves.
On tables and under tables, on narrow nine-inch stools, on the floor, in hammock racks, anywhere.
The most popular place on the ship was on the warm steel deck-plates in the alleyway outside the galley, at night-time a weird and spectral tunnel, lit only by a garish red light.
A popular sleeping billet, made doubly so by the fact that only a screen separated it from the upper-deck, a scant ten feet away.
The fear of being trapped below decks in a sinking ship was always there, always in the back of men's minds.
Even below decks, it was bitterly cold.
The hot-air systems operated efficiently only on 'B' and 'C' mess-decks, and even there the temperature barely cleared freezing point.
Deckheads dripped constantly and the condensation on the bulkheads sent a thousand little rivulets to pool on the corticene floor.
The atmosphere was dank and airless and terribly chill-the ideal breeding ground for the T.B., so feared by Surgeon-Commander Brooks.
Such conditions, allied with the constant pitching of the ship and the sudden jarring vibrations which were beginning to develop every time the bows crashed down, made sleep almost impossible, at best a fitful, restless unease.
Almost to a man, the crew slept, or tried to sleep, with heads pillowed on inflated lifebelts.
Blown up, bent double then tied with tape, these lifebelts made very tolerable pillows.
For this purpose, and for this alone, were these lifebelts employed, although standing orders stated explicitly that lifebelts were to be worn at all times during action and in known enemy waters.
These orders were completely ignored, not least of all by those Divisional Officers whose duty it was to enforce them.
There was enough air trapped in the voluminous and bulky garments worn in these latitudes to keep a man afloat for at least three minutes.
If he wasn't picked up in that time, he was dead anyway.
It was shock that killed, the tremendous shock of a body at 96
At ten minutes to midnight the Commander and Marshall made their way to the bridge.
Even at this late hour and in the wicked weather, the Commander was his usual self, imperturbable and cheerful, lean and piratical, a throw-back to the Elizabethan buccaneers, if ever there was one.
He had an unflagging zest for life.
The duffel hood, as always, lay over his shoulders, the braided peak of his cap was tilted at a magnificent angle.
He groped for the handle of the bridge gate, passed through, stood for a minute accustoming his eyes to the dark, located the First Lieutenant and thumped him resoundingly on the back.
"Well, watchman, and what of the night?" he boomed cheerfully. "Bracing, yes, decidedly so.
Situation completely out of control as usual, I suppose?
Where are all our chickens this lovely evening?"
He peered out into the snow, scanned the horizon briefly, then gave up.
"All gone to hell and beyond, I suppose."
"Not too bad," Carrington grinned.
An R.N.R. officer and an ex-Merchant Navy captain in whom Vallery reposed complete confidence, Lieutenant-Commander Carrington was normally a taciturn man, grave and unsmiling.
But a particular bond lay between him and Turner, the professional bond of respect which two exceptional seamen have for each other. "We can see the carriers now and then.
Anyway, Bowden and his backroom boys have "em all pinned to an inch.
At least, that's what they say."
"Better not let old Bowden hear you say that," Marshall advised. "Thinks radar is the only step forward the human race has taken since the first man came down from the trees." He shivered uncontrollably and turned his back on the driving wind. "Anyway, I wish to God I had his job," he added feelingly. "This is worse than winter in Alberta!"
"Nonsense, my boy, stuff and nonsense!" the Commander roared. "Decadent, that's the trouble with you youngsters nowadays.
This is the only life for a self-respecting human being." He sniffed the icy air appreciatively and turned to Carrington. "Who's on with you tonight, Number One?"
A dark figure detached itself from the binnacle and approached him.