He turned to Chrysler, the bridge messenger, young brother of the Leading Asdic Operator.
"W.T., Bridge. W.T., Bridge." The loudspeaker above the Asdic cabinet crackled urgently, the voice hurried, insistent.
Turner jumped for the hand transmitter, barked an acknowledgment.
"Signal from Sirrus.
Echoes, port bow, 300, strong, closing. Repeat, echoes, port bow, strong, closing."
"Echoes, W.T.?
Did you say 'echoes'?"
"Echoes, sir.
I repeat, echoes."
Even as he spoke, Turner's hand cut down on the gleaming phosphorescence of the Emergency Action Stations switch.
Of all sounds in this earth, there is none so likely to stay with a man to the end of his days as the E.A.S.
There is no other sound even remotely like it.
There is nothing noble or martial or blood-stirring about it.
It is simply a whistle, pitched near the upper limit of audio-frequency, alternating, piercing, atonic, alive with a desperate urgency and sense of danger: knife-like, it sears through the most sleep-drugged brain and has a man, no matter how exhausted, how weak, how deeply sunk in oblivion, on his feet in seconds, the pulse-rate already accelerating to meet the latest unknown, the adrenalin already pumping into his blood-stream.
Inside two minutes, the Ulysses was closed up to Action Stations.
The Commander had moved aft to the After Director Tower, Vallery and Tyndall were on the bridge.
The Sirrus, two miles away to port, remained in contact for half an hour.
The Viking was detached to help her, and, below-deck in the Ulysses, the peculiar, tinny clanging of depth-charging was clearly heard at irregular intervals.
Finally, the Sirrus reported.
"No success: contact lost: trust you have not been disturbed."
Tyndall ordered the recall of the two destroyers, and the bugle blew the stand-down.
Back on the bridge, again, the Commander sent for his long overdue cocoa.
Chrysler departed to the seaman's for'ard galley, the Commander would have no truck with the wishy-washy liquid concocted for the officers' mess, and returned with a steaming jug and a string of heavy mugs, their handles threaded on a bent wire.
Turner watched with approval the reluctance with which the heavy, viscous liquid poured glutinously over the lip of the jug, and nodded in satisfaction after a preliminary taste.
He smacked his lips and sighed contentedly.
"Excellent, young Chrysler, excellent!
You have the gift.
Torps., an eye on the ship, if you please.
Must see where we are."
He retired to the chart-room on the port side, just aft of the compass platform, and closed the black-out door.
Relaxed in his chair, he put his mug on the chart-table and his feet beside it, drew the first deep inhalation of cigarette smoke into his lungs.
Then he was on his feet, cursing: the crackle of the W.T. loudspeaker was unmistakable.
This time it was the Portpatrick.
For one reason and another, her reports were generally treated with a good deal of reserve, but this time she was particularly emphatic.
Commander Turner had no option; again he reached for the E.A.S. switch.
Twenty minutes later the stand-down sounded again, but the Commander was to have no cocoa that night.
Three times more during the hours of darkness all hands closed up to Action Stations, and only minutes, it seemed, after the last stand-down, the bugle went for dawn stations.
There was no dawn as we know it.
There was a vague, imperceptible lightening in the sky, a bleak, chill greyness, as the men dragged themselves wearily back to their action stations.
This, then, was war in the northern seas.
No death and glory heroics, no roaring guns and spitting OerKkons, no exaltation of the spirit, no glorious defiance of the enemy: just worn-out sleepless men, numbed with cold and sodden duffels, grey and drawn and stumbling on their feet with weakness and hunger and lack of rest, carrying with them the memories, the tensions, the cumulative physical exhaustion of a hundred such endless nights.
Vallery, as always, was on the bridge.
Courteous, kind and considerate as ever, he looked ghastly.
His face was haggard, the colour of putty, his bloodshot eyes deep-sunk in hollowed sockets, his lips bloodless.
The severe haemorrhage of the previous night and the sleepless night just gone had taken terrible toll of his slender strength.
In the half-light, the squadron came gradually into view.
Miraculously, most of them were still in position.
The frigate and minesweeper were together and far ahead of the fleet, during the night they had been understandably reluctant to have their tails tramped on by a heavy cruiser or a carrier.
Tyndall appreciated this and said nothing.
The Invader had lost position during the night, and lay outside the screen on the port quarter.