Vallery smiled. "You never were a very good liar, John."
Tyndall laughed. "Touche!"
He was warmed, secretly pleased.
Rarely did Richard Vallery break through his self-imposed code of formality. "A heinous offence, we all know, to clout one of H.M. commissioned officers, but if Ether-ton's story is true, my only regret is that Ralston didn't give Brooks a really large-scale job of replanning that young swine's face."
"It's true, all right, I'm afraid," said Vallery soberly. "What it amounts to is that naval discipline, oh, how old Starr would love this, compels me to punish a would, be murderer's victim I" He broke off in a fresh paroxysm of coughing, and Tyndall looked away: he hoped the distress wasn't showing in his face, the pity and anger he felt that Vallery, that very perfect, gentle knight, the finest gentleman and friend he had ever known, should be coughing his heart out, visibly dying on his feet, because of the blind inhumanity of an S.N.O. in London, two thousand miles away.
"A victim," Vallery went on at last, "who has already lost his mother, brother and three sisters... I believe he has a father at sea somewhere."
"And Carslake?"
"I shall see him tomorrow.
I should like you to be there, sir.
I will tell him that he will remain an officer of this ship till we return to Scapa, then resign his commission... I don't think he'd care to appear at a court martial, even as a witness," he finished dryly.
"Not if he's sane, which I doubt," Tyndall agreed. A sudden thought struck him. "Do you think he is sane?" he frowned.
"Carslake," Vallery hesitated. "Yes, I think so, sir.
At least, he was.
Brooks isn't so sure.
Says he didn't like the look of him tonight, something queer about him, he thinks, and in these abnormal conditions small provocations are magnified out of all proportion." Vallery smiled briefly. "Not that Carslake is liable to regard the twin assaults on pride and person as a small provocation."
Tyndall nodded agreement.
"He'll bear watching... Oh, damn!
I wish the ship would stay still.
Half my coffee on the tablecloth.
Young Spicer", he looked towards the pantry," will be as mad as hell. Nineteen years old and a regular tyrant... I thought these would be sheltered waters, Dick?"
"So they are, compared to what's waiting for us. Listen!" He cocked his head to the howling of the wind outside. "Let's see what the weather man has to say about it."
He reached for the desk phone, asked for the transmitting station.
After a brief conversation he replaced the receiver.
"T.S. says the anemometer is going crazy.
Ousting up to eighty knots.
Still north-west.
Temperature steady at ten below." He shivered. "Ten below!" Then looked consideringly at Tyndall. "Barometer almost steady at 27.8."
"What!"
"27.8.
That's what they say.
It's impossible, but that's what they say." He glanced at his wrist-watch. "Forty-five minutes, sir... This is a very complicated way of committing suicide."
They were silent for a minute, then Tyndall spoke for both of them, answering the question in both their minds.
"We must go, Dick. We must.
And by the way, our fire-eating young Captain CD, the doughty Orr, wants to accompany us in the Sirrus... We'll let him tag along a while.
He has things to learn, that young man."
At 2020 all ships had completed oiling.
Hove to, they had had the utmost difficulty in keeping position in that great wind; but they were infinitely safer than in the open sea.
They were given orders to proceed when the weather moderated, the Defender and escorts to Scapa, the squadron to a position 100 miles ENE. of rendezvous.
Radio silence was to be strictly observed.
At 2030 the Ulysses and Sirrus got under way to the East.
Lights winked after them, messages of good luck.
Fluently, Tyndall cursed the squadron for the breach of darken-ship regulations, realised that, barring themselves there was no one on God's earth to see the signals anyway, and ordered a courteous acknowledgment.
At 2045, still two miles short of Langanes point, the Sirrus was plunging desperately in mountainous seas, shipping great masses of water over her entire fo'c'sle and main deck, and, in the darkness, looking far less like a destroyer than a porpoising submarine.
At 2050, at reduced speed, she was observed to be moving in close to such slight shelter as the land afforded there.
At the same time, her six-inch Aldis flashed her signal:
"Screen doors stove in:
'A' turret not tracking: flooding port boiler-room intake fans."
And on the Sirrus's bridge Commander Orr swore in chagrin as he received the Ulysses's final message:
"Lesson without words, No. 1.
Rejoin squadron at once.