This was the end.
The Ulysses could never come back.
A lifetime ticked agonisingly by.
Nicholls and Carpenter looked at each other, blank-faced, expressionless.
Tilted at that crazy angle, the bridge was sheltered from the wind.
Carrington's voice, calm, conversational, carried with amazing clarity.
"She'd go to 65 and still come back," he said matter-of-factly. "Hang on to your hats, gentlemen.
This is going to be interesting."
Just as he finished, the Ulysses shuddered, then imperceptibly, then slowly, then with vicious speed lurched back and whipped through an arc of 90
The Kapok Kid, grinning with relief, picked himself up and tapped Carrington on the shoulder.
"Don't look now, sir, but we have lost our mainmast."
It was a slight exaggeration, but the top fifteen feet, Which had carried the after radar scanner, were undoubtedly gone.
That, wicked, double whip-lash, with the weight of the ice, had been too much.
"Slow ahead both!
Midships!"
"Slow ahead both!
Midships!"
"Steady as she goes!"
The Ulysses was round.
The Kapok Kid caught Nicholls's eye, nodded at the First Lieutenant.
"See what I mean, Johnny?"
"Yes." Nicholls was very quiet. "Yes, I see what you mean."
Then he grinned suddenly.
"Next time you make a statement, I'll just take your word for it, if you don't mind.
These demonstrations of proof take too damn' much out of a person!"
Running straight before the heavy stern sea, the Ulysses was amazingly steady.
The wind, too, was dead astern now, the bridge in magical shelter.
The scudding mist overhead had thinned out, was almost gone. Far away to the southeast a dazzling white sun climbed up above a cloudless horizon.
The long night was over.
An hour later, with the wind down to thirty knots, radar reported contacts to the west.
After another hour, with the wind almost gone and only a heavy swell running, smoke plumes tufted above the horizon.
At 1030, in position, on time, the Ulysses rendezvoused with the convoy from Halifax.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WEDNESDAY NIGHT
THE CONVOY came steadily up from the west, rolling heavily in cross seas, a rich argosy, a magnificent prize for any German wolf-pack.
Eighteen ships in this argosy, fifteen big, modern cargo ships, three 16,000-ton tankers, carrying a freight far more valuable, infinitely more vital, than any fleet of quinqueremes or galleons had ever known.
Tanks, planes and petrol-what were gold and jewels, silks and the rarest of spices compared to these?
Aboard the merchant ships, crews lined the decks as the Ulysses steamed up between the port and centre lines.
Lined the decks and looked and wondered-and thanked their Maker they had been wide of the path of that great storm.
The Ulysses, seen from another deck, was a strange sight: broken-masted, stripped of her rafts, with her boat falls hauled taut over empty cradles, she glistened like crystal in the morning light: the great wind had blown away all snow, had abraded and rubbed and polished the ice to a satin-smooth, transparent gloss: but on either side of the bows and before the bridge were huge patches of crimson, where the hurricane sand-blaster of that long night had stripped off camouflage and base coats, exposing the red lead below.
The American escort was small, a heavy cruiser with a seaplane for spotting, two destroyers and two near frigates of the coastguard type.
Small, but sufficient: there was no need of escort carriers (although these frequently sailed with the Atlantic convoys) because the Luftwaffe could not operate so far west, and the wolf-packs, in recent months, had moved north and east of Iceland: there, they were not only nearer base-they could more easily lie astride the converging convoy routes to Murmansk.
ENE. they sailed in company, freighters, American warships and the Ulysses until, late in the afternoon, the box-like silhouette of an escort carrier bulked high against the horizon.
Half an hour later, at 1600, the American escorts slowed, dropped astern and turned, winking farewell messages of good luck.
Aboard the Ulysses, men watched them depart with mixed feelings.
They knew these ships had to go, that another convoy would already be mustering off the St. Lawrence.
There was none of the envy, the bitterness one might expect-and had indeed been common enough only a few weeks ago-among these exhausted men who carried the brunt of the war.
There was instead a careless acceptance of things as they were, a quasi-cynical bravado, often a queer, high nameless pride that hid itself beneath twisted jests and endless grumbling.
The 14th Aircraft Carrier Squadron-or what was left of it-was only two miles away now.
Tyndall, coming to the bridge, swore fluently as he saw that a carrier and minesweeper were missing.