He leaned back luxuriously, eyes closed, head far back on the rest, and groaned again.
"I'm an old man, Johnny, my boy, just an ancient has, been."
"Nonsense, sir," Nicholls said briskly. "Just a slight malaise.
Now, if you'll let me prescribe a suitable tonic..."
He turned to a cupboard, fished out two tooth-glasses and a dark-green, ribbed bottle marked
"Poison."
He filled the glasses and handed one to Brooks.
"My personal recommendation.
Good health, ski" Brooks looked at the amber liquid, then at Nicholls.
"Heathenish practices they taught you at these Scottish Universities, my boy... Admirable fellers, some of these old heathens.
What is it this time, Johnny?"
"First-class stuff," Nicholls grinned.
"Produce of the Island of Coll."
The old surgeon looked at him suspiciously. "Didn't know they had any distilleries up there."
"They haven't.
I only said it was made in Coll... How did things go up top, sir?"
"Bloody awful.
His nibs threatened to string us all from the yardarm.
Took a special dislike to me, said I was to be booted off the ship instanter.
Meant it, too."
"You!" Nicholls's brown eyes, deep-sunk just now and red-rimmed from sleeplessness, opened wide. "You're joking, sir, of course."
"I'm not.
But it's all right, I'm not going.
Old Giles, the skipper and Turner, the crazy idiots, virtually told Starr that if I went he'd better start looking around for another Admiral, Captain and Commander as well.
They shouldn't have done it, of course, but it shook old Vincent to the core.
Departed in high dudgeon, muttering veiled threats... not so veiled, either, come to think of it."
"Damned old fool!" said Nicholls feelingly.
"He's not really, Johnny.
Actually, he's a brilliant bloke.
You don't become a D.N.O. for nothing.
Master strategist and tactician, Giles tells me, and he's not really as bad as we're apt to paint him; to a certain extent we can't blame old Vincent for sending us out again.
Bloke's up against an insoluble problem.
Limited resources at his disposal, terrific demands for ships and men in half a dozen other theatres.
Impossible to meet half the claims made on him; half the time he's operating on little better than a shoe-string.
But he's still an inhuman, impersonal sort of cuss-doesn't understand men."
"And the upshot of it all?"
"Murmansk again.
Sailing at 0600 tomorrow."
"What!
Again?
This bunch of walking zombies?" Nicholls was openly incredulous. "Why, they can't do that, sir!
They, they just can't!"
"They're doing it anyway, my boy.
The Ulysses must-ah-redeem itself." Brooks opened his eyes. "Gad the very thought appals me.
If there's any of that poison left, my boy..."
Nicholls shoved the depleted bottle back into the cupboard, and jerked a resentful thumb in the direction of the massive battleship clearly visible through the porthole, swinging round her anchor three or four cable-lengths away.
"Why always us, sir?
It's always us.
Why don't they send that useless floating barracks out once in a while?
Swinging round that bloody great anchor, month in, month out------"