Turner was shouting angrily into the telephone. "You'll damn' well do what you're told, do you hear?
Get them out immediately!
Yes, I said 'immediately'!"
Vallery touched his arm in surprise.
"What's the matter, Commander?"
"Of all the bloody insolence I" Turner snorted. "Telling me what to do!"
"Who?"
"The L.T.O. on the tubes.
Your friend Ralston!" said Turner wrathfully.
"Ralston!
Of course!" Vallery remembered now. "He told me that was his night Action Stations.
What's wrong?"
"What's wrong: Says he doesn't think he can do it.
Doesn't like to, doesn't wish to do it, if you please.
Blasted insubordination!" Turner fumed.
Vallery blinked at him. "Ralston, are you sure? But of course you are... I wonder...
That boy's been through a very private hell, Turner. Do you think------"
"I don't know what to think!" Turner lifted the phone again. "Tubes nine-oh?
At last!...
What?
What did you say?...
Why don't we... Gunfire!
Gunfire!" He hung up the receiver with a crash, swung round on Vallery. "Asks me, pleads with me, for gunfire instead of torpedoes!
He's mad, he must be!
But mad or not, I'm going down there to knock some sense into that mutinous young devil!"
Turner was angrier than Vallery had ever seen him.
"Can you get Carrington to man this phone, sir?"
"Yes, yes, of course!" Vallery himself had caught up some of Turner's anger. "Whatever his sentiments, this is no time to express them!" he snapped. "Straighten him up...
Maybe I've been too lenient, too easy, perhaps he thinks we're in his debt, at some psychological disadvantage, for the shabby treatment he's received... All right, all right, Commander!" Turner's mounting impatience was all too evident. "OS you go.
Going in to attack in three or four minutes."
He turned abruptly, passed in to the compass platform.
"Bentley!"
"Sir?"
"Last signal------"
"Better have a look, sir," Carrington interrupted. "He's slowing up."
Vallery stepped forward, peered over the windscreen.
The Vytura, a roaring mass of flames was falling rapidly astern.
"Clearing the davits, sir!" the Kapok Kid reported excitedly. "I think-yes, yes, I can see the boat coming down!"
"Thank God for that!" Vallery whispered.
He felt as though he had been granted a new lease of life.
Head bowed, he clutched the screen with both hands-reaction had left him desperately weak.
After a few seconds he looked up. "W.T. code signal to Sirrus" he ordered quietly. "' Circle well astern.
Pick up survivors from the Vytura's lifeboat.'" He caught Carrington's quick look and shrugged. "It's a better than even risk, Number One, so to hell with Admiralty orders.
God," he added with sudden bitterness, "wouldn't I love to see a boatload of the 'no-survivors-will-be-picked-up' Whitehall warriors drifting about in the Barents Sea!"
He turned away, caught sight of Nicholls and Petersen.
"Still here, are you, Nicholls?
Hadn't you better get below?"
"If you wish, sir."
Nicholls hesitated, nodded forward towards Tyndall. "I thought, perhaps------"
"Perhaps you're right, perhaps you're right." Vallery shook his head in weary perplexity. "We'll see.