Just wait a bit, will you?"
He raised his voice. "Pilot!"
"Sir?"
"Slow ahead both!"
"Slow ahead both, sir!"
Gradually, then more quickly, way fell off the Ulysses and she dropped slowly astern of the convoy.
Soon, even the last ships in the lines were ahead of her, thrashing their way to the north-east.
The snow was falling more thickly now, but still the ships were bathed in that savage glare, frighteningly vulnerable in their naked helplessness.
Seething with anger, Turner brought up short at the port torpedoes.
The tubes were out, their evil, gaping mouths, high-lighted by the great flames, pointing out over the intermittent refulgence of the rolling swell.
Ralston, perched high on the unprotected control position above the central tube, caught hi's eye at once.
"Ralston!" Turner's voice was harsh, imperious. "I want to speak to you!"
Ralston turned round quickly, rose, jumped on to the deck. He stood facing the Commander.
They were of a height, their eyes on a level, Ralston's still, blue, troubled, Turner's dark and stormy with anger.
"What the hell's the matter with you, Ralston?" Turner ground out. "Refusing to obey orders, is that it?"
"No, sir." Ralston's voice was quiet, curiously strained. "That's not true."
"Not true!" Turner's eyes were narrowed, his fury barely in check. "Then what's all this bloody claptrap about not wanting to man the tubes?
Are you thinking of emulating Stoker Riley?
Or have you just taken leave of your senses, if any?"
Ralston said nothing.
The silence, a silence all too easily interpreted as dumb insolence, infuriated Turner.
His powerful hands reached out, grasped Ralston's duffel coat. He pulled the rating towards him, thrust his face close to the other's.
"I asked a question, Ralston," he said softly. "I haven't had an answer.
I'm waiting.
What is all this?"
"Nothing, sir." Distress in his eyes, perhaps, but no fear. "I-I just don't want to, sir.
I hate to do it-to send one of our own ships to the bottom!" The voice was pleading now, blurred with overtones of desperation: Turner was deaf to them. "Why does she have to go, sir I" he cried. "Why?
Why? Why?"
"None of your bloody business-but as it so happens she's endangering the entire convoy!" Turner's face was still within inches of Ralston's. "You've got a job to do, orders to obey.
Just get up there and obey them!
Go on!" he roared, as Ralston hesitated. "Get up there I He fairly spat the words out.
Ralston didn't move.
"There are other L.T.O.s, sir!" His arms lifted high in appeal, something in the voice cut through Turner's blind anger: he realised, almost with shock, that this boy was desperate. "Couldn't they------?"
"Let someone else do the dirty work, eh?
That's what you mean, isn't it?" Turner was bitingly contemptuous. "Get them to do what you won't do yourself, you-you contemptible young bastard!
Communications Number?
Give me your set.
I'll take over from the bridge."
He took the phone, watched Ralston climb slowly back up and sit hunched forward, head bent over the Dumaresq.
"Number One?
Commander speaking.
All set here.
Captain there?"
"Yes, sir.
I'll call him." Carrington put down the phone, walked through the gate. "Captain, sir. Commander's on the------"
"Just a moment!" The upraised hand, the tenseness of the voice stopped him. "Have a look, No. I.
What do you think?"
Vallery pointed towards the Vytura, past the oil-skinned figure of the Admiral.
Tyndall's head was sunk on his chest, and he was muttering incoherently to himself.
Carrington followed the pointing finger.