"Don't worry, sir.
I won't miss." The voice was quite toneless, heavy with nameless defeat.
Perplexed, now, rather than angry, and quite uncomprehending, Turner saw the left sleeve come up to brush the eyes, saw the right hand stretch forward, close round the grip of 'X' firing lever.
Incongruously, there sprang to Turner's mind the famous line of Chaucer,
"In goon the spears full sadly in arrest." In the closing of that hand there was the same heart-stopping decision, the same irrevocable finality. Suddenly, so suddenly that Turner started in spite of himself, the hand jerked convulsively back.
He heard the click of the tripping lever, the muffled roar in the explosion chamber, the hiss of compressed air, and the torpedo was gone, its evil sleekness gleaming fractionally in the light of the flames before it crashed below the surface of the sea.
It was hardly gone before the tubes shuddered again and the second torpedo was on its way.
For five, ten seconds Turner stared out, fascinated, watching the arrowing wakes of bubbles vanish in the distance.
A total of 1,500 Ibs. of Amatol in these warheads-God help the poor bastards aboard the Vytura...
The deck 'speaker clicked on.
"Do you hear there?
Do you hear there?
Take cover immediately!
Take cover immediately!"
Turner stirred, tore his eyes away from the sea, looked up, saw that Ralston was still crouched in his seat.
"Come down out of there, you young fool!" he shouted. "Want to be riddled when the Vytura goes up?
Do you hear me?"
Silence.
No word, no movement, only the roaring of the flames.
"Ralston!"
"I'm all right, sir." Ralston's voice was muffled: he did not even trouble to turn his head.
Turner swore, leapt up on the tubes, dragged Ralston from hiis seat, pulled him down to the deck and into shelter.
Ralston offered no resistance: he seemed sunk in a vast apathy, an uncaring indifference.
Both torpedoes struck home.
The end was swift, curiously unspectacular. Listeners-there were no watchers-on the Ulysses tensed themselves for the shattering detonation, but the detonation never came.
Broken-backed and tired of fighting, the Vytura simply collapsed in on her stricken mid-ships, lay gradually, wearily over on her side and was gone.
Three minutes later, Turner opened the door of the Captain's shelter, pushed Ralston in before him.
"Here you are, sir," he said grimly. "Thought you might like to see what a conscientious objecter looks like!"
"I certainly do!" Vallery laid down the log-book, turned a cold eye on the torpedoman, looked him slowly up and down.
"A fine job, Ralston, but it doesn't excuse your conduct.
Just a minute, Commander."
He turned back to the Kapok Kid. "Yes, that seems all right, Pilot.
It'll make good reading for their lordships," he added bitterly. "The ones the Germans don't get, we finish off for them... Remember to signal the Hatteras in the morning, ask for the name of the master of the Vytura."
"He's dead... You needn't trouble yourself!" said Ralston bitterly, then staggered as the Commander's open hand smashed across his face.
Turner was breathing heavily, his eyes dark with anger.
"You insolent young devil!" he said softly. "That was just a little too much from you."
Ralston's hand came up slowly, fingering the reddening weal on his cheek.
"You misunderstand me, sir." There was no anger, the voice was a fading murmur, they had to strain to catch his words. "The master of the Vytura, I can tell you his name.
It's Ralston.
Captain Michael Ralston.
He was my father."
CHAPTER TWELVE
SATURDAY
TO ALL things an end, to every night its dawn; even to the longest night when dawn never comes, there comes at last the dawn.
And so it came for FR77, as grey, as bitter, as hopeless as the night had been long. But it came.
It came to find the convoy some 350 miles north of the Arctic Circle, steaming due east along the 72nd parallel of latitude, half-way between Jan Mayen and the North Cape. 8 what would be left of it by that time, would be in the Kola Inlet, steaming up-river to Polyarnoe and Murmansk... 40 hours.
It came to find the convoy, 14 ships left in all-scattered over three square miles of sea and rolling heavily in the deepening swell from the NNE.: 14 ships, for another had gone in the deepest part of the night.
Mine, torpedo?
Nobody knew, nobody ever would know.
The Sirrus had stopped, searched the area for an hour with hooded ten-inch signalling lamps.