CHAPTER X
THE SURVIVOR
“ ... And regrets to report only one survivor.”—
Admiralty Announcement.
The glass dropped another point, and the captain of the cruiser glanced for the hundredth time from the lowering sky to the two destroyers labouring stubbornly in the teeth of the gale on either beam. Then he gave an order to the yeoman of signals, who barked its repetition to the shelter-deck where the little group of signalmen stamped their feet and blew on their numbed fingers in the lee of the flag-lockers. Two of the group scuffled round the bright-coloured bunting: the clips of the halliards snapped a hoist together, and vivid against the grey sky the signal went bellying and fluttering to the masthead.
The figures on the bridges of the destroyers wiped the stinging spray from their swollen eyelids and read the message of comfort.
“Return to base. Weather conditions threatening.”
They surveyed their battered bridges and forecastles, their stripped, streaming decks and guns’ crews; they thought of hot food, warm bunks, dry clothing, and all the sordid creature comforts for which soul and body yearn so imperiously after three years of North Sea warfare. Their answering pendants fluttered acknowledgment, and they swung round on the path for home, praising Allah who had planted in the brain of the cruiser captain a consideration for the welfare of his destroyer screen.
“If this is what they call ‘threatening,’” observed the senior officer of the two boats, as his command clove shuddering through the jade-green belly of a mountainous sea, flinging the white entrails broadcast, “if this is merely threatening I reckon it’s about time someone said ‘Home, James!’”
His first lieutenant said nothing. He had spent three winters in these grey wastes, and he knew the significance of that unearthly clear visibility and the inky clouds banked ahead to the westward. But presently he looked up from the chart and nodded towards the menace in the western sky. “That’s snow,” he said. “It ought to catch us about the time we shall make Scaw Dhu light.”
“We’ll hear the fog buoy all right,” said the captain.
“If the pipes ain’t frozen,” was the reply. “It’s perishing cold.” He ran a gauntletted hand along the rail and extended a handful of frozen spray. “That’s salt—and frozen....”