But the human factors here outwright the difficulties and may carry the reader through. Much of the lingo is perhaps too British for some readers, in the same sense that Monsarrat's H.M.S. Supremely well done- but can the reading public take it? MacLean is English. It is an unbearable story, completely unrelieved in its stark and bitter march of death and destruction. Nichols, Junior medic, was transferred by breeches buoy to another ship in need - and so Nichols alone survived to tell the story of the death of a great fighter, as the Ulysses made the supreme sacrifice in an effort to take final payment. And still the shrinking convoy went on towards the goal. Adolf 242n113 HMS Ulysses (book) 10, 234n40 Ho, Stanley 161 Hobart, Adeline 99 Hobart, Jake 168 The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (book) 114, 121. The clearing weather brought out the bombers- and more ships were sent to the bottom. Men performed deeds far beyond the call of duty and those who fell short of greatness paid the price. One ship after another of the convoy was sacrificed Vallery was forced into decisions that tore him apart disease took its toll- with Vallery himself its ultimate victim madness, too, stalked the decks and Tyndall's sanity cracked. The weather turned vicious the temperature dropped to an unbelievably low figure and the German wolf pack made the most of every opportunity. From that moment on, it was unadulterated hell. But the home office was adamant - and the Lysses was on its way once more. Rear-Admiral Tyndall felt it so - and the chief surgeon, Brooks, did not hesitate to speak his mind. But Captain Vallery and his officers and men had taken more than humans should be asked to take- and when mutiny was in the making, it seemed to all Justifiable. The Ulysses had been a lucky ship, fast, equipped with radar, with a captain who was worshipped by his crew. In fiction form, this is the story of the Murmansk run - and of the attempt to get convoy, FF77, through, under the inadequate protection of a few cruisers, most of them outmod.

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