Читать книгу The Land God Made in Anger - John Davis Gordon - Страница 21

The Bonanza sailed late that night. The fog had gone. By midnight the lights of Walvis Bay were disappearing astern and a wind was blowing in off the cold Benguela current, whipping the spray across the bows. McQuade stood on the bridgewing in his foul-weather gear, on watch, the helm on autopilot, the black sea surging and smacking and flying. He did not want to go diving down into that any more than Tucker did, and oh God, no, he did not want to be opening up the charnel house of skeletons and stink of death that Commander Manning had promised, he did not want to be diving head-first down that tube of black water into that black tomb, he did not want to be putting on his new expensive wetsuit tomorrow and toppling himself into that dark deep cold water – and those lights of Walvis Bay looked awfully good.

And there was something else for him to be uptight about: Red Straghan, the diver Roger Wentland had warned him about. That morning McQuade had bought one new wetsuit from Alan Louw’s shop and another second-hand tank and harness, but he had had to go to Straghan’s shop for a second-hand air-compressor. Red Straghan himself had come out of the workshop when he heard McQuade’s voice, his hard red face wearing his truculent smile, his hard blue eyes opaque, and said, ‘An air-compressor, Jim? What d’you need one of those for? Doing a lot of crayfishing these days?’

‘Just for emergencies,’ McQuade had said. ‘An airtank’s no good if you can’t refill it out there, is it?’

Red Straghan had leered, ‘Well, if you need any underwater work done, remember your friends, Jim …’ leaving McQuade with the uneasy feeling that he knew something was afoot. But how could he know?

McQuade did the entire night-watch himself: he was too tense to sleep. Finally the sun came, first flaming pink, making black silhouettes of the sand dunes, then golden red, then over the horizon came the sun, big and blinding gold and setting the dunes on fire, and the shore became visible, ancient and harsh, stretching on and on. The Bonanza ploughed northwards up the Skeleton Coast in the early morning, and McQuade surveyed the treacherous shore through his binoculars: the seething Atlantic swells breaking in long crashing lines, and beyond the desert rose up, harsh and dry, going on and on, not a living thing to be seen. When the boys began to show up, McQuade gave orders to assemble marker-buoys out of anchors, chain and rope he had bought yesterday. He went to bed but two hours later he was still awake and he went back to the bridge. They were passing Cape Cross and the rocky shore was black with seals, the seething sea alive with them; then the lifelessness came back into the burning shores. From time to time his binoculars picked up the skeletons of shipwrecks on the shore, stark bits of hulls, sometimes high and dry, half-buried in half a century of shifting sands.

McQuade moved restlessly between the bridgewing and the satellite-navigator, plotting the co-ordinates, and the boys also moved restlessly, watching the progress on the chart, watching the echo-sounder, watching the shore. All their enthusiasm for treasure-hunting seemed to have evaporated. Tucker, who had never had much, was quietest of all, watching his dials, glumly counting the cost of each passing hour. The Kid paced about restlessly, rethinking his convictions that big biteys were too well fed in this part of the world. Only Potgieter seemed placidly unworried.

‘What’re you looking so cheerful about, Pottie?’ Tucker complained.

Potgieter said, ‘No, Got, man, everything’s okay, hey.’

‘You’re not afraid of bankruptcy?’ Tucker complained.

‘No, Got, man, that’s a chance you’ve sommer got to take, hey?’ Potgieter said.

‘Not afraid of big biteys?’ the Kid complained.

‘No, Got, that’s a chance you sommer got to take, hey?’ Potgieter explained.

‘What you going to do if you meet a big bitey?’ the Kid demanded. ‘Stick your finger in his eye?’

‘No, Got, you worry about that when it happens, hey?’ Potgieter explained philosophically.

‘There’s going to be nothing to worry about, boys,’ Elsie said.

‘It’s all very well for you!’ Tucker cried.

Elsie held up his palms for calm. ‘Think positively,’ he said positively. ‘Think about all that money. Think of that lovely passenger ship we’re going to own. Think of your nice smart white uniforms, think of all those lovely girls in their short-shorts shaking their pretty arses at you …’

‘Now you’re talking,’ the Kid said. ‘Keep telling us how it’s going to be, Elsie …’

The sun was going down in a riotous glow of orange and red over the cold Atlantic, and the Skeleton Coast a magnificent desolation of pink and mauve, when the Bonanza began to approach latitude nineteen degrees south.

McQuade stood at the sat-nav, the word computing flashing, waiting for it to tell him the ship’s latest position. Then it appeared: Lat 19° 18′ 57″ S Long 13° 12′ 32″ E. McQuade gave a tense sigh. ‘Okay, we’ve crossed our latitude. By one minute, nine seconds. Plus twenty minutes at three knots – another mile. So we’ve over-shot by about two point two miles. Turn her around, Pottie. Steer one seven zero.’

‘One seven zero, man.’ Potgieter swung the wheel.

McQuade tripped the knotlog. The Bonanza swung around in the setting sun. ‘Stand by to throw the float over.’

The Kid and Tucker clattered down the companionway to the fore-deck. The yellow marker-float was attached to a hundred and fifty feet of nylon rope, thirty feet of chain and a thirty-pound Danforth anchor.

McQuade watched the knotlog. It clicked off the distance run in tenths of a nautical mile. The coast was about a mile to the east, a low brooding mass in the short twilight, the crests of the breakers just visible against the gloom. He looked at the depth-sounder. The needle wriggled its way busily across the sensitized paper, showing a steady eighty to ninety feet here. He looked at the radar. The sweeping line showed the ragged coastline, but it was deceptive: the radar was not rebounding off the actual shore but off the sand dunes beyond. Many a ship had come to grief on this coast because of that.

The knotlog clicked over. ‘Stand by.’

The Kid picked up the anchor and lowered it over the side until it hung just above water. Tucker picked up the heap of chain. They waited.

The knotlog clicked up two point two miles. ‘Let her go!’ McQuade shouted.

The Kid released the anchor into the sea, and Tucker hurled the heap of chain over. The rope went lashing after it, followed by the yellow float.

McQuade stood on the bridgewing. The float bobbed on the swells. ‘Now stay there.’

He turned back to the bridgehouse. On the chart he had drawn a rectangle representing an area of sea three miles long by one mile wide: the parallel of latitude which he had calculated following Jakob’s indications ran through the centre. The marker float which they had just dropped was approximately on this latitude. The eastern end of the rectangle began three hundred yards off the shore, in thirty feet of water. The western end of the rectangle was in a hundred and fifty feet of water, the maximum depth from which a submariner could reach the surface alive. Tucker said anxiously:

‘We aren’t going as close in as three hundred yards in the dark, are we?’

‘No. We start our search pattern one thousand yards off tonight. In the morning we move in-shore.’ He tripped the knotlog again and said to Potgieter: ‘Steer due east.’

‘Oh Lord …’ Tucker said.

The bows came slowly round. The Bonanza began to churn towards the dark shore, her engines at Slow.

They stood in front of the radar, the knotlog and the depth-sounder, watching them. The Bonanza chugged slowly towards the shore in the big dark swells. The knotlog clicked up the first two hundred yards. Click went the knotlog: four hundred yards. Click: six hundred yards. Click: eight hundred.

‘Oh, Lord …’ Tucker breathed.

‘We’re still twelve hundred yards off-shore!’ Elsie snapped.

The Bonanza ploughed on into the darkness. The Kid suddenly burst out: ‘For Christ’s sake, let’s wait until daylight!’

‘Oh Lord yes!’ Tucker cried.

McQuade turned to him: ‘Waste a whole twelve hours, Hugo? Half a day’s wages?’

‘Okay!’ Tucker cried.

‘Elsie?’

‘You’re the skipper,’ Elsie said.

‘Okay. Turn her around, Pottie. Two seven zero.’

Potgieter turned the wheel hard over. McQuade said:

‘We’ll go five hundred yards further out, then drop the anchor for the night. Two-hour anchor-watches. I’ll do the first. We start at sunrise.’ He sighed. ‘And now, I think, we’ll have a drink.’

‘And I’ll make a lovely dinner,’ Elsie beamed at them. ‘You’re all being very good brave boys.’

‘Then tell us some more about the pretty girls and our nice white uniforms, Elsie,’ the Kid said.