Читать книгу The Land God Made in Anger - John Davis Gordon - Страница 23

Their wetsuits were on. They lifted the inflated dinghy over the rail, and dropped it overboard. Potgieter lowered a short rope ladder. McQuade clawed his way down it into the rocking dinghy. The Kid followed. Then Potgieter lowered the outboard motor, on a rope, which McQuade eased over the dinghy’s transom and fastened. Tucker lowered down the airtank harnesses. Elsie lowered the fins, masks, tool-bags, floats. Last came Tucker, looking as if he were going to a funeral. He clambered into the wobbly dinghy and said: ‘I’m only wearing this wetsuit in case I fall overboard.’

‘Dry your eyes and start the engine.’

The marker floated about a hundred yards behind the Bonanza’s stern. Four hundred yards beyond it the surf thundered against the Skeleton Coast. Tucker ripped the cord and the outboard motor roared to life.

‘Tank up,’ McQuade said. He hefted on his airtank harness. He buckled on his weight-belt. He wrestled on the fins. The Kid was tanked up. McQuade called, ‘Cast off.’

Potgieter untied the painter and threw it down to them. Tucker opened the throttle and the dinghy churned away from the hull of the Bonanza.

‘Good luck, darlings!’ Elsie shouted. ‘Good luck.’

Tucker eased the dinghy up to the float. McQuade grabbed it, and looked at the surging blue-black sea. God, he did not want to be going over the side into it. ‘Okay,’ he said soberly to the Kid. ‘Goggle up.’

He spat into his mask, smeared the saliva across the glass, then rinsed it in the sea. He put it on, over his eyes and nose.

‘First I’ll check the visibility.’ He said to Tucker: ‘If we can see the bottom it’ll be quicker if you tow us around the area, with the Kid and I hanging onto the dinghy.’ He added: ‘And nicer.’ He put his regulator into his mouth.

He lay down on the fat rubber gunnel, clutching it with one arm. He buried his head under the water.

All he could see was brilliant blue, fading into misty darkness. He peered all about, then raised his arm and made a circling motion.

Tucker opened the throttle unhappily and the dinghy began to churn into a circle. McQuade kept his head under water, hanging onto the gunnel, and oh God he did not like that darkness down there, but no way was he going to see anything like this. He pulled his head out, sat upright and Tucker slowed the engine. McQuade took the regulator from his mouth. He looked for the yellow buoy to get his bearings. Then looked at his wrist-compass.

‘We’re both going over,’ he said to the Kid: ‘We follow the buoy’s rope down to the anchor, where the sub should be, but the anchor may have landed way off. If we don’t see the sub immediately, you go north,’ he pointed, ‘I’ll go south. You’ll have to get down at least twenty feet to see the bottom.’ He looked at Tucker. ‘Circle around slowly and keep both our bubbles in sight.’

And before his nerve could fail him, he put the regulator back into his mouth and clutched his mask and toppled himself over backwards, into the sea.

There was the crash about his ears, the roaring of the bubbles, the sharp bite of the cold on his face, the bitter taste of the sea. Below him, and in all directions stretched the blue gloom of the icy Atlantic, surging darkness. There was another splash, and there was the Kid, his eyes wide behind his mask. McQuade gave him a confident thumb-sign he did not feel and he thrust his head down, and he lifted bis buttocks, and he kicked, and down he went, into the underworld.

He dived down six feet, his breath roaring, looking for the rope hanging from the marker-buoy. The Kid was swimming towards it. The rope curved away into misty darkness, and down they went together.

They swam side by side, down ten feet, twenty: still they could not see bottom. Down they went further; at twenty-five feet the bottom came mistily into view, a seething mass of waving weed and rocky sand. The rope disappeared into it. Then they saw the chain. They followed it, and there was the anchor, its flukes caught insecurely in a mass of weed. McQuade gave it a tug. The anchor shifted easily. He jabbed his finger at it, the Kid grabbed one of the flukes and McQuade grabbed the other. They lifted it. They swam with it, to a wide wedge of sand ten feet away, and dropped it. McQuade wrestled the flukes into the sand. He gave the chain a tug. It held.

They hovered, bubbles roaring, and looked in all directions for the submarine. Visibility was only about fifteen feet, fading into opaque gloom. McQuade looked at the depth gauge on his wrist: they were at about thirty-five feet. How far from the submarine had the anchor landed? A hundred feet, even two hundred, allowing for the ship’s movement? McQuade tapped the Kid, pointed at his wrist-compass and then pointed north, and made a circling motion, then tapped himself on the chest and pointed south.

And, oh God, it was lonely down there, without the Kid beside him. McQuade swam hard, his breathing roaring in his ears, scanning from side to side, while ahead the seething sea faded into sinister grey-blue nothingness. There were many fish of all sorts and sizes. Now he was swimming over a large stretch of hard, ribbed sand, then ahead low rock shelves appeared out of the gloom, weed surging at him, and all the time the myriad of fish cruising about him and then darting aside. McQuade swam and swam, heart knocking, for about fifty yards, then turned into a circle towards deep-sea and began a sweep back towards the anchor, searching. The seabed shelved off deeper and deeper underneath him, rock and sand and then rock again, fading off into the opaqueness. He checked his wrist-compass and swam on through his circle, scanning left and right, every minute expecting the welcome sight of the Kid to emerge out of the darkness, and the rope of the anchor-buoy. But ahead was only the shifting gloom of sand and weed and rock; he swam and he swam for another five minutes, then he was suddenly overcome with a fearful loneliness and a desperate need to confirm his position, and he turned upwards, and kicked.

He rose slowly, at the same rate as his ascending bubbles and it suddenly felt as if all the fiends of the ocean were rising up behind him with jaws agape and he had a desperate desire to thrash up to God’s own air; then the surface was dancing above his head, and he burst through it. He looked for the dinghy, whirled in the water, then saw it, and the float.

He was astonished. He had overswum it by two hundred yards. He had been completely disorientated down there. Tucker sped the boat across the swells and came up beside him. McQuade grabbed the gunnel and kicked and heaved himself over. He spat out the regulator. ‘Have you seen Kid?’

‘No,’ Tucker said worriedly. ‘Should I have?’

‘Take me back to the float.’

Tucker swung the boat around. ‘We’re doing this all wrong.’ McQuade panted. ‘You lose your way down there … Tomorrow we’re all going down together … In a long line, about twenty feet apart so each man can still see the next … And we sweep the seabed in a pattern …’

Tucker was all eyes. ‘Oh Lord … And now? Are you packing it in for the day?’

With all his heart McQuade wanted to pack it in, but he still had at least half an hour of air left in his tank. He looked at the sun: he still had at least an hour of useful daylight.

‘No.’ He rammed his regulator back into his mouth and he toppled backwards into the sea again.

He dived down on the float’s line again, until he could see the anchor; then off he swam again, south-west this time.

He swam and swam, twenty-five feet below the surface, turning his head left and right, trying to keep an estimate of the distance he was covering. He knew he was breathing inefficiently in his nervousness and the air would probably last less than half the normal time. He tried to take shallow breaths. He swam and swam over waving weed and rambling rocky shelves and stretches of sand. Both the chart and his depth-sounder had told him that this part of the seabed was flat, and they were basically right, but every now and again there were ravines and grottos that faded into weedy darkness, waving, and all kinds of fish cruised and drifted amongst them. It was when he estimated that he had only about ten minutes of air left, that the submarine almost burst out of the watery gloom at him.