The Land God Made in Anger. John Davis Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ Germany between 1935 and 1945, of which 785 were lost. There was the Type XXIII, et cetera … Type XXI … et cetera. Then, Type VII C … This may be regarded as the standard type of German submarine, having been built in largest numbers. Displacement, 517 tons. Length 213 feet, beam 19 feet, height 13 feet. Five torpedo tubes.” And here …’ he turned over the page, ‘are some diagrams.’

      Everybody clustered round. The scale of the drawings was small. A confusing mass of dense detail.

      ‘What exactly was abandon-ship procedure?’

      ‘Well,’ Manning said. He called for a sheet of paper from the barman, drew a large cigar-shape. He sketched in the conning tower. ‘There’s a water-tight hatch in the top of the conning tower. There’s another hatch below it, in the central control room. Now, mounted in this second hatch is a telescopic escape tube, which you can pull down. Big enough for a man. Here.’ He drew it in. ‘So, when your submarine is wrecked, and you abandon ship, you pull down this telescopic tube until it is about two feet above the deck of the control room. So.’ He drew it in. ‘Now, you open valves in the hull of the submarine,’ he drew a few crosses, ‘and flood water into the submarine. The water stops entering when the air pressure inside the sub is the same as the sea pressure outside. The sub is now about half-full of water, and everybody is standing in water up to their waists. Each man has an air-bottle. Now, the upper hatch is opened, and water floods into the conning tower, and into this telescopic tube. But no more water enters the part where the men are because the pressure has been stabilized. Now, each man ducks under water, into the flooded tube, and swims up it, one at a time. Up through the conning tower, out into the open sea. He rises slowly to the surface.’

      ‘I see. And every man could escape like that?’

      ‘Every man. Provided the sub was in less than fifty metres of water. Deeper than that and the sea pressure would kill them.’

      So why did only two men escape? And suddenly McQuade knew how to get into the submarine: the same way that those two men got out, but in the reverse direction.

      ‘And after forty years, would the submarine still be half-full of air and that tube still full of water?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘So my hero could get into the submarine the same way? Go into the conning tower and swim down that tube?’

      ‘Theoretically, yes.’

      McQuade ran his hand over his hair. ‘And what’s it going to be like when he gets inside?’

      ‘Black as ink. Stinking. The air would be unbreathable, he’d have to keep his breathing apparatus on.’ He turned to one of his officers, ‘Daniels, you’ve done a diving course?’

      ‘Yes, sir,’ Daniels said. ‘We dived down on a number of wrecks, but never on a submarine.’

      ‘What marine life is our hero likely to find down there?’

      Daniels said earnestly: ‘My guess, sir, is that the conning tower is likely to have a lot of fish living in it. In the lower part of the submarine the water would be pretty foul, but my guess is that there would be sufficient circulation of water down that tube to support marine life like crabs and some small fish. And possibly some octopus.’

      McQuade did not like the sound of this. Black as ink. ‘And skeletons? Of crew who did not manage to escape?’ he asked.

      ‘Oh yes, sir. The crabs and crayfish would have eaten them long ago. Just skeletons now.’ He added cheerfully, ‘Their hair would survive.’

      Ian Manning said: ‘Why didn’t they all escape?’

      ‘Ah,’ McQuade said, ‘part of the story.’

      The plot thickens, eh? All right, but if some chaps failed to escape they might have crawled up onto their bunks to die. Above the water line. What would their condition be? Would they be kind of mummified in that salty environment?’

      ‘Skeletons, sir,’ Daniels assured him.

      ‘I wonder,’ Manning said. ‘Barman, pass me the phone please.’ He dialled, then said, ‘Doctor Walters, please … Jack, this is Ian. Got a technical question for you … These chaps have been in this sunken submarine for forty years … Yes, of course they’re dead, not just irritable …’ He gave the naval doctor the facts, grinning. He listened, then thanked him and hung up. He turned to McQuade: ‘Didn’t follow all that medical jargon but it’s possible that the chaps on upper bunks may be mummified. Something to do with body fats hardening into a wax-like substance under certain conditions. Interesting, that.’

      ‘Thank you very much,’ McQuade said.

      ‘What else do you want to know?’

      ‘I need to know the entire layout of the submarine. Where the water-tight doors are, how they lock and unlock, what the different compartments hold, and so on. You haven’t a bigger-scale diagram than that one in Jane’s?’

      The commander stroked his beard. ‘Not in Walvis Bay. They’ve got a submarine in the war museum in Johannesburg. Don’t know what type it is. Otherwise, you’d have to go to Germany to their submarine museum. In Kiel, I think it is, but that would be a ridiculous expense …’

      It was eight o’clock when McQuade got back to his house, scratchy-tired. He snapped on the telephone answering machine. A sultry female voice said:

      ‘Jim, please come to see me urgently. This is important for both of us. I know you are not at sea, so I’m waiting. Helga.’

      McQuade snorted. Important, huh? After slapping his face and shrieking Heil Hitler? No way. He picked-up the telephone and dialled Elsie’s number. He got his answering machine.

      ‘Elsie, please phone the Kid, Tucker and Potgieter and tell them there’s to be a shareholders’ meeting aboard the Bonanza at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. And get word to the Coloured crew that we’re not going to sea because we’ve got repairs to do.’

      He went to his bedroom, to sleep, sleep, sleep.

10

      The shareholders’ meeting took place on the bridge of the Bonanza around a case of beer McQuade had provided to jolly them along. Walvis Bay was still shrouded in thick fog. The Kid was late in arriving and everything got off to a bad start with Rosie, long-suffering Tucker’s long-suffering wife, showing up with her four children at heel. She came clomping up onto the bridge in her sexless sandals, sand between her toes, her sexless dress clammy, to lay down a few laws. ‘Now look here, James McQuade, I hear you’re not going back to sea today, and I demand to know what this meeting’s all about because if it’s about another cut in salaries I’m here to tell you—’

      ‘Rosie, this is a shareholders’ meeting.’

      ‘And this,’ Rosie pointed dramatically at undramatic Tucker, ‘happens to be my shareholder, my breadwinner, and these—’ she indicated the little girls staring up at him – ‘happen to be the little mouths he has to feed. I don’t mean with fish, the damn freezer’s full of damn fish, but four little mouths, plus mine, need more than fish, you know, they need ordinary, СКАЧАТЬ