down. When no one could see them. But no one could see them In dense fog like this. This was as good as another night thrown in for free.
'Give Uncle Arthur a shake. Tell him we're on our way. In the
'He'll have to stay. He'll know damn' well he'll have to stay. Beul nan Uamh, tell him.'
'Not Dubh Sgeir? Not the boathouse?'
'
'I'd forgotten,' Hutchinson said slowly. 'We can't move in against it until midnight.'
The Beul nan Uamh wasn't Jiving up to hs fearsome reputation. At that time in the afternoon. It was dead slack water and there was only the gentlest of swells running up from the south-west. We crossed over from Ballara to the extreme north Of the eastern shore of Dubh Sgeir and inched our way southward with bare steerage way on. We'd cut the by-pass valve into the underwater exhaust and, even in the wheelhouse, we could barely hear the throb of the diesel. Even with both wheelhouse doors wide open, we could just hear it and no more. But we hadn't the wheelhouse doors open for the purpose of hearing our own engine.
By this time we were almost half-way down the eastern patch of miraculously calm water that bordered the normal mill-race of Beul nan Uamh, the one that Williams and I had observed from the helicopter the previous afternoon. For the first time, Hutchinson was showing something approaching worry. He never spared a glance through the wheelhouse windows, and only a very occasional one for the compass: he was navigating almost entirely by chart and depth-sounder.
'Are you sure it'll be this fourteen-fathom ledge, Calvert?'
'It has to be. It damn' well has to be. Out to the seven fathom mark there the sea-bottom is pretty flat, but there's not enough depth to hide superstructure and masts at low tide. From there to fourteen ifs practically a cliff. And beyond the fourteen fathom ledge it goes down to thirty-five fathom, steep enough to roll a ship down there. You can't operate at those depths without very special equipment indeed.'
'It's a damn' narrow ledge,' he grumbled. 'Less than a cable. How could they be sure the scuttled ship would fetch up where they wanted it to?'
'They could be sure. In dead slack water, you can always be sure.'
Hutchinson put the engine in neutral and went outside. We drifted on quietly through the greyly opaque world. Visibility didn't extend beyond our bows. The muffled beat of the diesel served only to enhance the quality of ghostly silence. Hutchinson came back into the wheelhouse, his vast bulk moving as unhurriedly as always.
'Fm afraid you're right. I hear an engine.'
I listened, then I could hear it too, the unmistakable thudding of an air compressor. I said: 'What do you mean afraid?'
'You know damn' well'He touched the throttle, gave the wheel a quarter turn to port and we began to move out gently into deeper water. 'You're going to go down.'
'Do you think I'm a nut case? Do you think I
'Half, Calvert. Take half of our share. God, man, we do nothing.'
'I'll settle for a pint in the Columba Hotel in Torbay. You Just concentrate on putting this tub exactly where she ought to be. I don't want to spend the rest of my life swimming about the Atlantic when I come back up from the
He looked at me, the expression in his eyes saying 'if,' not 'when,' but kept quiet. He circled round to the south of the diving-boat — we could faintly hear the compressor all the way - then slightly to the .west. He turned the
'About that. Hard to judge in fog.'
'North twenty-two east true. Let go the anchor.'
I let go the anchor, not the normal heavy Admiralty type on the chain but a smaller CQR on the end of forty fathoms of rope. It disappeared silently over the side and the Terylene as silently slid down after it I let out all forty fathoms and made fast. I went back to the wheelhouse and strapped the cylinders on my back.
'You won't forget, now,' Hutchinson said. 'When you come up, just let yourself drift. The ebb's just setting in from the nor'-nor'-east and will carry you back here. I'll keep the diesel ticking, you'll be able to hear the underwater exhaust twenty yards away, J hope to hell the mist doesn't clear. You'll just have to swim for Dubh Sgeir.'
'That
'I'll cut the anchor rope and take oft.'
'And if they come after you?'
'Come after me? Just like that? And leave two or three dead divers down inside the
There were three divers aboard the
Getting down there had been no trouble. I'd swum on the surface towards the diving-boat, the compressor giving me a clear bearing all the time, and dived when only three yards away. My bands touched cables, life-lines and finally an unmistakable wire hawser. The wire hawser was the one for me.
I stopped my descent on the wire when I saw the dim glow of light beneath me. I swam some distance to one side then down until my feet touched something solid. The deck of the