Scend of the Sea

by Geoffery Jenkins

  Malherbe thumped the table. 'Just pump in more and more air until it's compressed inside the chute!'

  Matthews jumped to his feet. ‘I’ll get my team down there right away. They can lever open the hatch as the air inside equals the sea pressure outside.'

  'Not so quick!' snapped Lee-Aston. He looked at his watch. 'How long before you can raise the air pressure in the chute to equal the sea's, Malherbe? We can't afford to fluff it now. It's a matter of very delicate checks and balances. Your frogmen will have to open the hatch at exactly the right moment, or else the chute will flood, or there won't be enough pressure to eject her. If the frogmen can't open the hatch, you'll have to stop pumping compressed air or you'll burst her lungs inside the tunnel. Jansen, get your men spread in a circle round the probable area of ascent. You'll have to pluck her out of the water smartly -she's very weak.' He spoke to an aide. Tell Major Bates I want him overhead in a helicopter -' he looked inquiringly round the tight circle of faces ‘ - fifteen, twenty, minutes?'

  'Eighteen,' replied Malherbe, who had been scribbling calculations on his pad. 'Eighteen minutes exactly. By then the pressure in the chute will equal the sea pressure outside the hull.'

  Joubert caught my eye and gave me a tentative thumbs-up signal. He grinned hesitantly.

  The other men started to get to their feet, but Lee-Aston held them back.

  'Captain Fairlie, gentlemen. Where do you want to be when the pressure goes critical, captain?'

  The austere captain's compassion warmed me. I wanted the new-found sympathy and understanding I had found round the table, but I also wanted to be alone if ... if ... I dared not frame my fears.

  'Bates. With Bates.'

  Tell Major Bates to pick up Captain Fairlie in ten minutes' time from the stern platform,' Lee-Aston ordered the aide. 'Aye, aye, sir.'

  Lee-Aston stood with me at the stern. Jubela was alone on deck, staring as if mesmerized at the buoy marking the wreck. A galvanic ripple had passed through the circle of waiting ships from the conference table. Five yellow rubber dinghies, their grab-lines dripping, disposed themselves round the spot where the solitary orange-yellow wreck buoy bobbed in the rising sea.

  Beneath it was Tafline.

  Frogmen pulled on their black rubber wet suits and flippers, and I could see them checking times. Three of them hoisted scuba air bottles on to their shoulders and two had heavy crowbars.

  Upon these men's deftness would hang her life-in twelve minutes.

  The compressor's note quickened.

  They were pumping the air into the chute which would kill or save her.

  As if to mask the sound, Lee-Aston said, 'It is a very well-tried method, Captain Fairlie.'

  I wondered how long I could go on talking.

  'Won't the compression burst her lungs inside the chute?’ I managed to say.

  'No,' replied the level voice. 'It's not nearly high enough, at sixty feet, for that. Coming up-you're absolutely safe from drowning, I assure you. You can't hold your breath even if you tried. As you come up the air expands-it comes out as bubbles.'

  I saw Bates's little Alouette approaching.

  'Don't imagine you'll see anything happening beforehand in that murky water, even from the air,' warned Lee-Aston. 'She'll come out and up in a cocoon of air, and the first you'll know of it will be a few air bubbles from her lungs preceding her.'

  The Alouette swept in.

  Lee-Aston said, 'Look at your watch in nine minutes.'

  It was only then that I realized his own desperate anxiety under the cool exterior. My hands were bandaged beyond the wrists. I had no watch.

  Lee-Aston waved the sailors aside and himself adjusted the 'horse-collar' round my shoulders.

  The winch tugged. He stood back and saluted.

  Bates was alone in the cockpit. The others of the crew stayed in the rear compartment. He did not say anything, but held out his left wrist with his watch. Six minutes.

  I was grateful I could no longer hear the compressor. We came round in a tight circle. I saw a line of bubbles. Bates checked me.

  'Frogmen. There won't be anything before the time.’

  From the low altitude of the helicopter, I had a wider view of the horizon than from the frigate's deck. It seemed that the advancing purple storm bank was only a few miles away.

  Bates came round again and hung in the centre of the circle of yellow dinghies. The frogmen, two to a dinghy, did not look up from watching the enclosure of water.

  The helicopter hung.

  There was nothing in the murkiness below.

  Bates held out his watch, wordlessly.

  Zero!

  'There she blows!'

  The thin line of bubbles, like a torpedo wake, were different from the strong cascades emitted by the frogmen.

  Bates dropped the Alouette like a lift to about twenty feet above the water.

  In the middle of the erupting water, I saw the short hair, the polo collar, the patterned shoulders. Frogmen seemed to dive from every quarter to support the white face against the dark sea.

  Bates was grinning. 'Get down there on the horse-collar-you first!'

  In the rear they stood aside, too, and in seconds I was hanging above the sea.

  I looked down and she looked up. Tafline.

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