Five of Captain Zaimis’s ten minutes were gone. My time was almost run out. And yet it had to be that oil-rig, it simply had to be. The general himself had said so, and there had been no need to tell anything but the truth to a man with no chance of escape: and if that weren’t enough, the memory of that stiff, creaking, leaden-footed man who’d brought the tray of drinks into the general’s room carried with it complete conviction.
But there was nothing on the ship alongside, nor was there anything under it. I would have sworn to that. There was nothing on the oil-rig itself: I would have sworn to that too. And if it wasn’t on the platform, then it was under the platform, and if it was under the platform it was attached to a wire or chain. And that wire or chain must be attached, underwater, to one of those supporting legs.
I tried to think as quickly and clearly as I could. Which of those fourteen legs would they use? Almost certainly I could eliminate right away the eight legs that supported the derrick platform. Too much activity there, too many lights, too many eyes, too many dangling lines to catch the hundreds of fish attracted by the powerful overhead lights, too much danger altogether. So it had to be the helicopter platform under which the Matapan was rolling and plunging at the end of her mooring rope. To narrow it still farther — 1 had to narrow it, to localise the search by gambling on the probable and ignoring the possible and almost equally probable, there were only minutes left — it was more likely that’ what I sought was on ‘the seaward side, where I was now, than on the landward side where there was always danger from ships mooring there.
The middle pillar of the seaward three, the one to which the Matapan was moored, I had already investigated. Which of the remaining two to try was settled at once by the fact that my life-line was passed round the left-hand side of the pillar. To have worked my way round three-quarters of the circumference would have taken too long. I rose to the surface, gave two tugs to indicate that I would want more slack, placed both feet against the metal, pushed off hard and struck out for the corner pillar.
I almost didn’t make it. I saw now why Captain Zaimis was so worried — and he’d a forty-foot boat and forty horsepower to cope with the power of the wind and the sea and that steadily growing, deepening swell that was already breaking white on the tops. All I had was myself and I could have done with more. The heavy weights round my waist didn’t help me any, it took me a hundred yards of frantic thrashing and gasping to cover the fifteen yards that lay between the two pillars, and closed oxygen sets aren’t designed for the kind of gasping I was doing. But I made it. Just.
Once more on the seaward side and pinned against the pillar by the pressure of the swell I started crabbing my way down below the surface. This time it was easy, for right away, by chance, my hand found a broad, deeply- and sharply-cut series of slightly curved grooves in the metal extending vertically downwards. I am no engineer, but I knew this must be the worm that engaged against the big motor-driven pinion which would be required to raise and lower those pillars. There must have been one on the last pillar also, but I’d missed it.
It was like going down a cliff with a series of rungs cut in the rock-face. I paused every other foot or so, reaching out on both sides, but there was nothing, no projection, no wire, just the smooth rather slimy surface. Steadily, painstakingly, I forced myself downwards, increasingly more conscious of the gripping pressure of the water, the difficulty of breathing. Somewhere close on forty feet I called it a day. Damaging my ear-drums or lungs or getting nitrogen into the bloodstream wasn’t going to help anyone. I gave up. I went up.
Just below the surface I stopped to have a rest and clear my head. I felt bitterly disappointed, I had banked more heavily than I knew on this last chance. Wearily, I laid my head against the pillar and thought with a bleak hopelessness that I would have to start all over again. And I had no idea in the world where to start. I felt tired, dead tired. And then, in a moment, the tiredness left me as if it had never been.
That great steel pillar was alive with sound. There could be no doubt about it, instead of being silent and dead and full of water, it was alive with sound.
I ripped off my rubber helmet, coughed and gagged and spluttered as some water found its way in under the oxygen mask, then pressed my ear hard against the cold steel.
The pillar reverberated with a deep resonant vibration that jarred the side of my head. Water-filled pillars don’t reverberate with sound, not with sound of any kind. But this one did, beyond all question. It wasn’t water that was in that pillar, it was air. Air! All at once I identified that peculiar sound I was hearing; I should have identified it immediately. That rhythmical rising and falling of sound as a motor accelerated and slowed, accelerated and slowed, was a sound that had for many years been part and parcel of my professional Me. It was an air compressor, and a big one at that, hard at work inside that pillar. An air compressor deep down below water level inside one of the support legs of a mobile rig standing far out in the Gulf of Mexico. It didn’t make sense, it didn’t make any kind of sense at all. I leant my forehead against the metal, and it seemed as if the shuddering jarring vibration was an insistent clamorous voice trying to tell me something, something of urgency and vital importance, if only I would listen. I listened. For half a minute, perhaps a minute, I listened, and all of a sudden it made the very best kind of sense there Was. It was the answer I would never have dreamed of, it was the answer to many things. It took me time to guess this might be the answer, it took me time to realise this must be the answer, but when I did realise it I was left with no doubts in the world.
I gave three sharp tugs on the rope and within a minute was back aboard the Matapan. I was hauled aboard as quickly and with as little ceremony as if I had been a sack of coals and I was still stripping off oxygen cylinder and mask when Captain Zaimis barked for the mooring rope to be slipped, gunned the engine, scraped by the mooring pillar and put the rudder hard over. The Matapan yawed and rolled wickedly as she came broadside on to the troughs, shipping solid seas and flying clouds of spray over the starboard side, and then, stern to the wind and steady on course, headed for shore.
Ten minutes later, when I’d peeled off the diving-suit, dried off, dressed in shore clothes and was just finishing my second glass of brandy, Captain Zaimis came down to the cabin. He was smiling, whether with satisfaction or relief I couldn’t guess, and seemed to regard all danger as being past: and true enough, riding before the seas, the Matapan was now almost rock-steady. He poured himself a thimble of brandy and spoke for the first time since I’d been dragged aboard.
“You were successful, no?”
“Yes.” I thought the curt affirmative a bit ungracious. “Thanks to you, Captain Zaimis.”
He beamed. “You are kind, Mr. Talbot, and I am delighted. But not thanks to me but to our good friend here who watches over us, over all those who gather sponges, over all who go to sea.” He struck a match and put a light to a wick in an oil-filled boat-shaped pottery dish which stood in front of a glassed-in portrait of St. Nicholas.
I looked sourly at him. I respected his piety and appreciated his sentiments but I thought he was a bit late in striking the matches.
CHAPTER VI
It was exactly two o’clock in the morning when Captain Zaimis skilfully eased the Matapan alongside the wooden jetty from which we had left. The sky was black now, the night so dark that it was scarcely possible to distinguish land from sea and the rain was a drumfire of sound on the roof of the cabin. But I had to go and go at once. I had to get back inside the house without being observed, I had to ‘have a long conference with Jablonsky, and I had to get my clothes dry: my luggage was still in La Contessa, I’d only the one suit, and I had to have it dry before morning. I couldn’t bank on not seeing anyone until evening, as I’d done the previous day. The general had said that he’d let me know what job it was he had in mind inside thirty-six hours: the thirty-six hours would be up at eight o’clock this morning. I borrowed a long oilskin to keep off the worst of the rain, put it on over my own raincoat — the oilskin was a couple of sizes too small, it felt as if I were wearing a strait-jacket — shook hands all round, thanked them for what they had done for me and left.