The Ebb Tide

CHAPTER 4 The Bottom of the River

Hasbro lurched up out of the flood, his hand gripping his upper arm, and I let loose of the rungs and splashed down alongside him, going under for one dark, cold, horrifying moment before getting my feet under me, river water streaming into my eyes, my clothes sodden. Hasbro waded forward, putting his hand on a rung and feeling blindly to get a purchase with his foot. He climbed heavily as I pushed from below, trying to keep at least partly protected by the curved wall of the diving chamber. St. Ives leaned out and hauled Hasbro in from above, and I scrambled up after him, finding myself inside for the second time, kneeling in a pool of water on the deck, gasping to catch my breath, and too stunned and flummoxed to know how cold I was.

The hatch was already slamming shut, but there was one last report from the rifle, only a dim crack, like two stones knocked together, and the sound of the bullet pinging off the interior walls of the chamber, four rapid, distinct pings, and then the flattened bullet dropping to the curved floor and sliding down into the shallow pool of water. I realized, as I plucked the spent bullet up from where it lay and put it into my pocket as a souvenir, that the chamber was illuminated now, a soft glow emanating from overhead lamps, and there was the sound of a beehive-like humming on the air.

St. Ives twisted closed the latch that secured and sealed the door from within, nodded his head with satisfaction, and said, “We’re carrying dry cells! She’s an independent traveler!” The statements meant nothing to me, but his apparent joy bucked me up just a little. He worked at the controls methodically, manipulating levers and wheels, cocking his head with concentration. I helped Hasbro off with his wet coat, the inside of which was a marvel of pockets. After he extracted a roll of bandage and a flask of the cask-strength malt whisky that he carried against emergencies of all sorts, he worked his shirt down over his arm, exposing the wound. The bullet had scored the flesh and then had gone on its way, thank God, although there was a prodigious quantity of blood, which we staunched with the steady pressure of a wet kerchief folded into a compress. Hasbro dribbled whisky over the wound and I tied it with the bandage, making a neat job of it. I was reminded of poor Merton, beaten bloody in his own shop. We were getting the bad end of things, and no doubt about it — apparently played for fools all along.

“Thank you, Jack,” Hasbro said, offering me the flask. I raised it in a brief salute and took a swallow, nearly gasping at the strength of the whisky, and then gave the flask to St. Ives, who was smiling like a schoolboy. “Oxygenators,” he said cryptically, nodding his head toward the controls. “Compressed air, so it’s a limited supply, but it’ll do if we look sharp. Jack, you’ll be on call to let in fresh air when we need it — that lever on the port side, there. But be as stingy as a landlady with it.” He turned the air lever downward, and there was a sort of metallic swishing sound, air through pipes, the exhaled air tasting cool and metallic.

St. Ives took a quick drink from the flask before handing it back to Hasbro and turning again to his work. Hasbro followed suit and then slipped the flask back into his coat. I won’t say that we felt like new men after the whisky, but at least not so old fashioned as we had felt a few minutes earlier. There was a constant hum and mutter and whoosh now, the chamber having become a living creature. St. Ives turned to us and nodded, as if to say, “What about that?” and with Hasbro attended to and apparently well, there was nothing to be done but to let St. Ives go about his able business, and I for one was happy to let him do it.

I watched the water creep up the side of the heavy glass portholes, my mind beginning to turn, trying to come to grips with what this meant, this watery entrapment. We had neither food nor drink, aside from the flask. Perhaps, I thought, we could wait until the water reached its zenith and then open the hatch, flood the sphere, swim to the surface, and try to find our way up the stairs, which might be reachable in the high water. Or might not. And of course our friend with the rifle might simply be waiting for us, conspicuously closer now on his perch overhead, which would make matters difficult indeed.

My spirits declined even further when I suddenly recollected Finn Conrad emerging from across the way last night at the precise moment that I was surveying the street. I wondered, perhaps unkindly, whether the boy hadn’t simply been waiting for us, whether he was an even better actor than he was an acrobat. It was he, I thought darkly, who had led us to the Goat and Cabbage, the Pied Piper turned on its head, and him cheerfully eating chestnuts outside on the street as we witlessly filed in through the door, avidly pursuing our doom….

The thing suddenly seemed to be a certainty, and that was a damned shame. I liked the boy, and I was shocked at the level of loathing I felt for scoundrels that would lure such a likely lad into a life of dishonor and falsehood. He had been monumentally helpful at Merton’s, but now that seemed evidently suspicious. Of course he would have been helpful, if his goal had been to lure us into the gin shop, where we would almost certainly discover the secret door, one thing leading to another. He hadn’t known about the map in the armadillo’s mouth, I reminded myself with some small satisfaction: the vital secret was still safe. But then I recalled Merton uttering the word, “reproduction” in his enthusiasm last night, and my satisfaction fled.

I sat there with a heavy heart, with nothing to cheer me aside from the faded glow of the whisky, which had seemed sufficient only moments ago. But I sat so only briefly, because the water outside had risen beyond the tops of the ports and I found myself looking out into the inky black of subterranean water. Lamps came on outside the craft, illuminating things, and I saw fish — eels of some sort — darting away into the darkness. The chamber tilted abruptly, as if it wanted to float, and I shifted on the seat, trying to distribute the weight so that we didn’t simply fall over like a dead thing.

“Hold on,” St. Ives said, opening a valve and listening, his head bent and eyes narrowed. “I think I’ve…”

There was the sound of water rushing into what must have been ballast chambers, and we settled on the floor once again. St. Ives tentatively began to work the several levers that rose from the deck of the chamber, manipulating the thing’s legs, the chamber rising and settling, pitching backward and forward in a way that was distinctly unsettling. I thought of an upended beetle, struggling to right itself, its myriad feet utterly useless to it, but I swept the thought away, aware that we were creeping along now with a slow, ungainly gait. “A drop of air, Jack,” St. Ives said, and I dutifully let in a few seconds’ worth.

“Where are we bound?” I managed to ask after I had done my duty. We could hardly climb the stairs, after all, and merely creeping about the floor of the shipyard would accomplish little.

“Out,” St. Ives said. “We’re bound for points east. It’s my idea that we have no choice but to make away with this marvelous craft. We’ll borrow it, I mean to say. If we could find the owner and ask permission, we’d do it, but under the circumstances it’s quite impossible, ha ha. And of course we have immediate dire need of it, which justifies our actions somewhat.” He furrowed his brow and shook his head, as if this were a thorny moral issue, but it was evident that he was elated, that he couldn’t have asked for a more suitable answer to our dilemma.

The elation faded into puzzlement, however, for right then the water outside our craft was illuminated far more brightly, and a large, moving shadow hove slowly past. It was the submarine that had sat on the stocks, suddenly alive now, making its way out of the flooded cavern. We watched in mute astonishment as it passed slowly by, one of the lighted portholes revealing the frozen profile of Dr. Hilario Frosticos himself, clearly having been aboard all along, waiting in the darkness. He was sitting at a desk in a cabin full of books and nautical charts, looking down at some volume as if unaware of our existence. And in the moment before he and his submarine passed out of sight into the depths, he glanced sideways into a cheval glass that sat before him on the desktop, and I saw his abominable reflection staring back at me, his ice-white visage perfectly composed and disinterested.

The lighted portholes winked out one by one, as if he were passing beyond the wall of the cavern into a subterranean sea, and abruptly we toppled forward, off the edge of the shipyard floor, descending in a rush of bubbles, swept along in a current that bore us away eastward, as St. Ives had promised. The only illumination came from our own craft now, but I thanked God for it, underwater darkness filling me with a certain horror. More eels undulated past the portholes, and a school of small, white fish, and then a corpse floated past, bloated and pale, its sightless, milky eyes staring in at us for a long moment before it was swept away in a current. It was horrible, and yet I scarcely remarked it, my mind still dwelling on the submarine and the living, corpse-like man who navigated it. Where had it gone, I wondered, and why had Frosticos allowed us our freedom, if indeed he had?

The water slowly brightened roundabout us. St. Ives switched off the lamps both inside and out, so as not to waste power. If we were tethered to a ship, he pointed out, then the ship’s engines would generate abundant electricity, but we depended upon the batteries — what he had meant by dry cells—which were an unknown quantity. We discovered ourselves to be in the depths of the Thames itself, the water murky with silt and river filth. How far we had come in the darkness we couldn’t say. Our rate of travel was mere speculation. It had no doubt been equal to that of the river, but where in the river were we?

It wouldn’t do, St. Ives said, to surface in the Pool, or in some other part of the river busy with shipping, and run afoul of a ship’s hawser, or come rushing up from below to tear a hole in a ship’s bottom. And of course as long as we were afloat, we traveled at the whim of the current, whereas we had some hope of controlling our movements if we could find the bottom in still water. How to accomplish this feat — that was the thorny problem, although St. Ives had clearly taken it up as a challenge. We clanked into something unseen, spun slowly, and continued on our way. I let in another burst of air. Through the port I could see what must have been the remains of a wrecked coal barge slide past, and I realized that all manner of debris lay on the river bottom, most of it half buried in muck. It would have made fascinating viewing, no doubt, under different circumstances.

St. Ives allowed more water into the ballast tanks, and we sank again, settling momentarily, a cloud of mud rising around us and obscuring our sight. We found ourselves toppling forward as the river pushed against us, and it was only by flushing water out of the ballast tanks that we managed to right ourselves once more, bobbing along eastward again, careening this way and that way in a manner that was soon sickening, as if we were afloat in a laundry tub. I let in more of our precious air, which we seemed to be breathing up at a prodigious rate. Directly after that we were cast in shadow, a shadow that stayed with us for some time before passing on.

“A ship,” St. Ives said, looking upward through a port. “Out of the Pool rather late.” He took his chronometer from his pocket and peered at its face. “The tide is making, or nearly, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Yes, sir,” Hasbro put in. “Just past midday, given the moon’s activities.”

“Excellent,” St. Ives said, winking at me.

I nodded my hearty assent, although truth to tell I know little about the tides. What I cared about at that moment was for the craft to cease its constant, rollicking, drunken behavior.

“We’ll have a period of slack water soon,” St. Ives told me by way of explanation. “Enough time, I very much hope, to find our way out of the river, ideally downstream some small distance, where we’ll cause less of a sensation. Air, Jack.”

“But when the tide turns,” I said as I reached for the lever yet again, “won’t that merely propel us back upriver?” I recalled the corpse that had visited us earlier. Quite likely it would continue to navigate the same shoreline, upriver and down, at the whim of the tides and with no end to its travels until it simply fell apart or was hauled in by a dredger’s net.

“Absolutely,” St. Ives said. “It won’t matter to us, though. Don’t give it a second thought.”

“Ah?” I said, wondering at this. Certainly it seemed to matter.

“We’ll be suffocated before the tide flows again,” St. Ives assured me. “Almost without a doubt. There’s no telling how much air we’ve been blessed with, but even if the tanks were full, with three of us breathing up the surplus we’ll be dead as herring in a couple of hours. You can bank on it.”

This silenced me, I can assure you, although St. Ives hadn’t meant for it to. He was merely making a practical observation. For another half hour or more we floated and bumped and spun our way downriver, in and out of the shadows of moored or passing craft. I found that I had become unnaturally conscious of my breathing, and so I began breathing unnaturally, gasping now and then with no provocation, mimicking the wheezing of the air in the pipes. What had seemed a spacious chamber had shrunk to the size of a pickle barrel, and I fidgeted about, trying to occupy myself by peering out the ports, spotting no end of mired flotsam — a wagon wheel, a tailor’s dummy, a chest half buried in silt and enticingly bound shut with heavy rope, probably containing gold coins and Java pearls the size of goose eggs, but already disappearing behind us.

“Air, Jack.”

It seemed to me that the rush of air was labored now, as if the pressure were low. But I was distracted from that frightful thought when I became aware that we were slowing settling again to the bottom. River mud swirled up around us so that for a moment we could see nothing at all. St. Ives consulted a compass among a small array of instruments, and when the murk settled he pointed out a long, curved wooden beam, a ship’s keel perhaps, lying half exposed on the river bottom. “That’s our bearing,” he said. “Along the edge of that beam. Due north.”

He began to manipulate the motivating levers once again, carefully now, waiting for the muddy water to clear time and again to get a view of the sunken keel so that we could take another creeping step. We edged around impediments sideways, like a crab, and two or three times backed away from a cavernous sort of rocky pit. Twice we mired ourselves in weeds and had to tug ourselves free. The broken end of the keel was far out of sight behind us now, and St. Ives was navigating by compass alone, adjusting and readjusting our direction of travel, none of us speaking or moving more than was strictly necessary. How much time passed, I couldn’t say, nor could any of us guess whether we were twenty feet from shore or sixty, whether we would creep out onto dry land, or bang up against the base of a cliff and find ourselves no nearer salvation than we ever were.

Again I opened the air valve, but the flow was feeble, a tired hiss, and the air in the chamber was distressingly thick. I tried to distract myself by watching our progress, but it was too frustratingly slow, and there was little of interest to be seen in the river, which was perpetually murky now in the slack water. Hasbro, who had either been asleep or in deep meditation, said, “I beg your pardon, sir?” and I had no idea what he meant until I heard the echo of my own voice in my ears, and I realized that I had been talking out loud, like a mad man, and with no idea what I had said.

“Nothing,” I told him with the rictus of a smile. “Just musing.”

“Best not to talk at all,” St. Ives said.

I decided to try closing my eyes, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t rid my mind of the watery clanks and thumpings that accompanied our slow progress across the bottom of the Thames. Abruptly there came into my mind the morbid notion that I was nailed into a coffin and had been dumped into the sea, and that I was suffocating in the darkness. My eyes shot open and I sucked in a great gasping breath of air, but there was no nourishment in it, and I sat there goggling like a rock cod drawn out of deep water.

“Are you quite all right, sir?” Hasbro asked.

I nodded a feeble lie, but noticed through the port just then that bits and pieces of floating debris had apparently begun swirling past us from downriver, and that the clouds of silt were clearing much more quickly. I was filled with a sense of doom. We had missed our tide, it seemed to me, and I was persuaded that we should throw open the hatch and try our luck with the river, abandoning the loathsome chamber…. Hasbro, God bless him, handed me the whisky flask in that dark moment, and I took a grateful draft before handing it back to him.

Very shortly we began to make a certain haste over a flat and sandy bottom, and my spirits lifted. I was conscious of the water brightening around us, and up through the port I could see what looked like a silver rippling window, which must, I knew, be the surface of the river. Then the chamber was out into the atmosphere, the water level declining along the glass. We staggered ashore until we were waist deep and could go no farther. Gravity, St. Ives told us, had gotten the best of us as our buoyancy decreased, and we risked breaking our legs if we ventured onto dry land.

I swung out of the open hatch like a man plucked from the grave, and leapt down into the river as into a bath, inflating my lungs with air that was as sweet as spring water, splashing my way to shore like a frolic at Blackpool. Recalling that moment of freedom even now makes me wax metaphoric, although the memory fades quickly, and I’m reminded of how close I had come to shaming myself with my fears and my weaknesses. If I were a younger man today, with a more frail sensitivity, I might revise this account, and cast a more stoic light on myself, perhaps adding a small moment of personal glory. But be it only ink on paper, that would be to commit the same fearful folly again, and with a lie on top of it. Surely there’s more virtue in the truth.

We had made our way, we soon discovered, to the lower edge of the Erith Marshes, almost to the bend above Long Reach. No one had seen us emerge — another bit of luck. Three hours later the diving chamber sat atop the bed of a wagon, affixed to a swivel crane and fenced in by empty crates to disguise its shape, all of it tied down securely and covered in canvas. We found ourselves on our way merrily enough, north to Harrogate now, where St. Ives told us we would replenish the compressed air at Pillsworth’s Chemical Laboratories, and then on across the Dales and around the top of Morecambe Bay for a rendezvous with Merton’s Uncle Fred at his cottage in Grange-over-Sands. We were in need of a sand pilot, you see, to go along with our map and our diving chamber. We had no time to waste if we wanted to catch the tide.