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“Certainly.”
Monk had told Hester of the idea that had come to him on the river, and of his plan to take Philo Trace and dive beneath the Thames at Blackwall Point. Of course she had asked him about it in minute detail, and he answered only with assurances of his safety, and generalities as to how that was going to be assured, and what he expected to find.
The next afternoon just before two o’clock he left, saying he would meet with Philo Trace and the men from Messrs. Heinke at the river, and would return either when he had discovered something or when the rising tide made further work impossible. She was obliged to be content with that. There was no possibility whatever of her accompanying him. She knew from the look on his face that pressing the issue would gain her nothing at all.
Monk found the entire experience of diving extraordinary-and terrifying. He met Trace at the wharf where they were to be fitted out with all they would need for the proposed venture. Until this point Monk had been concentrating on what he expected to find on the bottom of the river, and what he would learn from it, if they were successful. Now, suddenly, the reality of what he was going to do overwhelmed him.
“Are you all right?” Trace asked, his face shadowed with anxiety.
They were side by side on the vast wooden timbers of the wharf, the gray-brown water opaque, twenty feet below them, sucking and sliding gently, smelling of salt, mud and that peculiar sour odor of receding tide which left behind it the refuse of the teeming life on either side of it. It was so turgid with scraped-up silt it could have been a foot deep, or a mile. Anything more than a foot beneath the surface was already invisible. It was just before ebb tide turned to flood, the best time for diving, when the currents are least powerful and the visibility of the incoming salt water offered almost a foot of sight.
Monk found himself shivering.
“Right, sir!” a thin man with grizzled hair said cheerfully. “Let’s be ’avin’ yer.” He eyed Monk up and down with moderate approval. “Not too fat, anyway. Like ’em leaner, but you’ll do.”
Monk stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“Fat divers in’t no good,” the man said, whistling between his teeth. “Can’t take the pressure down deep. Their ’ealth goes an’ they’re finished. Off with yer clothes, then. No time ter stand abaht!”
“What?”
“Off with yer clothes,” the man repeated patiently. “Yer don’t think yer was goin’ down dressed up like that, did yer? ’Oo’d yer think yer’ll see down there, then? The flippin’ Queen?”
Another man had arrived ready to assist, and Monk looked across and saw that Trace was also being undressed and redressed by a cheerful man who was wearing a thick sweater in spite of the warm August morning.
Obediently he stripped off his outer clothes, leaving only his underwear. He was handed two pairs of long, white woolen stockings, then a thick shirt of the same material, then flannel knee breeches which had the effec
t of keeping the other garments together. They were suffocatingly hot. He had little time to imagine the ludicrous figure he must cut, but seeing Trace he knew he would appear much the same.
His dresser produced a cap of red wool and placed it on his head, adjusting it as carefully as if it had been an object of high fashion.
A string of barges moved past them, men staring interestedly, wondering what was happening, what they would be looking for, or if it was only a matter of shoring up a falling wall or broken pier stake.
“Watch yerself!” Monk’s dresser warned. “Keep that straight, just like I put it! Get yer air ’ose blocked up an’ we’ll be pulling yer up dead, an’ all! Now yer’d best be gettin’ down them steps onter the barge. No need ter put the rest o’ yer suit on yet. It’s mortal ’eavy, specially w’en yer in’t used ter it. Watch yerself!” This last was directed to Monk when he took a step in his stockinged feet perilously close to an upstanding nail.
Trace followed after him down the long ladder to the low boat which was bumping up against the wharf. It was already occupied by a wonderful array of pumps, wheels, coils of rubber hose and ropes.
Normally, Monk would have kept his balance easily in the faintly rocking boat, but he was tense and uncharacteristically awkward. It flashed into his mind to wonder what they would think of him if they found nothing. And who would pay him for this expedition?
Trace was looking grim, but his fine features were composed. At least outwardly he felt no misgivings. Had he believed Monk’s extraordinary story?
The three men who had dressed them and helped so far put their backs against the oars and pulled away from the wharf, then began to swing wide and go downstream with the outgoing tide, towards Bugsby’s Marshes and beyond. No one spoke. There was no sound but the creak of the oars in the oarlocks and the splash and dip of the water.
The sky was half overcast from the smoke of thousands of chimneys in the dock areas on the north side. Masts and cranes showed black against the haze. Ahead of them lay the ugly flats of the marshes. He had already told them as nearly as he could where they wished to begin the search. It was only approximate, and he became increasingly aware of just how huge the area was as they approached the Point, and the wreck he had seen on his earlier trip.
The men rested on their oars. It was just about slack tide.
“Right, sir,” one of them said. “Where’d yer be wantin’ ter begin, then?”
It was time to seek the counsel of experts.
“If a man wanted to sink a barge with the least chance of its being found, where would he choose?” he asked. It sounded ridiculous even as he listened to himself.
Overhead, gulls wheeled and cried. The wind was rising and the water slurped against the sides of the boat, rocking it very gently.
It was the man who had begun helping Monk dress who answered.
“In the lee o’ one o’ the sandbanks,” he answered without hesitation. “Water’s deep enough ter ’ide a barge even at the lowest tide.”
