Wreckers Must Breathe Read Online Free PDF Page B

Submarines don’t have to feed. Anyway, it would be dangerous to come so close in without surfacing.’
    â€˜Did it jump half out of the water?’ he asked, and I saw that he was perfectly serious. ‘Are you certain it was after the mackerel?’
    â€˜Perhaps jumping half out of the water is an exaggeration,’ I admitted, ‘but at least I saw a fin or something streak through the water in the trough of a wave.’
    â€˜Or something,’ he said. ‘Mightn’t it have been a periscope?’
    I thought about this for a moment. ‘I suppose it might,’ I agreed. ‘But why should it take my line?’
    â€˜The line might have got caught up in the submarine.’
    â€˜But it’s absurd,’ I said.
    â€˜You didn’t see the water after you’d taken that header. It boiled as though a bloody whale had gone down. The disturbance was too much for a shark. Anyway, that’s what I think.’
    â€˜But, whatever would it be doing so close in?’ I asked.
    â€˜That’s what’s been puzzling me,’ he said. ‘But you mentioning that fellow you met having got so wet has given me an idea. They might have wanted to land someone.’
    I thought this over for a moment. It was not altogether fantastic. And yet it seemed incredible. Looking back, I think that what seemed so incredible to me was not the presence of the submarine, but the fact that I had become involved in its presence. I am not accustomed to being caught up in violent adventures. My job is to comment on drama, not take part in it, and I felt somehow a little sceptical of my being knocked overboard by a submarine.
    â€˜Did the fellow you met say anything to you?’ Big Logan asked.
    â€˜Yes, he asked me the way to a cottage called Carillon, which stands back from the cliffs above Church Cove.’ It was then that I remembered his perfect English, and suddenly it seemed to me that it was almost too perfect. Word for word, as far as I could remember it, I repeated my conversation with the man.
    The conversation seemed harmless enough. But Big Logan was plainly excited. ‘How did he know there was a hidden reef off Cadgwith?’ he demanded.
    â€˜He’d been down here before,’ I pointed out. ‘It may have been you yourself who told him. He probably went out fishing.’
    â€˜Then can you tell me how he knew it wasn’t properly charted?’
    I couldn’t, but at the same time I was by no means convinced that this made the man a spy. Nevertheless, I was glad Big Logan had not realized that in conversation with this stranger I had given him important information concerning the movement of the fleet. Anyway, I consoled myself, if he were a spy he would have the information soon enough.
    â€˜I suggest we go along and have a word with Joe,’ Logan said. ‘He knows everybody around these parts. He’ll be able to tell us about the people who own this cottage.’
    I followed him back into the pub. We found the landlord in the bar. He had been going over his stock and he had the radio on. He put his fingers to his lips as we went in. Two of his visitors were sitting listening.
    â€˜This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they are prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’
    The voice was Chamberlain’s. The fact of war came as no great shock to me. It had been a certainty for the past twenty-four hours. Yet my stomach turned over within me at the actuality of it.
    The Premier’s speech was followed by announcements, commencing with details of the sounding of air raid sirens. The two visitors got up and left the bar, one saying that he