After ten minutes he was covered in sweat. He was deep down in a crevice with steep rock walls on either side, and he could no longer see the sea. He was surrounded by stone. A snake had shed its skin at the bottom of the fissure. He continued clambering over the rocks, saw the sea once more and came to the edge of an inlet that seemed to have been carved out of the cliffs.
He stopped dead.
As far in as you could go was a rickety jetty. Moored there was a dinghy. A sail was furled around the mast, situated towards the bows. On the shore were some fishing nets hanging from hooks attached to poles that had been driven down among the stones. There was also a big washtub made of tarred oak, a heap of stones for weighing down the nets, and some floats made of bark and cork.
He stood motionless, taking in what he saw. He was surprised to find that a skerry so far out in the archipelago, next to the open sea, was being used by fishermen and bird-hunters. They could not very well be seal-hunters as there were no rocks or skerries in the vicinity of the Sandsänkan lighthouse where grey seals were known to bask. You would have to go further into the archipelago for that, to the shallows east of Harstena.
He continued walking along the shore towards the sheltered inlet, and noted that the dinghy was well looked after. The sail furled round the mast was not patched and the sheets were whole rather than being knotted together from odds and ends of line. The nets, hanging neatly from the hooks, were small-meshed and evidently intended for catching herring. Furthest in was a well-worn path leading towards dense thickets of dog rose and sea buckthorn. The path meandered on beyond the thickets and between two large outcrops. Beside it, to his surprised delight, he observed a freshwater spring.
Then he came upon a patch of level ground and a little cabin squatting in the shadow of a cliff wall. It had a brick chimney, and a thin wisp of smoke was rising skywards. The foundation was of rough stones, and the walls were made of grey planks, varying in width, none of them planed. The roof was patched with moss, but its base was a layer of turf. There was only one window. The door was closed. There was a little vegetable patch alongside the cabin. Nothing was growing in it at present, but somebody had made the effort of covering it with bunches of seaweed, to act as fertiliser. Further away, next to the cliff wall, was a potato patch. He estimated it to be twenty square metres. It too was blanketed in seaweed mixed with old, dried potato haulm.
At that very moment the door opened. A woman emerged from the cabin. She was wearing a grey skirt and a dishevelled cardigan; she was carrying an axe, and her hair was long, golden and braided into a plait tucked into her cardigan. She caught sight of him and gave a start. But she was not scared and did not raise the axe.
Tobiasson-Svartman was embarrassed. He felt as if he had been caught in the act, without knowing what the act was. He raised his hand to the peak of his cap and saluted her.
‘I didn’t mean to come creeping up on you,’ he said. ‘My name is Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, I’m a commander but not the master of the naval vessel that’s anchored off the east side of the skerry.’
Her eyes were bright and she did not lower her gaze.
‘What are you doing? I’ve seen the boat. It anchors here day after day.’
‘We’re sounding depths and checking if the sea charts are reliable.’
‘I’m not used to seeing ships lying at anchor out here among the shallows. Even less to finding people on the island.’
‘The war has made it necessary.’
She did not take her eyes off him.
‘What war?’
He could tell that she was genuine. She did not know. She walked out of the door of a cabin on Halsskär and did not know that there was a major war in progress.
Before answering, he glanced at the door, to see if her husband might put in an appearance.
‘There has been war for several months now,’ he said. ‘A lot of countries are involved. But here in the Baltic it’s mainly the German and Russian Fleets stalking each other and hoping to strike a telling blow.’
‘What about Sweden?’
‘We’re not involved. But nobody knows how long that will last.’
Silence. She was young, could not have been thirty. Her face was entirely honest, like her voice.
‘How’s the fishing going?’ he asked politely.
‘It’s hard.’
‘No herring about, then? Any cod?’
‘There are fish about. But it’s hard.’
She put the axe down on a chopping block. Next to it was a collection of branches and driftwood for making firewood.
‘I rarely have visitors,’ she said. ‘I’ve nothing to offer you.’
‘Oh, that’s all right. I’m going back to my ship now.’
She looked at him. He thought she had a pretty face.
‘My name’s Sara Fredrika,’ she said. ‘I’m not used to being with people.’
She turned and vanished into the cabin.
Tobiasson-Svartman stared for ages at the closed door. He hoped against hope that it would open and that she would come out again. But the door remained closed.
Then he went back to the Blenda. Lieutenant Jakobsson was smoking by the rail as he clambered on board.
‘Halsskär? Is that what the skerry’s called? What did you find there?’
‘Nothing. There was nothing on it.’
They continued with their work, lowering and raising the sounding leads through the water.
All the time he was thinking about the woman who had emerged from the cabin and looked him straight in the eye.
Towards mid-afternoon a wind got up from the south-west.
Just as they finished work for the day it started raining.
Part III
Fog
Chapter 40
The first snow fell on 15 November.
It was dead calm, the bank of dark cloud came rolling in from the Gulf of Finland. The snow was slight at first. The thermometer showed minus two degrees and the barometer was falling.
The previous evening Tobiasson-Svartman had noted in his journal that they had been working for twenty-one days and had three rest days. He calculated that they should have finished sounding the new route, from the Sandsänkan lighthouse to the Gryt area of the northern archipelago and the approach to Barösund, by 1 December. Then the Blenda would move south to Gamlebyviken where a small area of the approach channel needed to be measured again.
However, Naval Headquarters had issued a warning that this second stage might have to be postponed until New Year, 1915. In that case Tobiasson-Svartman and his colleagues would return to Stockholm and wait there.
He was still not sure whether it would be possible to shorten the whole route from Halsskär westwards. There was one area that worried him. It was a badly charted stretch where certain indications suggested dramatic irregularities on the seabed. But were these isolated projections which he could ignore? Or was there an underwater ridge that would force him to restrict changes that could be made to the route?
He was not sure. His worry was his alone. He shared it with nobody else.
When he settled down in his bunk and blew out the paraffin lamp, he wondered why he had still received no letter from his wife. The destroyer Svea had rendezvoused with them on six occasions. Every time, he had handed his main record book over to the cryptographers, spoken to Rake about the war and drunk a glass of brandy, and before leaving had passed over his letter. He had always been sure that this time she would have answered, but Rake never had any mail for him.