The sun broke through the clouds. He noticed a drift net, gliding through the water. He did not realise what it was at first. Perhaps some tufts of seaweed had been disturbed by the anchor? Then he realised it was a net that had broken loose. There were dead fish caught in the mesh, and the carcass of a duck.
It occurred to him that he was looking at an image of freedom. The drift net stood for freedom. A prison that had broken loose, with some of its dead prisoners still clinging to their bars that were the mesh.
Freedom is always taking flight, he thought. He watched the net until it had drifted out of sight. Then he turned to Lieutenant Jakobsson, who had come to stand beside him.
‘Freedom is always taking flight,’ he said.
Jakobsson looked at him in surprise.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Oh, nothing. Just a line from a poem, I think. Maybe something of Rydberg’s? Or Fröding?’
There was a long pause. Then Lieutenant Jakobsson clicked his heels and saluted.
‘Breakfast is served in the wardroom. Somebody who is used to the space available on a destroyer will find that everything is much more cramped on a gunboat. Here we cannot have crew members who make sweeping gestures. You can speak loudly, but not wave your arms about.’
‘I don’t expect special privileges, and very seldom do I wave my arms about.’
When he had finished breakfast, which consisted mainly of an over-salty omelette, it was a quarter past eight Two grey-painted launches, each seven metres long, were lowered into the water. Sub-Lieutenant Welander, the naval engineer, took command of one of the launches, and Tobiasson-Svartman the other. Each of the boats carried three oarsmen and a rating selected to take charge of the sounding lines.
They started sounding along a line leading south-west from Sandsänkan lighthouse. Tobiasson-Svartman’s aim was to find out if it were possible for ships with a bigger draught than the ones given on the present chart to pass this far into the archipelago, shielded by the surrounding skerries and rocks.
Sounding lines were lowered and raised, depths established and compared with the figures on the charts. Tobiasson-Svartman was in overall charge, giving instructions when necessary. He took some measurements himself as well, the brass of his instrument gleaming as it glided up and down through the water. Readings were noted down in a diary.
The sea was calm. There was a strange atmosphere of peace around the boats, the sounding leads sinking and rising, the figures being called out, repeated then noted down. The oarsmen rowed as noiselessly as they could. Every sound bounced back and forth over the water.
On board the Blenda Lieutenant Jakobsson smoked his pipe and talked non-stop to one of the stokers about a leaking cooling tube. It was a friendly chat, like good-natured conversation outside church after a service.
Tobiasson-Svartman squinted into the sun and estimated the distance to the Blenda as sixty-five metres.
They progressed gradually westwards. The two launches proceeded with slow, steady strokes of the oars, on a parallel course, five metres apart.
Chapter 29
Shortly after eleven in the morning they found a depth that did not correspond to the depth recorded on the chart. The disparity was considerable, all of three metres. The correct depth was fourteen metres, not seventeen. They checked the surrounding depths, but found no deviations from the figures on the chart. They had stumbled upon an unexpected projection deep below the surface. Some sort of narrow and pointed rock formation in the middle of an area where the rest of the bottom was flat.
Tobiasson-Svartman had found the first of the points he was looking for. A wrong measurement that he could correct. A depth had become less deep.
But in his heart of hearts he was looking for something quite different. A place where the sounding lead never reached the bottom: a point where the sounding line ceased to be a technical instrument and was transformed into a poetic tool.
Chapter 30
The stretch where they were measuring at present curved round a series of small rocks and shallows to the south of the skerry known as Halsskär at the edge of the open sea. The west side had never been charted. There was a possibility that they might find a channel sufficiently deep and wide to take a vessel with a draught as big as the destroyer Svea.
In his travelling archive he found a note to the effect that until the eighteenth century the skerry had been called Vratholmen. He tried to discover why this barren little island no more than one thousand metres in diameter would have had its name changed. A person can change his name for any number of reasons. He had done so himself. But why a skerry at the edge of the open sea?
Could the original name have something to do with wrath, with anger? Records showed that it had been called Vratholmen for at least 250 years. Then, at some time between 1712 and 1740, its name had changed. From then on, there was no Vratholmen, only Halsskär.
He thought about the riddle for some time, but he could find no plausible answer.
In the evening, after copying his own and Sub-Lieutenant Welander’s notes into the main expedition record book, he went on deck The sea was still calm. Some ratings were busy repairing the gangway. He paused and gazed out at Halsskär.
Suddenly, there was a flash of light. He screwed up his eyes. It did not happen again. He went to his cabin and fetched his telescope. There was nothing to be seen on the smooth rocks apart from darkness.
Later that night he wrote a letter to his wife. It was a scrappy description of days that could hardly be distinguished from one another.
He did not write anything about Rudin. Nor did he mention the drift net he had seen that morning.
Chapter 31
The following day, as dawn broke, he clambered into one of the tenders tied to the Blenda’s stern. He unfastened the painter and rowed towards Halsskär. It was dead calm, and the sea smelled of salt and mud. He rowed through the gentle swell with powerful strokes and found a tiny cove on the west side of the skerry where he could land without getting his feet wet. He beached the tender, tied the painter round a large stone then leaned back against the sloping cliff.
The Blenda was anchored off the east side of Halsskär. He was alone. No sound reached him from the ship.
The skerry was resting in the sea. It was like being in a cradle, or on a deathbed, he thought. All the voices hidden in the cliff were whispering. Even rocks have memories, as do waves and breakers. And down below, in the darkness where fish swam along invisible and silent channels, there were also memories.
The barren skerry was a poor and destitute being, devoid of desires. The only vegetation on the rocky islet was patches of lichens, clumps of heather, occasional tufts of grass, short, windswept juniper bushes and some strips of seaweed at the edge of the water.
The skerry was a mendicant friar who had renounced all earthly possessions and wandered alone through the world.
He was all of a sudden overcome by a powerful longing for his wife. The next time he saw Captain Rake he would ask him to post the letter he had written to her.