David Gibbins - Pyramid

“The valve of the diving cylinder is jammed,” Jones said, and he ducked down again. There was a sound of scrabbling in the bilges, and then he reappeared. “I’ve found the spanner, Allah be praised. But I’m going to have to strike the valve to open it, and that sound would wake up all Cairo. I’ll need to muffle it.” He paused, looking up. “Toss me your scarf, would you, old boy?”

Chaillé-Long drew himself up and snorted. “I will not give you my scarf. It is the purest cashmere, direct from my fournisseur in Paris.”

“I don’t care if it’s rat skin. I never took you for a dandy, Chaillé-Long, but now I’m wondering. How did an American get a name like that anyway?”

“Not all Yankees are Irish, despite the prejudicial views of you English. My great-grandfather was French, from a landed family under the old regime. And before you call me a dandy, I will have you remember that I was a captain in the army of the North at the Battle of Gettysburg, and after that a colonel in the Khedive’s Sudanese army, chosen for the task by your revered General Gordon, no less.”

Jones narrowed his eyes and stared at him. “Well, if you were good enough for old Charlie Gordon, God rest his soul, I suppose you’re good enough for me. But I still need your scarf.”

Chaillé-Long snorted again, paused, then unlooped the scarf from his neck and dropped it into the opening. A few moments later there was a sound of dull thumping, of metal against metal, and then a sharp hissing noise that stopped as abruptly as it had started. “Done,” Jones called up. “That’s the breathing device prepared. As soon as the captain gives the word, Monsieur Guerin will be ready to go. We will help him to kit up.”

Fifteen minutes later Jones lit the small gas lamp inside the hold and then turned it down so that the glow would be invisible beyond the boat. He had known Guerin for only a few hours, since the man had joined them from the Cairo dock with his secret crate of equipment, and until now it had been a matter of fumbling around in the dark as he had helped to unbox and assemble the contraption.

Guerin had come straight from the harbor of Alexandria, where he had intended to dive on the ruins of the Pharos, the great lighthouse from antiquity, but Chaillé-Long had seen him there and diverted him to their present purpose. Now for the first time with some semblance of light, Jones was able to see it: a bulbous cylinder containing compressed air, above that a complex attachment of pipes and hoses to regulate the supply of air to the diver, and attached to that a face mask with a glass plate and beneath it the mouthpiece. Jones remembered the course in submarine mine-laying and demolition that he had been obliged to take as a recruit at the Royal Engineers depot at Chatham. His greatest fear had been confined spaces, followed closely by being underwater, and he had been petrified that the instructor would select him to demonstrate the bulky hard-hat diving gear in the murky depths of the River Medway. Earlier, in the barracks, the corporal in charge had regaled them with lurid tales of divers being sucked up into their helmets when their tenders on the surface had forgotten to keep the pump going. As it was, the luckless recruit who was selected on the river that day had come up unconscious and blue, temporarily overcome by carbon dioxide.

Jones squatted in the scuppers of the boat and peered more closely. The gear they had on the Medway had been helmet-diving equipment, in use for more than half a century; Guerin’s contraption was very different. He pointed at the regulating valve. “Does the diver introduce air manually by opening and shutting the valve with each breath, or is it automatic?”

The Frenchman thrust his head through the neck hole in the suit and shot him a sharp glance. “You know something of diving technology, mon ami ?”

Jones started to speak, and then checked himself. Only Chaillé-Long knew anything of his army background, and it was best it stayed that way. “From watching salvage divers on the docks at Portsmouth, when I was a boy growing up there,” he replied. That much was true; he had seen divers raising guns from the wreck of the Mary Rose , Henry VIII’s sunken warship, which had been deemed a hazard to the ever-larger naval ships that plied the Solent. “But of course they were only using Mr. Siebe’s hard-hat equipment.”

“Then, mon ami , you will have seen how impossible it is,” Guerin exclaimed, straining as he tried to poke his fingers though the hand holes, his arms outstretched and his fingers working vigorously against the rubber. Finally his left hand broke through, and he used it quickly to pull through the other hand. “ Premièrement , it is too heavy for the diver even to stand upright out of the water, firstly because the helmet must be strong enough to withstand the external pressure at depth, and therefore be a great weight of bronze, and secondly because the diver must wear yet more weight underwater to keep the helmet down because, despite its weight out of the water, it becomes almost buoyant underwater when filled with air.” His face reddened and his veins bulged where the rubber seal constricted his neck. “ Deuxièmement, ” he continued more hoarsely, “the diver must remain upright on the bottom to prevent the helmet from flooding and himself from drowning, and thus limiting his usefulness for jobs requiring any, how can I put it, finesse. Troisièmement , he is tethered to the surface by the air hose, so he has even less freedom of movement underwater, and he is entirely dependent for his survival on the man pumping the air down to him.”

“And fourthly,” Jones said, remembering the recruit on the Medway, “he risks blackout from carbon dioxide poisoning if he fails to manually open the valve and expel the exhaled air from his helmet.”

“Precisely. Précisément . You have it.” Guerin got up, climbed out of the hold, and lurched and fell backward. He was caught just in time by Chaillé-Long, who steered him to a plank that served as a bench. The Frenchman thrust his fingers into the neck seal to pull it open, gasping as he relieved the pressure. “I assure you, mes amis ,” he said even more hoarsely, his face running with sweat, “this constriction is relieved underwater, but it is necessary to keep the suit watertight.”

“Well, I for one am mighty relieved to hear it,” said Chaillé-Long, looking at the man dubiously and then at the river. “We shall need to secure that contraption on your back and get you in the water once our captain has steered this benighted craft to shore.”

Guerin nodded, his face now looking drained. “ Un moment , monsieur, while I recover my composure.” He gestured at the equipment and then looked at Jones. He was suddenly beaming. “It is, as I believe you have correctly surmised, an automatic valve, the first-ever demand valve. When the diver breathes in, the cylinder releases a lungful of air, regulated through the device on the valve.”

“Tried and tested, I presume?” said Chaillé-Long, taking the butt of his cigar from his mouth and tossing it into the river.

“Monsieur Denayrouze has been developing a similar device, and Monsieur Rouquayrol has been making cylinders strong enough to hold more air,” he replied, his eyes narrowing. “But their régulateur is inferior to mine, requiring the diver to open the valve manually each time he needs air.”

Chaillé-Long looked at him shrewdly. “Are you in competition with these other gentlemen?”

“It is why I have had to be so secretive. And there is something else, mon ami . This device would revolutionize underwater warfare. Divers could swim freely to attach mines beneath enemy ships’ hulls, wreaking havoc. One day wars will be fought underwater, you know. The world’s navies would clamor for it.”