Free Depths by Henning Mankell

prefers to jump into the sea. Sub-Lieutenant Welander's launch is known as "The Shilly-Shally". It's a malicious name, but an accurate one.'
    Tobiasson-Svartman understood. Welander was sometimes in two minds about various sounding results and demanded, quite unnecessarily, a second measurement.
    'What do they call my boat?' he said.
    'Nothing. That's surprising. Sailors are generally an inventive crowd. But your crew doesn't seem to have discovered a weakness in you that warrants the smashing of an invisible bottle of champagne against the bows and presenting the boat with a nickname.'
    Tobiasson-Svartman felt relieved. He had not made himself vulnerable without knowing it.
    Jakobsson suddenly pulled a face.
    'I have a shooting pain in my arm,' he said. 'Perhaps I've strained it.'
    Tobiasson-Svartman decided he would raise the matter he had been suppressing ever since coming on board.
    'I sometimes wonder about your hand, of course.'
    "Everybody does. But very few satisfy their curiosity. In my view it displays disgraceful cowardice not to dare to ask those you work with about their physical defects. The world is full of admirals who walk around with their heads under their arms, but no subordinate dares to ask them about their state of health.'
    Jakobsson chuckled merrily.
    'When I was a child I used to fantasise and say my hand had been injured in a pirate attack in the Caribbean,' he said. 'Or munched by a crocodile. It was too uninteresting and woeful to admit that it had always looked as it does now. Some people have a club foot, others are born with a hand that looks like a club. I still prefer to think that I came by it from a swarthy knave and his bloodstained cutlass, but it goes against the grain to tell lies to a fellow officer.'
    The snow was now falling very heavily. Welander's launch was already on its way to the greyish white buoys that marked where the previous day's soundings had finished.
    Tobiasson-Svartman boarded his launch, the ratings started rowing and he prepared his lead. As it was snowing he had his chart, notebook and pens in a waterproof oilskin wallet.
    The ratings were shivering in the snow. Two of them had bad colds and their noses were running. Tobiasson-Svartman was furious. He hated people with runny noses. But, of course, he made no comment. He was one of the disgraceful cowards Lieutenant Jakobsson had recently referred to.
    They rowed towards the buoys. He stood in the stern, gazing at Halsskär and thinking about Sara Fredrika. The thought of her husband made him jealous.
    The snow continued falling.
    He felt as if the sea were keeping watch on him, like a sharp-eyed animal.

CHAPTER 41
    Shortly after ten o'clock Welander shouted that he had come across a significant underwater peak. Over twenty metres the depth of water had decreased from sixty-three metres to nineteen. It was like coming upon a cliff wall that had risen unnoticed beneath the surface of the sea. Tobiasson-Svartman sank his own lead. The last sounding, a mere ten metres astern, had been fifty-two metres. He held his breath, hoping for the same measurement again. But his lead came to a stop after only seventeen metres. What he had feared had come to pass. They had hit upon an underwater ridge that had not previously been marked on charts.
    The sea had raised its voice and refused to cooperate.
    Instead of continuing along the transit line, he requested readings at right angles to the course the launches had been following so far. They must find out if the ridge was a long one or just an isolated stack. They took soundings every three metres and shouted the results to each other. Welander found depths of 19, 16, 16, 15 and then suddenly 7 metres, thereafter 7 again, then 4, followed by another jump to 2 metres. For a further stretch of a hundred metres the distance to the seabed was between 2 and 3 metres.
    Tobiasson-Svartman had the same result. This was no minor irregularity: they had come across a stretch of shallow