Elevener: переводы

→canoe of theirs. Then go to the Armourer and bring a stout wooden box: a rifle-box should do nicely. Also a few picks and spades from the Bo’sun. We’re going ashore to do a little gardening.”

→“Good. And how much German do they know how to jabber?” “I obediently report that not a great deal as yet, Herr Leutnant.” “Splendid. Well, get the buggers up here at once to man that jungle

→“I obediently report that fairly well, Herr Leutnant.”

→“Prohaska, do those niggers of yours down below understand you and you them?”

→“Befehl, Herr Leutnant?” I saluted.

→“Cadet Prohaska? The GDO wants you up on deck!” There was no arguing with such a summons, even when wet, exhausted and chilled to the bone. I hurried up on deck to where Linienschiffsleutnant Mikulić was waiting. He was not in a good temper.

→We arrived back at the cove, sodden and weary, just before dawn the next day, having got lost in the forest on the way back. As we rowed out to the ship Linienschiffsleutnant Zaleski was unusually quiet, and as soon as we came alongside he jumped to the gangway ahead of us and climbed up on deck to disappear below in search of the Captain. It cannot have been a lengthy interview, because at 5:45, just as I was warming my numbed hands around a tin mug of coffee at a mess table on the battery deck, there was a bellow down the companionway.

→“I don’t wonder at it. Anyway, let’s get back to the ship before we all catch pneumonia. I’m frozen.”

→“Otter hunters, that’s all: an old chileano and his wife. He claims to be half Swiss, so that’s the reason for the piano accordion. We just couldn’t tear ourselves away from them. But then I suppose they don’t get visitors very often down here.”

→“Bay with white cairn, indeed. The imbeciles must think that the coast of Tierra del Fuego is the length of the Prater Hauptallee. There must be dozens of bays with white cairns.”

→The reply came back within the hour: information very repeat very reliable stop mentions bay with white cairn stop coal and continue search stop. It drove Festetics into an unusual display of temper.

→The Windischgrätz dropped anchor once more off Sandy Point about midday on 17 January. Almost before the ship had stopped moving in the water the gig had been lowered and the Captain had gone ashore to send a telegram to Vienna: search fruitless stop coal nearly gone stop doubt information stop await instructions stop festetics.

→We sent parties across to the wreck, but not for the purposes of investigation. Our errand was nautical cannibalism: dynamiting the wooden hulk then hacking the debris to pieces with axes and saws to feed our own boilers. After two weeks of steaming the chan-nels we were down to our last few tonnes of bunker coal. The wood was to get us back to Punta Arenas.

→The best preserved was a British clipper, the Etruscan Empire, which had been dismasted and run aground on Hoste Island two years previously. We knew this, because the passengers and crew—unusually in such cases—had taken to the boats and managed to make Ushuaia a few days later with only a few of their number dead from exposure.

→We rounded Navarino and Hoste Islands, then returned to the Brecknock Peninsula where we had started three days before. Numerous wrecks had been sighted and a few investigated more closely, but most were too bat-tered by the sea to be identifiable any longer.

→We resumed our laborious hunt as promised at dawn the next day, bumping our way through the ice-floes along the Beagle Channel towards the English mission station at Ushuaia: the most southerly human settle-ment on earth in those days before the scientific outposts in Antarctica.

→“So in a word, Herr Kommandant, back to the search tomorrow?” “Perfectly correct, I’m afraid: back to the search tomorrow at first
light.”

→“Indeed they might. But every time the matter looks like being closed some new clairvoyant in Madrid or some foolish American society woman will claim to have seen Herr Orth in a dream or met him wearing dark glasses and a false beard on the promenade at Cannes. And I am afraid that this time the tales of Signor Fabrizzi—and also certain vague stories from Chilean otter hunters, I believe—have come to the ears of a large Viennese insurance firm which eight years ago paid out a very considerable sum of money on a life-assurance policy in respect of Herr Orth.They strongly suspect fraud, I understand, and are sending out an investigator by steamer to Buenos Aires. In fact he may well have arrived there by now and be on his way to Punta Arenas. The Chamberlain’s office and the War Ministry are both intensely anxious that if there is anything waiting to be discovered then the Imperial and Royal Navy should discover it first and not a civilian detective.”

→“But surely, after so many years even the Imperial Chamberlain’s office must realise that Herr Orth perished years ago, with not a single man of his crew reliably reported alive?”

→“Unfortunately, Herr Professor, senior naval officers a good deal more senior than I have been telling the court this for years past. We have told them repeatedly that ill-found ships with inexperienced captains, attempting to carry unstable cargoes the wrong way around Cape Horn in mid-winter, are more likely than not to sink on the way. But they will have none of it, I’m afraid: in the Hofburg’s view members of the House of Habsburg simply do not drown like other people.”