plunged into the mysterious twilight of a seabed, Makar Ivanovich from pleasure sniffed and walked in depth. Lit a lamp. On light was going to look at incredible quantity of fishes on an unprecedented show. They were curious not less people.
“Fishes, fishes, how many! – Konobeev thought, coming to fishing delight and being enough them directly with hands. – What disappointment, did not occupy network! However now you will not leave me!” – And he walked on the underwater wood of seaweed, surrounded with hordes of the fishes shining sides at turn as silver knives. It was so amusing, extraordinary and beautifully that Konobeev suddenly, having forgotten where he is, began to guffaw with all the might lungs, having started up so many bubbles on a surface that sitting on the boat seriously were disturbed for the old man. However, bubbles soon began to appear regularly, but they were removed further and further. They died it is visible soon.
Konobeev for the first time walked several hours in a row, almost till the sunset. Returned excited, shining.
– Well and life under water, however! – he told. – And why people on the earth live, but not in the sea-okiyane?
Chapter 7
TYPHOON
As it was pleasant to wander in novel tracks of an underwater taiga, Makar Ivanovich had to constrain the hunting passions and to set to work. And works was more than enough.
The Japanese fishers and poachers who were darting about at our coast with surprise and displeasure glanced at a big white tent which appeared in one night on the bank of the small river flowing into the ocean. It was “general staff” where there lived Vanyushka and Volkov. Soon near this tent others appeared; in several days on the coast there were navezeno many boards, logs, bricks. Saws began to squeal, began to knock axes. Temporary barracks began to grow.
Among the invited workers was many Japanese and Chinese who had to prepare cabbage as it prepares at them in the homeland. And the Russian workers studied at Japanese and Chinese. Volkov cared for that the export goods met all requirements of foreign consumers of a sea cabbage. The seaweed taken from water washed out in special tubs, cleared of sand and silt, sorted manually, once again cleared, small izrezyvat and put even layers of a certain size on the bamboo mats outspread in the open air in inclined situation. From these layers of seaweed dry plates turned out. The dried-up plates which stuck together in zhelatinoobrazny weight were torn off from mats and pressed for giving of uniform thickness to them. Tiles in 25x30 centimeters developed on ten pieces and accurately communicated. Volkov drew great attention to that tiles were prepared accurately and equally as chocolate bars.
Thoughtful Guzik, having stood once ashore where these works were performed, told:
– Human hands are well arranged, but they could be arranged even better. – And, having sat several evenings over drawings and calculations, he constructed the simple, but very expediently arranged machines for sorting and cutting of seaweed. After that work went even quicker and more accurately.
Volkov and Guzik’s efforts were crowned with success. The Japanese and Chinese buyers wholesalers estimated quality of the Soviet preparation soon and began to show the increased demand. Old Japanese merchants, having received samples, long rumpled in hands flexible, thin as writing paper, plates, looking narrowly to purple brown I blossom with light specks and slightly brilliant surface, weighed on a hand, smelled, tried on tooth, admired accurate processing and packing – and declared:
– Yes, it is good!
It was necessary to double, treble, decuple number of workers soon. Work was humming. The seaweed cast by storms and waves ashore also did not vanish. They were burned through in ashes, extracting alkalis, or brought to the small plant for iodine getting. For the first half a year the plant gave more than two thousand kilograms of an exit of iodine.
However it was necessary to get seaweed so far in almost exclusively old Japanese way on rather small places: workers by boats slid along coast with poles in hands. On the end of poles were крючья by which seaweed were hooked and taken on a surface and kept within on the boat while it was not filled up to the top. Production was brought to the coast and again sailed “to pinch a grass” as Vanyushka spoke. He could not wait to transfer rather work to a bottom and to start underwater farm vehicles: tractors, mowers…
Volkov, Vanyushka, Guzik and Konobeev daily fell in diving suits by an ocean floor and went on the future underwater plantations, performing nivelirovochny and geodetic works.
From the first steps it became clear what huge prospects are opened by diving processing. While Japanese could process in the usual way plantations at a small depth in three-five meters, the underwater farmers supplied with guzikovsky diving suits had an opportunity to work at depth of several tens meters. And it expanded the area of an underwater agrikultura on many thousands of hectares. At a depth of twenty – fifty meters it was not necessary and to sow huge spaces: they were already covered with dense thickets of the seaweed rich with iodine.
In the summer, at the end of June, the strongest typhoon burst. Konobeev the first predicted his approach on mysterious, to one to it to the known signs. The day before he long looked at a clear sky, at a blue quiet smooth surface of the ocean, smelled air, inflating nostrils of a nose fleshy, overgrown with hair, swung the head and grumbled:
– There will be a storm, however. The typhoon goes. It is advisable to remove a tent.
– We will strengthen it – Vanyushka carelessly told. Konobeev waved hopelessly a hand:
– Than you will strengthen, however? The typhoon turns out trees with a root and not that zakrepa. It is necessary to leave. To go to a cave.
Guzik was disturbed for the tools – in his tent there was a marching laboratory and many valuable precision instruments and devices. Near the coast there was a mountain with a big cave where Guzik also transferred the treasures. The skeptic Volkov did not wish to move a little though Konobeeva managed to be insisted on that put away diving suits in a cave nevertheless.
Night was silent, stuffy, damp. Any leaf did not shiver on a tree. The nature as if stood waiting. Volkov sat in the tent and by the light of the electric lamp fed by the same accumulator worked, having inclined over a simple pine table. Vanyushka on other table clicked on accounts, at the same time listening to a broadcast. Suddenly he raised the head and a finger which considered, and looked at Volkov.
The lock of a fine reddish hair went down on Volkov’s forehead, blue eyes by the light of a bulb seemed almost blue. The shadow deepened a scar on a cheek. Lips were densely compressed, the forehead is furrowed with the easy folds speaking about the big tension of a thought. Vanyushka sat without having stirred, with the raised middle finger of the right hand. Then suddenly came off a chair and rushed to Volkov, having forgotten to remove earphones from the head. It pulled for itself (himself) the radio receiver and nearly broke a lamp.
– Semyon Alekseevich! Makar Ivanych told the truth! – Vanyushka by uneasy and a little solemn voice exclaimed.
– Do not disturb, Johann – Volkov responded and began to move lips, collecting scattered thoughts.
– Semyon Alekseevich! – Vanyushka did not lag behind. – Put belongings and let’s go in a cave to Guzik! The typhoon all right! Now arose to the east of the Philippine Islands on the seventeenth of June. The first days it went quite slowly
