"E.Voiskunsky, I.Lukodyanov. The Crew Of The Mekong (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

disgust. Whistling softly, he scratched the boom with his fingernails, then
threw a ten-kopek coin overboard. But these century-old remedies failed to
call up a wind.
"I've done everything I can," Yura announced. Then he stretched out on
the deck and began to sing in a doleful voice:

The river flows but it doesn't flow;
The day got off to a bad start.
How can I tell you what's in my heart?
But I think you probably know.

Nikolai glanced at the distant shore and the refrigeration plant
outlined against the blue sky.
"Why," he said wonderingly, "I believe this is the spot where we
rescued that young woman in the red dress."
All of a sudden silence descended as the motor of the boat ahead was
switched off. They heard an angry voice say:
"I came here first. Everything I find here is mine."
"Don't be silly," another voice said. "The sea doesn't belong to you.
It belongs to everyone."
"I'll show you who it belongs to!"
The motorboat rocked as the man in the straw hat waved his arms.
"I wonder who he's talking to?" Nikolai looked more closely at the
motorboat. Then he fetched his binoculars from the cabin and trained them on
the straw hat. "Just what I thought. The voice sounded familiar. That's
Opratin."
"Give him my regards," Privalov said.
"Damn it!" Nikolai exclaimed. "You spoke of wanting the scuba gear,
Yura. Well, there it is."
Taking the binoculars, Yura clearly saw Bugrov's big head in the water
beside the motorboat. The mask was pushed up on Vova's forehead and he was
clinging to the boat with one hand.
Yura lowered the binoculars. "You're right. The diving gear is in
danger. It looks as though they want to drown each other."
"I'd like to know what they're doing here," said Nikolai. "Do you mind,
Boris, if I take a short swim?"
"Don't be too long. The wind may come up any minute."
"I'll be back soon." With these words Nikolai plunged into the sea and
swam towards the motorboat.
"Come, Yura," said Privalov, lighting a cigarette and letting the smoke
out through his nostrils, "tell me about your experiments once again."
That morning Nikolai Opratin had spent more than an hour on the small
wharf belonging to the Institute of Marine Physics. He had attached a cable
drum to the side of an Institute motor-boat and had wound on it a thin cable
with a strong electromagnet at its end.
Anatole Benedictov had said the knife could be magnetized. If this was
so, then he, Opratin, would find it. How stupid that the knife should have
fallen overboard! And what a scene Benedictov had made on deck! Opratin
recalled the glass ampoule on the biophysicist's desk. A drug addict.
Yet without that scene on deck he, Opratin, would not have learned of