Seas of South Africa (9 page)

“Sorry.”

“I . . . I have to get it back!” He jumped back into the water and splashed around. He ducked his head under and looked down, but didn't take a breath first. When his head came up, he was choking and spitting up water. I was starting to wonder if this was his very first time on the sea. He acted as if he didn't even know what it was.

I pulled on the rope again until he grabbed hold of the side of the sub. He looked so disappointed now you would have thought that somebody had just died. I didn't think I had ever seen anyone look so disappointed before. I couldn't help feeling sorry for him.

“I might be able to find it for you, if the salt water hasn't ruined it.”

He looked up. “Really? How could you do that?”

“Well, it's only ninety feet deep. I could swim down with a rope and hook, and we could pull it up. It's possible. But I think the salt water probably ruined your engine.”

“No. I can clean it. I built it from scratch. I can take it apart and clean it.” He turned and stared at the water as if he expected his plane to come back up all by itself. Then he shifted his weight, lost his balance, and fell into the water again. Oh boy. When I helped him out, he was spitting up water. I think he was completely exhausted now. Maybe he was hungry, too.

“Are you hungry?”

He raised his head and looked at me as if food was something he hadn't thought of for a very long time. He suddenly looked very tired, sad, and lonely. “Yah. I'm starving.”

“I'm making pancakes. Would you like some?”

“I'm not sure what they are, but I'll eat them.”

I reached down and offered him my hand. “I'm Alfred.”

He reached up. His hand was shaking. His lips were turning blue. He was shivering. “I'm Los.”

“Are you okay?”

He nodded, but he wasn't okay. He was shaking. I think maybe he really was starving.

“Come on in. I'll give you something to eat.”

He followed me. Just before he dropped his head inside the portal, he stopped and stared at the shore. He had a curious and dreamy look on his face. “We're on the sea, aren't we?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” He climbed down the ladder. “And this is really a submarine, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is.”

Inside the sub, Los looked like a kid who had just come into a toy store for the very first time. Even though he was exhausted, and starving, he examined everything with intense curiosity. He couldn't help it. I could tell that he was someone whose energy came from his mind, not his body. In a funny way, he reminded me of Albert Einstein.

“This is amazing. You've got to show me how everything works.” When he stood up, his head was almost touching the ceiling. He was about two inches taller than me, and maybe a little slimmer.

“Sure. I will, right after we eat . . . Oh!” My pancake wasn't on my plate anymore. I looked on the floor. It wasn't there,
either, but there was a sticky streak of raspberry jam. I looked at the crew. They were standing apart from each other and staring at me. I wondered which one had taken it. Probably Seaweed. But they all looked guilty. “Never mind. I'll cook some fresh ones. This is my crew. This is Hollie.” Hollie came over and sniffed Los, who bent down and touched him on the head. It wasn't really a pat; it was more of a poke, to see if he was real. “This is Seaweed.” Seaweed completely ignored Los because he wasn't carrying food. It was probably the height of rudeness in the seagull world to meet someone for the first time and not bring food. “And this is Little Laura. She just joined us last week.” Little Laura took a few steps sideways, until she was next to Hollie. She opened her mouth and made the little swallowing movements she always made just after she had eaten. She was definitely guilty.

I made a double batch of pancakes, and Los ate the whole thing, drank four glasses of water, and a whole pot of tea! As soon as he finished one pancake, I put another one on his plate, and he gobbled it up as if it were his very first meal. I had never seen anyone eat like that before.

“This is really good!” he said. He never even slowed down. But after a while, his eyes began to droop. Still, he pushed himself to eat, as if he believed he wouldn't get a chance to eat again for a long time. I had given him a sleeping bag to sit on, beside Hollie. But when I went into the stern to dig through the dry supplies for more powdered milk, and came back, he was lying sideways on the bag, curled up and fast asleep.

I made another plate of pancakes for myself, and ate them as I watched Los sleep, and listened to him snore. I knew what it was like to be that exhausted. He would probably sleep for a long time. I wondered how long he had been flying before he crashed into the sea. And how he got into the air in the first place. Did he push his plane off a mountain? His crash reminded me of the story of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun with wings made of feathers and wax. When the sun melted the wax, Icarus plunged to his death in the sea. I wondered if that's why Los had been shaking so much—he had just realized that his plane didn't float, and he couldn't swim. If we hadn't been in the water nearby, he would have drowned. I knew that shaky feeling too, of being close to death. It wasn't very nice.

As I watched him sleeping on the floor, snoring like a goat, something about him unsettled me, though I didn't know what it was. It was only after I stopped trying to figure it out that it came to me. It was his recklessness. He was obviously very smart, inventive, and good at building things. But he had come through the air in a machine that couldn't stay aloft once it had run out of fuel. And he flew it over the sea, where he couldn't land, and when he had no flotation devices, and couldn't swim. Not only that, he had come without food or water. Had he given no thought to any of those things? Had he no help or advice from anyone? At first glance, he had looked so cool in his flying machine. In reality, it had been practically a suicide mission. Here, now, he was asleep on the floor of a vessel of someone he didn't know at all.
What if I were a pirate? There were lots of them around here. What if I killed him in his sleep? Why would he trust me so quickly? He was probably nineteen or twenty years old, but I had the feeling he might not live very long.

Chapter Eleven

HE SLEPT THE REST
of the day and night, snoring the whole time. When I brought a pillow out and put it under his head, he didn't wake. The crew stepped around him as if he were a piece of driftwood we had carried in from the beach. Hollie sniffed him every time he went around him, trying to identify smells he had never smelled before. And Los did have a particular smell, like a spice or herb, like wild garlic. It was a good smell.

While he slept, I found his plane. It was an unmistakable shape on sonar ninety feet below. I steered the sub until we were directly above it, then dropped a hundred-foot rope over
the side, with a hook to pull it down. I took a careful look at Los to make sure he was still asleep, climbed out, slipped into the water, took a few breaths, and went down.

I was glad for the chance to practise diving. If you don't practise holding your breath under water, you lose your ability to do it. On the way down, I looked for sharks. My guidebook said that the seas of South Africa were thick with sharks, dolphins and whales. I had seen lots of sharks in my travels. Most were just curious, like fish. And the aggressive ones, like tiger sharks, would only eat you if you gave them an invitation. I didn't see any on the way down.

It was murky at the bottom. There was a current stirring up a fine silt. I had no problem finding the plane, but couldn't tell if it was upside down or not. The silt was creeping over it like snow drifting over old farm machinery in a field. It would be covered in no time. I wrapped the hook around a bar in the centre, and pulled it through a loop in the rope. Then I turned around and headed back up. There were a couple of dark shapes in the distance. Probably they were sharks, but as I wasn't moving with panic, and wasn't bleeding, they never bothered me.

Back on the sub, I pulled the slackness out of the rope and felt the weight of the machine. It was pretty heavy. I could lift it if I had to, but it would take a long time, and I'd get lots of blisters. I decided to wait for Los to wake up. But how would we tow it to shore when the water was so shallow? We'd have to figure that out. In the meantime, I thought I should get
some sleep, too. I lay down on my hanging cot and drifted off, listening to Los snore and the crew shuffle around him. I slept very lightly, half listening for Los to wake, and half listening for a beep on the radar. If any vessels were coming our way, I needed to know who they were.

Seven hours later, I hopped out of bed. Los still hadn't moved. I put the kettle on and fed the crew. They weren't happy having to step around someone sleeping in their space. Hollie didn't mind, but Seaweed and Little Laura were not impressed at all. I think they would have pushed him over the side if they could.

I put a pot on for porridge and sat down with a cup of tea and my book—Joseph Conrad's
Heart of Darkness
. It was the story of a British sailor who travelled up a river in Africa to find a man who went crazy. It was dark and savage, full of greed and violence, and I didn't really like it. But it had been a gift from Sheba, one of my two favourite people in the world, so I felt I should read it. I was just glad I wasn't visiting Africa at a time like that. Then I thought for a minute; maybe it wasn't all that different today.

Hollie's tail started wagging when Los moved. Little Laura scampered up the rope to her cage. Seaweed climbed the ladder and hopped into the air. The sun had been up for a while. It shone into the water and came up through the observation window in the floor. Los' eyes opened slowly, like a lizard's, and he stared blindly, as if he were waking from a faraway dream.

“Good morning,” I said.

He didn't answer right away. I think he couldn't remember where he was. He rubbed his eyes. “Are we in a submarine?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. Is it your submarine?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anybody else?”

“Just my crew.” I pointed to Hollie and Little Laura.

He sat up and looked around. “Is this where you live?”

“Pretty much. I really live in Canada, but I'm at sea most of the time.”

He stared sleepily as his eyes drifted across the control panel, the sonar and radar screens, the periscope, bicycle, hanging cot, air-compressors, valves, gauges, pipes running everywhere. Gradually, the sleepiness in his eyes faded, and was replaced by a look of desire. I knew that desire well, the desire for the freedom and capability that well-functioning machines could give you, though I couldn't help wondering if his desire knew no caution. I also thought I saw frustration in his eyes, like someone who had learned everything the hard way, and was tired of learning that way.

“Where did you get it?”

“My sub? My friend and I built it. Well, he built it. I just helped him. His name is Ziegfried.”

“How long did it take?”

“Two and a half years.”

“Was it hard?”

“I guess so. It was a lot of work, that's for sure. But I think the hardest part was probably just the waiting until it was finished. Ziegfried is extremely concerned with safety, and he had to test everything over and over and over. I found that hard. But if he hadn't done it, I probably wouldn't be here now. He works with the belief that anything that can go wrong, will, sooner or later. I've already learned that he was right about that.”

“He sounds pretty smart.”

“He is. Actually, he's a genius.”

“But how could he build a submarine? Where did he get all the materials?”

“He owns a junkyard. That's where we built it. We started with an old oil tank. First we reinforced the steel; then we built the wooden interior. There's a complicated hardwood frame beneath this cedar and pine that supports the hull against water pressure. There is also a thick layer of rubber between the wood and steel. The sub is designed to bounce when it hits something, instead of cracking and leaking. It really works, too. I learned that when I sailed through the Arctic and hit lots of ice.”

“That's amazing. If I went to Canada, would he help me build one?”

Los' question took me by surprise. “Uhh . . . I don't know. Maybe.”

“Do you
think
he would help me?”

“It's possible. But I can't really say. I can't speak for him. I
think he'd respect you for building your own flying machine, but he'd think you were crazy for flying it over the sea, especially when you can't swim. Ziegfried is so big on safety he wouldn't help you if he thought you were going to be reckless once you went to sea. If something happened to you, he would feel responsible.”

“What do you mean by reckless?”

“It means not being careful enough.”