The Boat Who Wouldn't Float (14 page)

I had almost decided I would be content to spend the rest of the summer, if not the rest of my life, in Spoon Cove when Mike Donovan arrived, brimming with energy and with enthusiasm. The idyll was at an end. Once more I had to face the prospect of continuing my voyage upon the grey, implacable seas.

I faced it with some reservations. Chief amongst these was Mike. He was hardly what one would call a seasoned mariner. To the best of his own recollection he had only been upon the waters three times in his life. The later voyages consisted of ocean crossings in troopships during the war. The first took place when, at the age of six, he ventured out on a pond in a Toronto park on a makeshift raft. He fell off, but was rescued by a mounted policeman who rode his horse full gallop into the pond to snatch Mike from an early grave. Apart from these occasions his experience with the sea and with boats was nil. This did not bother Mike, who was the world's greatest optimist, but it tended to disturb me a trifle.

Mike had driven down to Spoon Cove from St. John's in a Volkswagen. He now proceeded to remove from it two of the largest suitcases I have ever seen. How he had crammed them into his little car I cannot guess. One of them would have filled
Happy Adventure
's cabin to the exclusion of any
human beings. Gaily he flung these on the deck and flung himself after them. Mike was a natural born flinger; long, lean, lanky, and exuberant.

“What in hell are you doing with those suitcases? What's in them?” I asked, appalled.

“Library supplies. You think I'm Director of Libraries for nothing? I swung this trip by telling the Minister of Education I was going to establish a branch library system on the sou'west coast of Newfoundland. You wouldn't want to make a liar out of me, would you now?”

“No,” I said, “I wouldn't want to do that, Mike. So just
consider you've established your first branch library right here, in Tom Moulton's fish store. Now get those goddamn trunks off my deck before you sink the boat!”

Amiability was one of Mike's strong points. Whistling cheerfully, he carted the suitcases into the fish store and stowed them behind a pile of salt cod. He returned aboard and folded himself into the cabin but not before he had produced four bottles of Big Dipper rum. Library supplies in Newfoundland obviously run to better things than paste and date-due slips.

I considered it would be wise to give Mike a crash course in seamanship before departing from Burin. And this turned out to be one of the best entertainments ever staged in Spoon Cove.

Before the course was well advanced it had drawn an audience of many small boys and girls, a dozen elderly gentlemen, and a motley crowd of fishermen. They lined the stages on both sides of us, and watched in silence as I took Mike all around the vessel, pointing out and naming everything of importance. He followed alertly, nodding his head and repeating the names after me. Since he had studied several languages and could speak at least three of them fluently he had no trouble memorizing names. I then ran him through such standard procedures as making sail, lowering sail, handling the sheets, letting go the anchor, putting the fenders overside. He was very good at it.

The audience, which had not previously suspected there was a man alive who knew as little about a boat as did Mike, began to take to him. Finally I ordered him to go aft, unship the dory from its cradle and launch it overboard.

He performed this task almost flawlessly. Almost. He erred only in looping the dory painter around his wrist before shoving the little boat over the schooner's side.

The dory's momentum shot her away from the vessel-and Mike went too, on the end of the painter. He came to the surface somewhat wild-eyed, for the water was bitter cold, and staring about as if in search of a policeman riding
a horse. Alas, there was not one such in all of Burin. So he paddled to the dory, caught it, threw an arm and a leg over its side-and turned the little boat completely upside down on top of himself.

We could hear him underneath it, where he was clinging to a thwart. He was bellowing what I am afraid may have been Irish oaths but they were so muffled we could not really make them out. He was also kicking energetically with his feet and this had the effect of slowly propelling the upturned boat out into the harbour. It looked like some huge sea-tortoise, shorn of its head, although it did not sound like one.

One of the boys had by this time recovered sufficient control of himself to climb into a swamp and go in pursuit. He was unable to get Mike out from under so he towed the dory back to shore. In due time Mike's feet encountered the bottom. He ducked down and at last emerged shivering and blue into the light of day.

It would not have been surprising if he had given up the voyage there and then, climbed into his little car, and scuttled off for home. Not Mike. As he waded up on the shore he put on his broadest smile and his broadest Irish accent:

“Faith and begorra! And wouldn't that be a fine rig for swimmin' in the rain?”

The people of Spoon Cove took him to their hearts, and so did I.

 

There was one distinct advantage to Mike's ignorance of the sea and vessels. He did not know enough about them to be nervous. In his eyes
Happy Adventure
was the staunchest little vessel that had ever lived. He trusted her absolutely. He kept on trusting her, too, even when she did her best to disillusion him. Not, mind you, that he failed to take precautions. As he climbed into his bunk that first night he delayed a moment-to hammer a huge St. Christopher medal to the plank above his head.

Although I am not a member of Mike's faith that medal
is still where he placed it.
Somebody
must have had an eye on us in the days that followed. Whether it was St. Christopher or the Old Man of the Sea remains a mystery. I suspect it took both of them, working as a team, to do the job.

 

12.
A basking shark and a Basque proposal

T
WO DAYS
after Mike's arrival we set sail for St. Pierre, which lay fifty miles to the westward around the tip of the projecting boot of the Burin Peninsula. I hopefully looked forward to an easy passage. Since it was to be a coastwise voyage within sight of land, I did not expect the eccentricities of the compass would be a problem. The engine was working better than it had ever worked before. The leaks seemed to have settled down or, at any rate, they were not beyond control of Mike's muscular abilities. We were well stored with food and rum. Even the weather forecast was good.

The forecast called for “southerly winds, light at dawn, increasing to southeast twenty; visibility four miles, except in fog.” The phrase, “except in fog,” occurred in every weather forecast during every voyage I ever made in six years' residence on the south coast of Newfoundland. The fog itself also occurred on every voyage except one. Sometimes the fog was in patches only a few miles wide. Usually it was rather more impressive, extending over several hundred thousand square miles of ocean. Although the weather forecasts were quite often wrong about other things they were seldom wrong about the fog.

In honour of this, his first sail, I served Mike a special breakfast. It began with oatmeal porridge and condensed milk
in which several rashers of fat-back bacon bobbed. This was followed by boiled rounders. Rounders are another Newfoundland delicacy. They are very small cod that have been sun-dried “in the round,” rather than split, as are the larger fish. They have a flavour and aroma rather like old cheddar cheese. Mike, who was not a born Newfoundlander, had never tasted them before, but he was game and he ate two. He agreed about the aroma and the taste, only
he
said it was more like
Gorgonzola
.

We got away from Spoon Cove at seven o'clock with just enough breeze to fill our sails and make for a brave departure. An hour later we rounded Little Burin Island into the open waters of Placentia Bay and began pitching into a big, slow, queasy swell running from the south. As
Happy Adventure
began to rise and sink with the rhythm of the swell I got out the bottle and made the customary offering to the Old Man of the Sea, then I passed a glass to Mike who was looking thoughtful.

Mike raised the glass to his lips, abruptly turned aside, and made his own personal offering to the Old Man. I do not think it was made voluntarily because Mike did not hold with pagan superstitions; but voluntary or not it was made with energy and with abandon.

When he was quite finished he turned palely to me and said he did not think he really cared for rounders-not twice on the same morning anyway.

The breeze freshened until we were bowling down the desolate Burin coast at a good five knots. Mike began to get the feel of things and to enjoy himself. I showed him how to steer a compass course. He had no trouble with the compass but he had some difficulty steering. This was because steering a boat by means of a tiller, instead of a wheel, requires the helmsman to push the tiller in the opposite direction to the way he wants the boat to turn. It takes a little while to get accustomed to it.

Before noon we rounded Lawn Head and altered course until we were running almost due west. The wind began to
fall light and the sky grew increasingly hazy. I kept one anxious eye to seaward, watching for the black wall of fog to start advancing, and the other on the grim, reef-strewn coast that we were skirting.

Mike, at his ease at the tiller, was more interested in the oceanic world and its inhabitants. He grew ecstatic when we passed through a pod of pothead whales, sleek black beasts fifteen feet or more in length, so busy pursuing schools of unseen squid that some of them surfaced and blew within a stone's throw of us.

Mike had recently re-read
Moby Dick
and he was fired by a desire to experience the passions of a whaler. I turned a deaf ear to his suggestion that he be allowed to put off in the dory, armed with our boat-hook, and harpoon a pothead for himself. Not that I was unsympathetic, but I was becoming increasingly worried about a spreading overcast and rapidly worsening visibility that was forcing us to hold ever closer to a most inhospitable coast.

My problem was that I could not simply take a course off the chart and steer by the compass, keeping a good offing from the land. The compass would not let me. Although we were then steering just south of west the compass insisted we were actually steering north-northwest. There was only one way we could navigate and that was by making use of landmarks on the shore; and landmarks on the shore of the Burin Peninsula are ill-defined at best.

About two o'clock I slung my binoculars around my neck and climbed to the foremast spreaders, hoping to pick up Lamaline Head, off which lies a formidable barrier of sunken rocks. Luck was with me and I was able to distinguish the distant Head. Feeling relatively secure for the moment I swung my binoculars in search of other vessels.

A mile off the port bow I saw something which resolved itself into an immense, glistening black back. I took it to be one of the great whales, either a finner or a blue. Since I too have long been fascinated by the great creatures of the sea, I called down to Mike telling him what I had seen and ordering him to alter course toward the beast.

As we ran down upon the animal Mike was as expectant as a child making his first visit to the zoo-and nearly as unmanageable. He kept letting go of the tiller in order to leap up on the cabin trunk for a better look, and it was only by bellowing like a Captain Queeg that I could keep him at his post at all. He grew even more excited when I called down to tell him it was not a whale-it was a shark; either a Greenland or a Basking shark, but in any event one of the largest true fishes in the sea.

It was immense. Lazing slowly on the surface with its dorsal fin standing up like a tri-sail, it appeared to be quite unconscious of our approach. This is a characteristic of both species for both are sluggish giants with, apparently, not much intelligence. Perhaps they don't need a great deal. This specimen was a good ten feet longer than our vessel and it was hard to imagine any natural antagonist that could threaten it.

Certainly I had no intention of threatening it, let alone attacking it. However I did want a close look so I told Mike to run alongside, keeping about thirty yards away.

Mike chose to interpret the distance as thirty feet and, as we drew abeam of it, the great fish, for some reason known only to itself, ponderously changed direction to cross our bows.

“Hard-a-starboard, Mike!” I yelled. “Hard over!”

In retrospect I can attach no blame to Mike. He had only just learned that starboard meant right. He had only just learned to steer a boat with a tiller. He
did
manage to remember which direction starboard was-and he hauled the
tiller
hard to starboard.

We were then travelling at about four knots, which is no great speed, but that shark was very nearly an immovable object and when we hit him, just behind the dorsal fin, we did so with a rubbery jolt that almost catapulted me off the foremast.
Happy Adventure
's curving cutwater slipped up over his broad back until her bowsprit pointed skyward, then the monster sounded and the little ship sailed on.

Mike was all contrition but since as far as I could tell no harm had been done to anyone, I graciously forgave him. We sat and talked about the encounter. We were both much affected, for it is not often given to modern men to meet such a colossus from the alien sea world. Eventually I decided to go below and brew a pot of coffee.

When I stepped off the bottom of the companion ladder I stepped into several inches of cold water….

Even in that first shocked moment I knew exactly what had happened. The collision with the shark had sprung a plank below the waterline. As I leapt for the pump I yelled
at Mike to tell him we were holed; we were sinking! With vivid memories of the awful night spent outside Trepassey crowding in upon me I went at the pump with a sort of insane ferocity. Again! It had happened again! It was just too bloody much to bear!

Oh, how I pumped. Sweat filled my eyes. The pump itself grew warm to the touch. But I saw nothing, felt nothing, except a foul and consuming rage. I had no breath for words, but the oaths I mentally lavished on
Happy Adventure
, on Mike, on the Old Man, and even on St. Christopher, should have doomed me forever, even if the leak did not.

Then the pump sucked dry! The handle wobbled loosely in my hand.

I looked into the bilge opening beside the engine. The bilge was dry except for its usual coating of oily siime. There was no flood of cold green water pouring aft along the keelson.

I did not believe it. I stayed below watching the bilge for almost an hour and in that time the vessel took exactly as much water (it was quite enough, to be sure) as she usually took. There was no new leak.

Baffled but infinitely relieved I went back on deck and took over the helm and we resumed our voyage toward St. Pierre. I pondered the mystery of the flooded engine room but could form no idea of what might have happened.

After a time Mike went below to make the coffee. A few moments later he popped his head out through the companionway.

“Farley,” he said, “there's no water in the fresh water pump. Can't get a drop.”

Here was a new mystery. We had filled our fresh water tank before leaving Burin. It was an immense tank for so small a vessel, because Jack and I intended it to hold enough fresh water to last us clear across an ocean if need be. Now Mike insisted it was empty. Leaving
Happy Adventure
to look after herself I joined him down below, and in due course we found some answers.

The jolt when we hit the shark had caused an already slack hose connection on the bottom of the tank to shake free-and our entire supply of fresh water had flowed out into the bilges.

By the time we discovered what had happened we were well past Lamaline. Visibility had improved a little, and I was able to dimly distinguish a grey pimple on the far horizon and to recognize it for Colombier Island which lies close beside St. Pierre. I took the tiller again, having apologized to Mike, to
Happy Adventure
, to the shark, to St. Christopher, and to the Old Man of the Sea. Mike was discreetly busy down below. After a while he scrambled up on deck bearing two steaming mugs.

“Here, Skipper,” he said. “Drink this. And begorra, I'll bet you've never tasted Irish coffee like it!”

In truth I never had. I probably never will again. But this I can confirm: black coffee made with rum as a substitute for water is a drink of exceptional authority.

At about six-thirty the wind fell out completely. By then we were within a few miles of the North Channel entry into St. Pierre, so we downed sail and started the bullgine for the final run. We made a triumphant approach. With a bone in her teeth and a pennant of black smoke trailing from her exhaust, the little ship drove in toward the grey, treeless loom of the French islands.