I SHOULD HAVE SAILED away from Mozambique Island altogether. I knew that. And I wished I could have. It was surely the most dangerous place for me to be right now. But I remembered something my grandfather had once told me—that if you knew someone was going to do something wrong and you didn’t try to stop them, then you became responsible, too. I knew why that pirate had gone to the island. He was hoping to steal a faster boat. And maybe he would kill someone to get it. Was he really that ruthless? Judging from what I had seen so far, I believed he was. What if it were a family? What if there were children? My guidebook said there were twelve thousand people on the island. It also had a police station. Maybe if I could find it, and tell them everything I had witnessed, they would bring him in and question him. Then, once they saw what he was like, they might believe me. Maybe they wouldn’t put him behind bars, where he belonged, but would at least keep an eye on him. I sure as heck didn’t want to run into him again, but didn’t see how I could avoid going to the island to warn them. It seemed to me this was one of those times my grandfather had been talking about.
The island was barely approachable by sub, unless we sailed on the surface, which we couldn’t do in the daytime. I would have liked to sail completely around it, and see where the orange dinghy was moored, but the water was simply too shallow. I scouted as much as I could from a distance through the periscope in the late afternoon. There was a long bridge that spanned the channel between the mainland and island on the western side, but we couldn’t get close to it.
By twilight, we were sitting just north of the island, where the fort was. I brought the sub to a hundred feet from the fort’s stone wall, surfaced so that the portal was showing only six inches above water, opened the hatch, and tossed the anchor. There was little current, and there were stones sticking out of the water that helped disguise us. Once it was dark, I inflated the kayak, shut the hatch, and went for a paddle. No one would see me as long as I stayed in the dark. The lighted areas were in the middle and south of the island, where the people were. The north was shrouded in darkness.
I paddled all the way down the ocean side, around the bottom, up the mainland side, and under the bridge. I didn’t see a single pier. Boats were either moored at anchor, or hauled up on the beach. Tucked in between fishing boats on the sand, I found the orange dinghy.
Don’t be nervous, I told myself, just be careful. Find the police station, and tell them what you know. But what could I tell them—that a man had grabbed me, sank a boat that probably belonged to somebody else, and almost killed a bird? What if they didn’t believe me? What proof did I have? None. Still, I knew in my heart that he had come here to steal someone else’s boat, and I didn’t think he would hesitate to kill somebody to get it.
I paddled a little closer and looked carefully at the beach. There was no one on the sand, but there were lights beneath the palm trees and between small houses. The houses were made of stone and wood and had thatched roofs. I could hear music playing and voices laughing. It sounded like cafés.
I stared at the dinghy. I felt an urge to just run up on the beach, puncture its skin with my jackknife, and run back. Then, the air would leak out, and he couldn’t motor out and steal someone’s boat. At least it would slow him down. I reached into my pocket. Rats! I wasn’t carrying my knife. There must be something else I could do?
I paddled to the beach, climbed out, and crept up to the dinghy with my head down. My heart was beating fast. If I had more time, I might try to open the casing of the outboard motor and pull out some wires. Instead, I unscrewed the gas tank, reached down, grabbed handfuls of sand, and poured them into the tank. I moved as quickly as I could, and kept looking up the beach to see if anyone was coming. I poured a lot of sand into that tank. The engine might start, but it sure wouldn’t go far. The pirate was going to be furious. At least now he would know that somebody was watching him, and knew what he was up to.
I put the cap back on, turned to go, and froze. There was a little old man sitting on the sand in the dark not more than fifteen feet away from me. He had been watching me the whole time. He looked as though he had been hired to watch the dinghy, yet he never did anything. I looked at him to see if he was going to yell out, but he just stared as if he were staring right through me, as if he didn’t even see me. I figured he didn’t want to see me. He didn’t want to get caught in the middle of trouble. And he must have known there was trouble coming.
I ran back to the kayak, jumped in, and paddled away. I paddled all the way around the island and back to the fort. Along the way, I saw a sailboat motoring towards the south of the island from the open sea. It was hard to see in the dark, but I thought I saw the silhouettes of several people on deck. There were no lights on the boat, which was strange, though I didn’t give it much thought at the time. I paddled back to a spot just beyond the sub, tied up the kayak, climbed the wall, and jumped into the fort.
I would have liked to walk around the fort, explore the dungeons, and climb the cannon, but I couldn’t stop now. I had to find the police station. Maybe I could explore on my way back. I cut through the big courtyard, climbed over the front gate, and headed towards the centre of the island. I was hungry now. If Mozambique Island had 12,000 people, maybe it had pizza, too. Maybe I could find one after talking to the police.
I crossed a sandy soccer field and a treed park and found myself on a street with houses. There were people sitting outside as I went down the street. I smiled and waved at them, and they smiled and waved back. I had learned that people in other countries will always be friendly to you if you smile at them. Most of the people in the world are really friendly.
There were lots of houses, and a few stone buildings with shops and offices in them. Everything was old. All of the roofs on the houses were thatched, but the roofs of the buildings were made of clay shingles. It was a warm night, and the atmosphere in the town was relaxed and friendly. I heard music. Then, I saw a few cafés. I knew I had to watch out for the pirate now. But he would be easy to spot. He would stand out from these people like a rotten cabbage in a field of strawberries.
But I never saw him. I came upon a café where they were grilling fish out front, and the smell was so good, I thought I would die if I didn’t eat some. There were chairs around a picnic table, and a waiter pulled one out and gestured for me to sit, so I did. Then, he brought me a plate of fish and a tall glass of fresh pineapple juice to wash it down. I don’t think anything ever tasted as good as that meal. But all the time that I ate, I kept a lookout for a large man in the street.
As I was leaving the café, I asked the waiter if he could tell me where the police station was. A very friendly man, he suddenly looked concerned. He pointed quickly in one direction, then frowned and lowered his head. When I paid for my meal, I gave him a dollar for a tip. He shook my hand, hugged my shoulder, and shook my hand again. He said something else about the police station, but I didn’t understand. Then he lowered his head again, and shook it. I took that as a warning not to trust the police. It didn’t entirely surprise me. In some countries you can trust the police; in others, you can’t. Richer countries can afford to pay their police force. Poor countries sometimes can’t, so the police officers have to make their money some other way, which isn’t always legal. I thanked the friendly waiter and walked away.
Two streets west, I found the police station. It didn’t look like much. It was just a small building with one light on. I was standing across the street, wondering whether I should listen to the waiter and leave, or take a chance and go in, when, suddenly, the door opened and out walked the pirate!
I didn’t know if he saw me or not. I backed up into the darkness of the trees. He looked angry. He stormed down the street towards the beach. A policeman stood in the doorway of the station and watched him go. I waited until the police-man went back inside, then followed the pirate at a distance. He was too big and heavy to catch me at a run, and I noticed now that he had a bit of a limp. But I had to stay out of his knife-throwing range; that was for sure.
He went down a few more streets and turned into an alley that led to a café. The music was loud, and so were the people. Through the trees, I saw a few rougher types, like him. They were standing around with bottles in their hands, yelling and laughing and slapping each other’s backs. He disappeared amongst them.
I was about to go back to the sub then, and leave, but there was one thing I wanted to know. Why had he gone to the police station? Was it possible he had tried the motor of his dinghy and discovered it had been sabotaged? Was that it? It was kind of hard to believe that a pirate would complain to the police though, unless the police were corrupt too, which was what the waiter had been suggesting. But the whole thing didn’t make sense, and it made me so curious I thought I’d swing by the beach and just take another peek at the dinghy.
The old man was sitting in the same spot. I knew he saw me when I came over; I saw his head turn. He was just pretending not to see me. In the dark, I wasn’t sure if the dinghy had been moved or not. I thought maybe it had. “Did a big man try to move this boat?” I asked the old man. He didn’t answer. I reached into my pocket, found a dollar bill, and put it down on the sand in front of him. He picked up the dollar, looked up at me, and nodded. Then he got to his feet, pulled his thumb across his neck as a way of warning me to be careful, and disappeared in the dark. Now I knew. It was time to get out of here.
Just as I was about to leave the beach, I noticed the dark sailboat motoring down from the north of the island. It looked like a ghost on the water. They must have gone right around the island when they discovered the bridge in their way. I stepped closer to the water to try to see them more clearly. Then I heard heavy feet in the sand. I never had a chance.