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.
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.”
“I never planned to fly over the sea! There was nowhere to land! The dry ground ended and there was nothing but trees and swamp. I couldn’t land there. I was hoping to turn around and go back. And then, I hoped to land on the beach.”
“Did you run out of gas?”
“I don’t burn gas. I burn vegetable fat. Yes, I ran out of fuel a long time ago. But I was pedalling okay until I reached the sea. Then the air pushed me down. It wasn’t my fault. I did everything right. Will you help me find my plane?”
“I found it. And tied a rope to it. We can pull it up.”
“You found it? That’s great!”
“We can pull it up, but I don’t know how to get it to shore. The water is too shallow for the sub. I have an inflatable kayak, but I don’t know if it’s big enough to hold your plane.”
“I saw a city from the air. We could tow it there.”
“Maputo? I’m trying to avoid places like that right now. There are people chasing me.”
“It’s not Maputo. Maputo is in Mozambique. We are in South Africa. It’s Richards Bay.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s Maputo. Mozambique. Why do you think we are in South Africa?”
“Because we are! That’s where I’m from.” He looked worried. “It has to be South Africa. I have no papers for Mozambique. If they found me, they would put me in jail, and I would never get out. It’s Richards Bay. I flew exactly east.”
“Well, I am sorry to tell you that we are in Mozambique. You must have flown northeast. Don’t you have a compass on your plane?”
“No.”
Somehow that didn’t surprise me. “Well, don’t worry. I don’t have papers, either. And I can take you to South Africa. That’s where I am going.”
“But who is chasing you?”
“Pirates. I had a few run-ins with them a couple of hundred miles north. They’ve been following me ever since. If they find me, they will kill me.”
“Why? What did you do to them?”
“I took something of theirs. Well, it wasn’t really theirs, but I took it.”
“You robbed pirates? Are you crazy? What did you steal?”
“It wasn’t really stealing. I took things that they had taken from other people. I was trying to stop them from hurting more people.”
Los’ eyes opened wide. “Did you take guns?”
“I didn’t actually take them. I sank their boat. I sent it to the bottom with all of their guns and drugs. But now they have another boat, with more guns, and they are trying to find me.”
He shook his head at me, but spoke in a softer voice. “You are a dead man, Alfred. They will follow you forever.”
“No, I’m not. They can do all they want; they will never catch me. I won’t be staying around here. And they can’t follow me across the sea. It’s impossible.”
Los paused. “You can sail across the sea, can’t you?”
“Yes, I can.”
“That is amazing.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Will you help me raise my airplane out of the sea now?”
“Sure.”
So we climbed out, and I handed him a life jacket. “Here! You have to put this on. Just in case you fall in.”
“No. I won’t need that. I have good balance.”
“It doesn’t matter. You have to wear it anyway. You can’t swim.”
“No, I’m okay.”
Gosh, he was stubborn. “Look. I am the captain of this submarine. As long as you are on board my submarine, you have to obey my orders. That’s how it works. That’s the Law of the Sea. Now, I order you to put on this life jacket.”
“You are ordering me?”
“Yes. For your own good. If you don’t like it, I will take you to shore, and you can find your own airplane, and take it to South Africa by yourself.”
He stared at me to see if I was bluffing. I wasn’t. “It’s for your own safety. If you fall in, I might not be able to save you, and you will drown because you cannot swim. Drowning means dying. Do you understand that?” I wasn’t certain he did. I also wasn’t certain if I liked him yet or not. I sort of did, but he was so darn stubborn.
He grabbed the jacket and put it on. “Everybody dies sometime.”
“Yes, but you don’t have to die today. And I’d prefer if you didn’t die on my submarine.”
“I’m not afraid of dying.”
“I can tell.”
When Los had the jacket strapped on, we stood side by side and started pulling up the rope. Every time we raised eight feet or so, we wrapped a loop around the portal, so we could stop and rest without dropping the plane. It was easier together, but still a lot of work. When the plane was about halfway up, we stopped, rested for a minute, and stared at the shore. I wondered where he was from, and how he had come to build his own plane. Where did he learn how? Did he teach himself? I got the feeling he was on his own. He just gave me that impression. I was guessing we had a few things in common.
When the plane was almost in sight, Los asked me casually what that sound was. I had injured my ears in India, and they weren’t completely healed yet. Sometimes I had a ringing in them. “What sound?”
I stopped and listened. Suddenly, I knew what it was even before I heard it—the radar. I raised my head above the portal and glanced towards the horizon. Two motorboats were racing towards us at top speed. They looked like flying fish. I didn’t need binoculars to know who they were.