Seas of South Africa Read online

  I unbuckled the harness and felt it slip away. The cabin was two-thirds full, and the boat was tilting. It was sinking. I rushed at the door, shoved the screwdriver into the jamb, and twisted it open. There was no one there! “Maggie!” came the voice again, louder this time. I stuck my head inside the compartment and finally saw who it was.

  It was a bird in a cage. The cage was upside-down and the bird was clinging to the bars. It looked like a small parrot. The cage was attached to a hook. Water was flooding the compartment. How could I get the bird out without drowning it?

  I dropped the screwdriver, grabbed the cage, and pulled it free from the hook. There was a vinyl tablecloth floating on the water. I picked it up and wrapped it around the cage, held the cage above water, and started back through the cabin. The boat was almost vertical now. I took a deep breath and peeked into the cage. The bird stared back at me, and I had the strangest thought that it knew what we were about to do. “Good luck!” I said. I had such a bad feeling inside. I didn’t think it was going to make it. I pulled the tablecloth tight, gripped it hard with one hand, took another breath, and went under the water and out of the boat.

  It didn’t surprise me that we were already ten feet underwater. I kicked off the hull of the boat. It took just a few seconds to reach the surface. The cage was pulling me up, too, so it must have trapped some air. I sure hoped the bird would survive.

  When we broke the surface, I lifted the cage up. Water poured out of it. I grabbed the side of the sub and climbed up. When I pulled the tablecloth off the cage, the bird lifted its head and looked at me. It was soaking wet. “You’re lucky,” I said. It shook out its feathers and opened its beak as if it were trying to spit up water. It stared at me with shiny eyes. Then it squawked. “Rough seas! Rough seas!”

  Chapter Four

  THE CREW WASN’T pleased when I brought the little bird inside. Seaweed scowled, and Hollie whined. They might have been even less pleased had they known she was a girl. Her name was painted in bright pink and yellow letters on the front of her cage. Little Laura. I wondered what had happened to big Laura, or to Maggie. Were they still alive? I wished I could tell them that Little Laura had escaped from that pirate. He had doomed her to a watery grave. But, like Hollie, who had been thrown into the sea with a rope around his neck when he was a puppy, she was destined to live.

  I carried the cage inside and looked around for a place to hang it. There was a little metal dish inside, and a swing; nothing else. I bet she hadn’t been fed for a long time. “I’ll hang your cage from the ceiling. We’d better find you some food.”

  I knew that parrots liked fruit, seeds, and nuts, so I grabbed a handful of peanuts and raisins, opened the cage door gently, and dropped them inside. I lifted out the metal dish, filled it with water, and put it back. Boy, was that bird hungry and thirsty! For half an hour I watched it go back and forth between the food and water. Hollie wouldn’t stop whining, so I picked him up, and let him watch, too. Back and forth Little Laura hopped, grinding peanuts with her beak and gobbling droplets of water. And she watched us watching her.

  Meanwhile, Maggie’s Delight settled on her side four hundred feet below. On sonar, I saw her stop falling, turn slowly on to her side, and lie still. There she would stay forever. It was dark at four hundred feet, but not as dark, I imagined, as the heart of the man who had put her there.

  Little Laura was a challenge for Hollie and Seaweed. They didn’t like her at first. I couldn’t help wondering if it was because she was stubborn, like them. When I held Hollie close to the cage, which was what he wanted, Little Laura would come over to him with her beak open wide, and he would back away, afraid of getting bitten. Then he would look at me as if to say, does she have to be here? I wanted to open her door and give her the freedom to come out, but I was afraid that Seaweed would attack her. He looked at her as if she were a crab. I wasn’t afraid of Hollie hurting her; he wanted to be friends with everyone. But Seaweed was a very aggressive seagull, and seemed to regard Little Laura as an intruder. So, I waited until he was outside before I opened the door.

  As soon as the door was open, Little Laura climbed out and up on top of her cage. She looked all around the sub, then climbed down to the bottom of the cage, and hung upside down, and looked around. I wondered if she might try to fly, but she didn’t. Then I wondered if she could fly. One of her wings seemed shorter than the other. She looked like she wanted to climb down, so I cut a piece of rope long enough to reach the floor, and tied it to the bottom of her cage. While I was tying it, she kept her beak open as if she would bite me. When I was done, she climbed halfway down the rope. She seemed to have her eye on Hollie’s pile of ropes and sticks. He looked up at her nervously. I sat down on the floor to watch what would happen next.

  Little Laura worked her way down the rope like an acrobat without much balance. When she was a few inches from the bottom, she stopped, hung upside down, and looked to see if the coast was clear. Then she stepped onto the floor and stood up. She was pretty small. Hollie got up, pretended to ignore her, picked up one of his sticks, and put it on his pile. Little Laura made a kind of cakewalk towards the pile. She reminded me of Charlie Chaplin. I watched Hollie to make sure he wouldn’t suddenly turn aggressive against the little bird. He didn’t. He just looked worried.

  Little Laura eyed the pile of sticks and rope. But every time she got close to a piece of it, Hollie would get up and move it somewhere else. Still, the little bird wouldn’t quit. Eventually, she closed her beak on the end of a small stick and dragged it back towards the rope. That wasn’t easy, because the stick was too big for her. There was no way she could carry it up to her cage. But that didn’t stop her from trying. Once she pulled it to the bottom of the rope, Hollie got up, walked over quietly, picked up the stick, and carried it back. Little Laura opened her beak wide and lunged at him, but he just ignored her. Then, she started the whole thing over again. I got tired of watching, so I got up and made some tea.

  I was sitting on my cot, drinking my tea, and eating an orange, when Seaweed dropped down the portal. He came in like a chimney sweep, with a noisy rustling of his feathers. I jumped to my feet because I knew Little Laura was on the floor. Seaweed liked to come in, check for food, plop down on his spot by the observation window, and be left alone while he slept.

  There was no food in sight, so Seaweed went straight for his spot. But Little Laura stood in his way. It looked like David standing in front of Goliath. I followed Seaweed over and stayed ready to rescue the little bird. Little Laura had her beak open. Seaweed wasn’t impressed with that. He opened his beak and lunged at her as if he were going to swallow her up.

  “No! Seaweed! Don’t!” But before I could grab him, Little Laura lunged back at him, and Seaweed stopped. He leaned forward with his beak wide open, trying to intimidate the little bird. But she reached up and tried to intimidate him right back. I think that impressed him. It was a stand-off. To change the mood, I gave each bird a piece of my orange. That ended the conflict. Seaweed gobbled his in an instant and looked for more. Little Laura picked up hers and began the long climb up the rope to her cage. It was a lot of work. Half way up, the piece of orange slipped from her beak, fell to the floor, and Seaweed gobbled it up. Little Laura hung upside down and just stared. I felt sorry for her then so I peeled another orange and put a couple of pieces in her cage. What a tough little bird.

  But she was afraid of me. She would always open her beak when my fingers were near, or when I’d put fresh water or food in her cage. I’d reach out my hand and say, “Come!” But she never would. And yet I thought she was lonely. She seemed to want Hollie’s company the most. But he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. She would climb all the way down the rope and approach him. She wouldn’t try to take his ropes or sticks anymore; she would just pick at them. But it looked like what she really wanted was his attention. She even approached his tail once, but he didn’t like that, got up and turned around. Then he plopped down, stared at her, an
d sighed. But she wouldn’t give up.

  I started leaving her cage door open when I went to bed because she liked to go in and out so much, and I didn’t want her to feel locked in. But once, when I got up for a drink of water, I couldn’t find her. I looked at Seaweed. He was as still as a stone. I looked at Hollie. He was curled up, watching me, but not moving. Where was Little Laura? She wasn’t in her cage. I started looking around on the floor. Maybe she had crawled into a small space to hide. Nope, she wasn’t anywhere. I started to worry. I stared at the crew again. Seaweed hadn’t so much as blinked, but it seemed to me that Hollie was looking a little suspicious. I stepped closer. Now, he looked downright guilty. “Hollie. Do you know where . . . ?” And then, I saw her. She was lying on her belly, tucked in against Hollie’s side. I looked closely to make sure she was still alive. Yup. Her little belly was rising and falling. Hollie looked at me as if to say, it isn’t my fault. What else was I supposed to do?

  “You’re a good dog, Hollie.”

  After that, Hollie and Little Laura became friends. I kind of wondered if they shared a special bond in that, both having come so close to death, they knew that other creatures were quite willing to kill them. I wondered if they recognized that feeling in each other.

  Chapter Five

  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 dire
ction, 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.