River Odyssey Read online

  I pedalled for hours. Hollie lay on his blanket with his head on his paws and watched patiently. He wanted to get out and run. Seaweed looked like he was watching with one eye open but was probably sleeping. I took short breaks, drank orange juice and tried to stay relaxed, but it was hard to when I couldn’t know if we were being tracked from above. Probably we weren’t. I knew that. But I also couldn’t know for certain if we were keeping a true course. Without sonar I couldn’t know if we had run into a current that had shifted our direction a few degrees. That was worrisome. But I didn’t want to turn on sonar because there was always the chance our sonar waves would bounce off a nearby vessel with a sensitive listening device and they would know exactly where we were. To stay calm and pass the time I opened a book on the handlebars and read about Anticosti Island.

  It was bigger than Prince Edward Island but only two hundred people lived there; two hundred people and a hundred thousand deer. Wow! The island used to be privately owned until the Quebec government bought it in 1974. Adolph Hitler tried to buy it in 1937. Holy smokes! Imagine Hitler living in Canada. The Canadian government said no. Good thing. It was bad enough the island was a disaster for ships. Actually, it was a graveyard, just like Sable Island. I bet there were ghosts there.

  According to Sheba it was difficult to get close to a ghost. That had certainly been my experience, if what I had seen was a ghost. Ziegfried didn’t think so. I still wasn’t sure.

  Ghosts were timid creatures, Sheba said. They were like shadows or wisps of smoke or ripples on the water. She said that ghosts were the spirits of people who hadn’t completely left the world because there was something holding them back, something bothering them too much to leave. So, they just sort of flitted about for a while, visiting places and occasionally being seen by people who were sympathetic towards them and didn’t scare them. People like her. Well, I supposed that explained why people rarely saw them.

  If any place would have ghosts hanging around, surely it was Anticosti Island? Not only had people drowned there when their ships smashed against the rocks, but there was a man, a couple of hundred years ago, who helped people escape their sinking ships, imprisoned them, killed them and ate them! Yikes! How creepy was that?

  After three hours of pedalling I surfaced to periscope depth and continued by battery. I couldn’t know if we were within radar range of the speedboats and had to assume that we were. I was drop-dead tired now but couldn’t risk getting caught again. Besides, I had promised Hollie a walk on the beach. And so, I motored on for a few more hours, until the silhouette of the island appeared under the moon. I sailed in very cautiously with sonar, dropped anchor in thirty feet of water, inflated the dinghy and we climbed in.

  According to the charts, the water was crowded with sunken ships, just as at Sable Island. Storms and undertows pushed those wrecks around, too, so that they could appear and disappear randomly, sticking out of the sand and water here and there like skeletons that kept changing their minds about where they wanted to be buried. I didn’t want to get the anchor tangled up in the timbers of an old wreck, and I didn’t want to strike one of the rocks that had deceived so many other sailors.

  I pulled the dinghy onto the beach and Hollie jumped out and ran around like someone who had been locked up for years. He ran so hard he fell over and rolled like a ball. He was crazy. Seaweed was already on the beach, picking long stringy things out of the body of something dead. The sun was still two hours away but there was enough light from the moon to see silhouettes on the beach. The beach was littered with driftwood and rocks and reminded me of pictures I had seen of the surface of the moon, except that the silhouettes seemed to be moving as we walked. I knew they weren’t.

  We went all the way down the beach, and I had the feeling we were being watched the whole time. We both kept turning around, and Hollie would sniff the air, but he would do that anyway. Eventually he ran the craziness out of his system and started behaving like a normal dog. He turned and looked at me as if he had just woken from a wild dream. What was that about?

  “I don’t know, Hollie. You’re the one running around like a nut.”

  Then we heard a noise and both turned our heads. “What was that?”

  He sniffed the air. It had been a strange sound. I couldn’t describe it. It wasn’t a human sound. There were a hundred thousand deer on this island; maybe it was one of them. I listened closely but heard only the sound of the wind. Maybe what we had heard was a piece of falling driftwood. We reached the end of the beach, turned around and walked back. Hollie trotted beside me like a model dog. If there were any ghosts I thought we might see a bundle of light. But we didn’t. If there were any ghosts they were probably afraid of us anyway.

  We climbed back into the sub, deflated the dinghy, pulled up anchor and motored a little way from shore. Anxiously, I switched on radar. If there were boats in the area they would know that we were here, or that somebody was here. If they came towards us to investigate we’d have to find another place to hide. But I hoped they wouldn’t. I was so tired.

  The radar wave made a clean sweep across the screen. There was nothing out there. Yes! I started to look for a place to sleep. I took one last peek through the periscope at the beach we had just walked down, now retreating behind us in the dark, and saw a bundle of light! Yikes! Straining my eyes I saw a figure standing at the water’s edge, on the very spot we had just stood! It was watching us leave.

  “We’re going back!” I said excitedly.

  Now I was spooked.

  Chapter 7

  IT DIDN’T SURPRISE me that when I surfaced and opened the hatch the ghost was gone. I still wanted to go and stand on that spot. I planned to leave Hollie in the sub this time but he would have none of that. If I were going to walk on the beach again then so was he. So, I tossed the anchor, inflated the dinghy all over again, climbed in and paddled to the spot. This time, when we stepped onto the beach, Hollie growled. I looked around.

  “What is it, Hollie? What do you smell?”

  I couldn’t see anything, but what was that sound? Was it whispering? Was it the wind? And what was that smell? It smelled like burning leaves or something. Hollie continued to growl but didn’t bark. I went and stood where I thought I had seen the figure standing and I felt a shiver go down my spine. The air was cold. I closed my eyes and listened, but all I could hear was the wind and waves, and the little murmur of Hollie’s growl, growing fiercer and more afraid at the same time. And then, something coughed behind us.

  I turned and saw a towering shape facing us. Its eyes were flashing with the light of the moon. Its head was enormous. It coughed again and snorted. Then I knew what it was. It was a huge buck with an enormous set of antlers. It was standing above us on the beach and pawing the sand with its front hoof. Was it going to charge?

  “Bark! Hollie! Bark!”

  Hollie barked. The buck snorted again. Then Hollie started barking and didn’t stop. It was such a pathetic little bark but the buck backed up and trotted away, snorting like a steam engine.

  “Good job, Hollie. You scared him away.”

  I bent down and patted him. He was trembling. Who would have guessed that a deer would be scarier than a ghost?

  We returned to the sub, deflated the dinghy and climbed back in. But when I pulled on the anchor this time, it wouldn’t budge. In my haste to see the ghost, I had thrown the anchor too quickly. The current had shifted the sub, the anchor dragged and wrapped around something. Whichever way I pulled, it would not give. Rats! I would have to swim down and free it. The sun would be up soon. I decided to make a cup of tea and feed the crew first. Seaweed probably wasn’t hungry after his breakfast on the beach but he would eat anyway. Seagulls had bottomless stomachs. They were like garbage compactors.

  Sitting on the hull drinking my tea and eating an orange, I dangled my feet over the edge and watched as the sun began to pierce the water below. Suddenly, I got a fright. I shouldn’t have, really, it was just a wreck beneath us, but i
t was such a spooky wreck, with open ribs reaching up towards us. The sub looked like a baby dolphin waiting to be grabbed by a giant squid!

  I was already kind of jumpy because of the buck. Now, this ship’s skeleton looked like it had trapped our anchor on purpose and was trying to grab us. Was it just a coincidence we had stopped directly above it? I knew that Ziegfried would probably just laugh at that, but a chill swept over me and I had to calm myself. Get a grip, I told myself. It was just a coincidence. Like it or not, I had to go down there and free the anchor or we weren’t going anywhere.

  The problem with letting yourself become afraid of something is that your fear can run away with you. I long ago learned how important it is to face your fears right away and not let them build up until you are too afraid to do anything. There is nothing to be afraid of but fear itself. That’s what Ziegfried always said. Fear is explainable, just like everything else.

  I finished my orange, took a few deep breaths and jumped off the sub. We were in only thirty feet of water. That was nothing. I could dive to a hundred feet and hold my breath underwater for over two minutes. This dive was nothing, and yet, something about the way the old ship was lying on the bottom spooked me. And it was harder to hold your breath when you were spooked.

  Her rib cage looked like a trap ready to snap shut. Each waterlogged rib was tall and curved inward, like a gloomy statue bending over and staring down at you. Swimming down between them I saw the anchor tangled up in the ship’s belly, exactly in the middle of the ribs.

  It took only fifteen seconds to reach the bottom. The little anchor had wedged itself into a crack in the ship’s wooden spine and the rope had twisted up awkwardly on a couple of timbers. I pulled the rope free first, or thought I did, then reached down and tugged at the anchor. It was stuck. Bringing my feet down to balance against the spine, I took hold of the anchor with both hands and prepared to pull harder. Suddenly, something hit me on the back, knocked the air out of my lungs and pinned me down against the spine. It didn’t take long to realize what had happened. One of the timbers had collapsed. It hurt my back but I was okay. I didn’t panic. That was the important thing. But the timber also fell onto the rope, and the rope was wrapped around my leg. When I tried to free myself from underneath the timber, the rope held me back. I started to feel my lack of air. I pulled hard on my leg, but it wouldn’t budge! That’s when I panicked. I tugged once, tugged twice, then pulled my leg free, but not before the timber cut my skin and filled my knee with splinters. As I swam to the surface I saw that my leg was bleeding.

  I broke the surface and gasped for air. My leg was stinging and burning. I climbed onto the sub to take a look. There was a gash about three inches long just above my knee. It wasn’t deep. I could clean it and bandage it. But the splinters were a different story. Instead of thin, sharp slivers of wood, they were thick, dull chunks that had become embedded in my skin like rocks. And they hurt! I’d have to pick them out with tweezers and put peroxide on my leg so it wouldn’t get infected. But first, I had to swim back down and free the anchor. I had no intention of becoming another wreck on Anticosti Island.

  It took a while to calm down. I hated panicking, even a little. It was the worst feeling in the world. When you panicked, you lost control of your ability to think. You were just trying to survive. But you didn’t make good decisions. It was okay in a situation like that, where all I had to do was pull my leg free. Without panicking maybe I wouldn’t have pulled hard enough to free myself and might have drowned. So, maybe it had saved my life. But there were times when I would have drowned if I had panicked, because I really needed to think straight. As Ziegfried always said, the sea doesn’t care if you are sincere. If you make a critical mistake, the sea will drown you. It won’t take long either.

  I breathed deeply and went down again. This time, I kept an eye on the timbers the whole time, never turning my back on them, and still another one fell! Boy, did I ever get the feeling this old wreck was trying to trap me!

  The anchor came free with a good hard tug. Looking up, I saw the timbers reaching for the sub like the limbs of a sea monster and suddenly I remembered Sheba’s dream. Was that a coincidence? Sheba said there was no such thing as a coincidence. But what else would you call it?

  Standing on the hull, I pulled the anchor. The sun was up and the day was clear. Anticosti Island looked different now in the daylight. It was beautiful. It looked like a peaceful giant asleep in a friendly river mouth. How different from the night. It bothered me that I had let myself get spooked. On the other hand, I didn’t know why I ever doubted Sheba in the first place; the island was obviously haunted by ghosts. And it was guarded by gigantic deer.

  Chapter 8

  OKAY. TWO BAD things had happened and we weren’t even on the river yet. Was something trying to tell me to turn around and go back home? Sheba said that something terrible would happen but that I would be all right. Well, I guessed it had happened. Two terrible things had happened. This voyage was a lot more trouble than I thought it would be. Was it worth it?

  It was my fault though, I had to admit. We had been caught by the navy because I sailed too closely behind the freighter. I got trapped by the wreck because I had thrown the anchor carelessly in my hurry to see the ghost. If I had done just what I was supposed to do—sail to Montreal— instead of looking at other things and procrastinating, probably nothing bad would have happened. Probably. On the other hand, I was an explorer by nature. I had to explore things. I couldn’t help it.

  I was so desperately tired and needed to sleep, but had to clean my wounds first. The waterlogged wood was like mud. The splinters didn’t come out in neat pieces so I had to scrape them out, which hurt a lot and made them bleed. Then, the peroxide hurt even more. I spent two hours cleaning the wounds, feeling sleepier all the time. When I finished, I laid my head down on my cot for just a second. We were still on the surface and the hatch was wide open. I only intended to rest for a second.

  It was twilight when I woke. Hollie was sitting beneath the open portal chewing on a rope. He wagged his tail and came over when I lifted my head. I reached down and scratched his fur. He was the best dog in the world. I had always wanted a dog growing up and never had one. I found Hollie in a drifting dory one day. Someone had put a rope around his neck, tied it to a stone and thrown him off a wharf in the fog. How horrible can people be? But he landed in a dory, it drifted free, or someone set it free, and I found him. Nobody had wanted him. Nobody had cared about him. He was an orphan.

  “But you’re a sailor now, aren’t you?”

  His little tail beat against the floor.

  “Where’s Seaweed?”

  He looked up the portal towards the sky, growing dark now.

  “Yup. Probably eating something on the beach. Time to go. He’ll find us.”

  I started the engine and turned west, into the current. My leg was swollen around the area where I had scraped the splinters out and it was sore. I wrapped a bandage around it and opened it every few hours to pour peroxide on it, the way my grandmother had taught me. That was really painful. But better a painful leg than to have drowned.

  Jacques Cartier never had trouble on Anticosti Island, according to Sheba’s book. He never lost a single member of his crew either, at least not at sea. That was kind of hard to believe when you think that shipwrecks were common then and a sailor’s life so dangerous. If airplane crashes today were as common as shipwrecks back then, no one would ever fly.

  Sailors died of accidents on board the ships too, and disease, and yet Cartier never lost a single crew member in all of his voyages. He must have been pretty smart. He must have been very determined too. Hmmm. I decided to stop whining. It was true: I never wanted to go to Montreal in the first place, but I had agreed to go. And so, I figured I’d better smarten up and try a little harder to make this trip successful. Either go, or don’t go, I thought to myself, but don’t keep belly-aching about it.

  That’s what I was thinking when it started t
o rain.

  At first, the rain fell gently. The air was warm and the rain was light. Hollie and I stood in the portal in the dark. I stood on the ladder and leaned against the open hatch. Hollie rested against my chest and arms, his front paws on the hatch. Seaweed finally joined us and sat on the bow in front of us as the sub plowed through the water, splaying waves perfectly even on both sides. It was a windless night and the rain came down straight and sprinkled Hollie’s face and made him blink. But soon it started to rain harder, and since we wanted to stay in the portal, I went in and grabbed an umbrella. Usually it was too windy for an umbrella but tonight it was still and it was nice to stand in the portal and listen to the rain falling and smell the river and smell the mustiness of Hollie’s fur. Hollie smelled like an old wool blanket when he was wet.

  And then it started to rain harder.

  The rain came straight down and it poured! Seaweed hopped onto the hatch, squeezed behind us, then dropped inside. The rain beat down so hard on the umbrella it made me laugh. Hollie looked worried but I assured him it was okay.

  “We’re in a submarine, Hollie. This is the safest place in the world.”

  I thought maybe after fifteen minutes or so the rain would lighten up but it didn’t. Half an hour later it was still flooding down. The air was so wet it was almost hard to breathe. We could have climbed inside but it was so interesting. Sheets of water fell off the umbrella and some of it splashed inside the sub but I didn’t care. It would just collect into the drain and the sump pumps would remove it. The submarine really was designed for water, inside and out.