Ghosts of the Pacific (2 page)

I COULD HAVE SWORN
I felt Ziegfried step onto the island
in the middle of the night. I must have dreamt it; nobody
was big enough to shake an island just by stepping onto it,
even if he was one of the biggest men in all of Newfoundland and Sheba's island one of the tiniest. All the same, I
woke with an urge to sneak outside and check. Sheba was a
light sleeper. She could hear you blink in the next room. I
slid my legs out of my sleeping bag without disturbing the
cats on it. Hollie was sleeping on my feet and he raised his
head and looked at me. I shook my head and he dropped his
again. I pulled on my socks, stood up and listened. The only
sound was the uneven breathing of the dogs and cats. I tiptoed into the kitchen and heard the cockatiels snoring above
the stove and saw Edgar asleep in the corner by the wood
box, with Marmalade the cat curled up on top of him. The
night time was the only time they hung out together. I undid
the latch with the tiniest sound, went out and closed the
door behind me.

You had to know exactly where to step in the dark on
Sheba's island or you could run into the rock or fall into the
sea. I started down towards the little cove, where the sub
was. There! I saw the silhouette of Ziegfried! But he didn't
see me. It amazed me I had managed to get out of the house
without waking Sheba. I was developing stealth. But as I
stared at Ziegfried's hulking shape, not moving, I realized
that Sheba was there too, swallowed up in his gigantic arms.
They were hugging. I smiled. I should have known. Sheba
had probably heard him in the boat when he was miles away.
I turned around like a mouse and snuck back into bed.

In the morning they were sitting at the table already when
I came into the kitchen. Sheba was wearing summer flowers
in her hair and was beaming. Ziegfried looked as happy as a
man could be, sitting next to his queen. He smelled like the
sea. Edgar was leaning against his shoulder, shutting his eyes
nervously every time Ziegfried reached up to scratch him.

“Al! Great to see you! I had a feeling you'd be heading
north. It's a good thing I brought your parka.”

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “I hope it's the right way
to go.”

“I think so. It's the shortest. It has the least traffic. And
now you've been given the thumbs up.”

He meant Sheba. As logical and scientific as he was, he felt
deep respect for Sheba's magical knowledge. He had observed
enough unexplainable phenomena to hold her in awe. He
said that four hundred years ago they would have burned
her at the stake for being a witch. Sheba said that they had,
in another life, which was why she was more comfortable
living on an isolated island off the coast of Newfoundland.

After breakfast, Ziegfried and I carried supplies from the
boat to the sub. I didn't bother to pack them tightly yet; there
would be lots of time to do that at sea. While we worked, we
talked.

“The Northwest Passage is twenty-eight hundred miles
long, Al, along the most southerly route possible. That won't
bring you to the Pacific yet, just the Beaufort Sea. But from
there the Pacific should be accessible enough by the end of
summer. You need to allow at least a month to reach the
Beaufort Sea.”

“A
month
? We crossed the Atlantic in a week and a half!”

“Ice, Al. Ice is the demon waiting for you, even though
they say the Arctic is freer of ice than ever before. You'll have
to see that for yourself. Once you leave the Labrador Sea and
wind through the passage you'll have to slow down. It isn't
icebergs or sheets of ice you'll have to worry about. It's
calved ice.”

“Calved ice?”

“Small chunks that break off icebergs and float just beneath the surface. They're called growlers and they're pretty
much invisible. The force of your impact with a growler is
the mathematical square of your
speed
of impact.”

“Which means . . .?”

“Which means: if you are sailing at ten knots and you
strike a growler, the force of your impact will be one hundred
units. But if you are sailing twice as fast, at twenty knots, then
the force of your impact will be four hundred units,
four
times as much. Get it?”

“Umm . . .”

“Imagine falling out of a tree, Al. If you climb just a bit
higher, it's going to hurt twice as much when you hit the
ground. Get it?”

“Got it.”

Then he dropped his bushy eyebrows, stared into my eyes
and spoke in his gravest tone, which reminded me of the old
man in
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
, a poem Sheba gave
me to bring along on this journey. “Once you enter the ice
flow, Al, sail as slowly as you can stand it. Then . . .
cut that
speed in half
.”

“
What
? Really?”

“Really.”

“But that will take forever.”

“No. It will take a month. Have you visited your grandparents yet?”

“Yup. My grandfather asked me if I was still sailing around
in that old tin can.”

“He did?”

“I said, yes, of course I was. He's still hoping I'll join him
on his fishing boat. He sure doesn't give up easily.”

“The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, Al.”

“What?”

“It's an expression. It's good to be stubborn, Al. Serves you
well at sea.”

“Oh. My grandfather said it was a good thing I was exploring the world now because I'd be too afraid to do it
when I was older. Isn't that weird?”

Ziegfried didn't answer. He just listened.

“I asked him what he meant by it and he said, ‘You think
you're invulnerable when you're young. Everybody does. You
think nothing bad's going to happen to you. Then, when
you're a little older, you realize that bad things do happen,
even to you. No, you'd better get all your exploring out of
your system now, Alfred, while you're still young enough.' I
told him I didn't agree with that at all, that it doesn't matter
how old you are. You either face your fears or you don't, it
seems to me.”

“That's well said, Al. What did he say to that?”

“He started talking about the weather.”

Ziegfried laughed. “Sounds like your grandfather. He
cares a great deal about you, Al. Make no mistake about it.
That's just the way he expresses it.”

“I suppose.”

We sailed for the Pacific—Hollie, Seaweed and I—on the
first of August, just after midnight. Ziegfried and Sheba saw
us off with hugs, words of encouragement, and lots of tears.
Ziegfried and I would meet up somewhere in the Pacific, as
we had done in Crete the year before. We hadn't decided
where yet. As I backed the sub out of the cove, turned and
headed out to sea, I stood in the portal and saluted them.
They were the greatest people I would ever know. Now
my
tears fell, when no one could see them.

The sub cut through the dark like a migrating bird towards the North Pole. Hollie and I stood in the portal and
let the wind blow in our faces as the bow ploughed the sea
in front of us. We would sail due north for seven hundred
miles before turning west into the Hudson Strait.

Ziegfried's warning to sail slowly weighed heavily on my
mind. I wasn't worried about puncturing the hull if we
struck ice. It was built of reinforced steel and supported by
a strong wooden frame on the inside. There was also an insulating, shock-absorbing layer of rubber in between the
wood and steel. Ziegfried had designed the sub to bounce
like a ball if it ever struck anything. And we had struck lots
of things before, including ice, and bounced well enough—
sort of how you would bounce off the floor of a gymnasium
if you fell. I was more concerned that a few good blows
would jar things loose or crack the engine casing or break
mechanical components in the drive shaft or battery set-up,
not to mention the discomfort and danger to the crew being
knocked around inside.

But for the first seven hundred miles we could expect ice-free sailing. And that is what we received.

It took three and a half days. We sailed on the surface with
the hatch wide open and the engine cranked up, cutting
eighteen knots, our fastest cruising speed, with a couple of
knots of current pushing us from behind. I wished sailing
was always so easy. To sleep we dove to two hundred feet, shut
everything off and drifted in the deeper, slower current travelled by naval submarines and whales, either of which would
have woken me with a presence on sonar.

I spent those days repacking our supplies: the canned food,
boxed food and dried food that stuck out from every corner;
the bananas, grapes and fresh bread that hung down from
the ceiling; and the oranges, apples, potatoes and root vegetables that crowded the compartments in the stern. And I
pored over the maps and charts I had of the Arctic.

The engine hummed along with a sound like perfection.
Some people find the sound of waves, or the wind through
trees, peaceful and soothing. For me it was the hum of our
engine, even though it was, as Ziegfried called it, a “well-behaved explosion in a pretty tank.” I found it comforting
and reassuring. It was the sound of power and independence. It made me feel strong and confident.

We were carrying enough fuel to sail roughly ten thousand miles. That would take us to the far side of the Pacific.
I would buy diesel somewhere over there to sail back. If we
ever ran out of fuel I had the stationary bike, which could
propel the sub at a speed of four knots when I pedalled
steadily. At that rate, taking into consideration winds and
currents, and how much I could pedal each day, it would
probably take us about a year to reach the far side of the
Pacific. But I wasn't planning on running out of fuel.

ZIEGFRIED WAS AN
amazing inventor. Of all his inventions,
besides my sub, the one I liked the most was a doggie treadmill for Hollie. I thought it was really cool and hoped it
would solve a big problem for the long distances we travelled: Hollie's need for exercise. It was two feet long and ten
inches wide. It fit sideways against the inside hull, beside the
stationary bike, when it wasn't being used. I simply dropped
it into place whenever I pedalled, and Hollie would jump
onto it immediately. The treadmill had a tiny motor with
three speeds. Hollie could trot, run gently, or, if he were
bursting with energy, run fast. He loved it.

He ran at the very front, leaving half of the track free.
When he wanted to get off, he ran faster and jumped off the
front. The only thing we didn't anticipate was Seaweed's interest. If Hollie got something new, Seaweed wanted it too.

Seaweed would jump on after Hollie but could only stay
on when the treadmill was in trot speed. Seagulls weren't
built for jogging. He was twice Hollie's height but took up
less space with his feet. When Seaweed was on the treadmill
I had to turn my head the other way because I would start
to laugh. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. But Sheba
had told me never to laugh at an animal or a bird—it was a
sign of disrespect—so I had to look the other way.

Fortunately Hollie preferred a steady run, and Seaweed
could only stand beside him, glare at him and occasionally
nip at the track with his beak. I didn't think it was unfair;
Seaweed got to fly outside for hours every day.

Another piece of new equipment was an inflatable kayak,
a birthday present for me from Ziegfried and Sheba. I had
tested it already and it was amazing. It was just ten feet long
and cut through the water like a razor. I kept it folded beneath my seat at the panel board. That was one thing about
travelling in a sub: everything had to be kept in its own exact
spot and measured to the quarter inch.

The kayak inflated quickly, just like the rubber dinghy. We
ran an air hose up the inside of the portal, and the kayak
took only thirty seconds to inflate. I made a test to see how
quickly I could pull it from under my seat, climb the portal
with it, unwrap it, inflate it, grab the paddle pieces, screw
them together into one, throw on a life jacket and jump into
the kayak with Hollie. Two and a half minutes. We should
have been on TV.

Deflating the kayak, folding it, wrapping it up and putting everything back in its place took about fifteen minutes.

The last piece of new equipment was a desalinator. It
looked like a fancy teapot from ancient Persia. The metal on
the bottom was thin and heated quickly, but the sides were
insulated to keep the heat inside. You filled the pot with salt
water and it started boiling from the bottom, creating steam,
which separated the salt from the water. Steam doesn't carry
salt because it's too heavy. The top of the pot was sealed
except for a narrow copper tube through which the steam
would escape then condense into water in another pot. But
if you ran the water through only once it was still too salty
to drink. Running it twice was better, though it was still a
good idea to run it through a filter after that to remove the
last traces of salt and other minerals, like gold. Ziegfried said
that sea water carried traces of gold. The desalinator was
good for cleaning rainwater too, which could be kind of
salty at sea.

I discovered that first-run water from the desalinator was
perfect for making stew. Sheba had shown me how to make
a pot of stew in a small pressure cooker. I used one potato,
one carrot, one onion, one clove of garlic, one tablespoon of
butter and one pinch of spice—a mix of thyme, sage, pepper and rosemary. Ziegfried raised his eyebrows and called
it “sub-stew.” But if you ate it with a hard biscuit it was really
good!

Seven hundred miles north of Bonavista Bay we turned
sharp to the port side. The Button Islands were to the south
and Resolution Island to the north as we entered the Hudson Strait. We had been sailing only three and a half days,
and I couldn't believe how much the climate had already
changed. The temperature had dropped from twenty-one
degrees to three. The air was fresh but cold. The water
looked different too, although I couldn't say why. It was just
as dark at home. But here there was something else, something foreboding.

It was so hard to take Ziegfried's advice and slow down. If
we didn't slow down we could sail through the Northwest
Passage in a week. With Ziegfried's advice it would take a
month. Could we, maybe, split the difference?

I decided to cut our speed to twelve knots. Even that was
so slow I could barely stand it. I climbed the portal, strapped
on the harness, stood on top of the hatch with the binoculars and scanned the water. There was no ice. And it was
sunny.

Nothing showed on radar either, although my mariner's
manual said not to trust radar for ice. Sometimes it will show
and sometimes not. Sometimes it will leave just a shadow on
the screen like the dry spot under a tree after a rain shower,
except that sometimes a huge tree leaves only a small spot.
Don't trust radar, they warned. Okay.

So we sailed at twelve knots, which was slower than I
wanted but faster than Ziegfried advised. Seaweed took to
the air like a kite. I pedalled. Hollie ran on the treadmill.
Then we stood in the portal for a few hours together and
leaned against the hatch and watched the sky grow less
sunny, although the sun never actually went away. It just settled behind some clouds and turned red. Then, very slowly
the red faded to grey, like an element cooling down on a
stove. As the sun faded, the temperature dropped. Now I was
pretty sure it was freezing. It had that feel to it, as when ice
forms on puddles overnight. Hollie sniffed the cold air.

“Can you smell ice, Hollie?”

He looked up. Maybe.

At the end of the day the sun was still up, glowing weakly
behind darkening clouds. It was going to rain, I thought.
Without darkness it was hard to know when to sleep. I
steered closer to Baffin Island. We would have to drop anchor to sleep. To do that we'd have to sail close to shore. The
strait was a thousand feet deep in most places.

By the time the first drops of rain fell, the cliffs of Baffin
Island loomed above us. They were tall and gloomy, like
silent warriors standing at the edge of the land. I bet they
were beautiful in the sun. Seaweed had flown to shore. I
dropped anchor in forty feet, shut the hatch, dimmed the
lights, climbed into my cot and drifted off to sleep. Hollie
made a reconnaissance of the sub's interior before settling
on his blanket. I heard him sniffing. I knew what he was
sniffing for too. I had hidden his rope.

To keep him sharp.

Nine hours later I woke, stretched, climbed the portal and
opened the hatch to find a very miserable bird sitting on the
hull in freezing rain. “Good morning, Seaweed. Want some
breakfast?”

I fed the crew, put the kettle on for tea, poured oats into
the pot for porridge and slid the bar across the inside of the
portal to do chin-ups. By the time the water was boiling I
had done three sets. It would have been nice to jump over
the side for a swim but the water was about half of one
degree. At that temperature I would be unconscious in a
minute, dead in four. There's no such thing as swimming in
Arctic water. Hollie would probably last a little longer than
that. Seaweed could sit on the water all day.

I did have a wetsuit though. It was under the mattress on
my cot. Wrapped up in the wetsuit I might last fifteen minutes or so. It was hard to say. That's what was so threatening
about Arctic water: it would kill you if you fell in and didn't
get out fast enough. That's why I had an unbreakable rule
never to come out of the portal without the harness strapped
on properly when the sub was moving. It was a matter of life
and death.

After breakfast we weighed anchor and turned into the
current, heading northwest. Everything was misty and rainy
now, a very cold rain. Tough as he was, Seaweed must have
had a nasty night. He settled down on his spot opposite
Hollie and went into a deep sleep. Hollie sniffed around
until he found his rope under the treadmill, carried it triumphantly to his blanket and mauled it. I climbed the por
tal with the binoculars, strapped on the harness and stood
up for a look.

It was bleak. Visibility was poor. Should we slow down
more? That's what I couldn't decide. We hadn't seen any ice
yet and the water still looked clear, so I decided to stick to
twelve knots. Even at that speed it would take three days just
to pass through the Hudson Strait.

The next day was exactly the same—quiet and uneventful. The slow pace was really getting on my nerves. I tried to
stay busy by studying charts, watching sonar, reading books
and pedalling the bike. But by the morning of the third day
I just had to get out of the sub, I was feeling so restless. I
decided to take the kayak for a paddle.

The only safe way to do that was to wear the wetsuit. But
climbing into the wetsuit was like stretching a balloon over
a pop bottle. I was sweating like crazy when I finally got it all
zipped up. Now, only my face was exposed, and my cheeks
were squashed together like a pumpkin. A wetsuit wasn't
comfortable until you dived underwater and the material
became wet and lost its tightness.

I pulled the kayak from under my seat. Hollie jumped up
and wagged his tail excitedly. “No, Hollie. I'm sorry. You
can't come today; it's too dangerous.”

He frowned. His shoulders dropped and his eyebrows fell
over his eyes. Seaweed opened one eye then shut it. I felt like
a mummy climbing out of a tomb trying to get up the portal with the kayak and paddles.

The wind had picked up a little bit and it blew freezing
rain into my face. I considered turning back but the wind
wasn't that strong yet and I wasn't planning on going far.
Besides, it had been so much work getting the suit on. So, I
inflated the kayak, screwed the paddle together, shut the
hatch and climbed onto the hull. I didn't bother with a life-jacket because the wetsuit was pure buoyancy. Don't be nervous, I told myself. It was just the same as getting into a
kayak anywhere else. Since I had never fallen out of a boat
of any kind ever, why should I worry about it now, even
though I was as stiff as a board? I sat down, tied a rope
around my waist and through a handle on the kayak, gave a
push against the hull and was off.

The kayak was so quick. It didn't matter which way the
current was flowing. It didn't matter how strong it was, or
the wind; the kayak easily skimmed across the surface. This
was how the Inuit used to hunt seals, in kayaks made out of
sealskin. I read once that a hunter had travelled all the way
from Greenland to Baffin Island in a sealskin kayak. Wow!

After a few minutes I was surprised to see the first chunk
of ice. I couldn't see it clearly through the freezing rain. It
was teetering on the edge of the shore next to some rocks. It
was just one piece of ice all by itself. Then, oddly enough, it
dropped into the water and made quite a splash. I was surprised to see how quickly the current grabbed hold of it and
pulled it out. That was weird. The current wasn't
that
strong.
What was going on?

Curious, I paddled towards the chunk of ice. It was mostly
submerged, just as a growler was supposed to be. I could
barely see it. But it was there. It must have picked up a few
rocks on shore because I saw a dark spot right at the tip of
the little piece jutting up out of the water. But it was coming
in my direction so quickly. How could that be? I stopped
paddling for a second. I raised myself up with my hands on
my thighs and tried to see more clearly. It wasn't more than
a hundred feet away now. And then I saw something that
made me panic: two eyes. It wasn't a chunk of ice at all—it
was a polar bear!

I spun around so fast the front of the kayak came right
out of the water. The polar bear chased me all the way back
to the sub. It was such a strong swimmer I couldn't believe
it! But I stopped panicking when I realized I could paddle
faster than the bear could swim. Still, it kept coming after
me and that was frightening. I couldn't make the slightest
mistake, such as dropping the oar or slowing down. Polar
bears eat seals and I must have looked like a seal wrapped up
in my black wetsuit.