Journey to Atlantis (3 page)

SHEBA’S ISLAND WASN’T much bigger than a soccer field. It was just a rock really, jutting out of the ocean at the end of a chain of tiny islands in Bonavista Bay. It had a hidden cove on the mainland side, where I could tie up the sub out of sight. The other side faced the stormy Atlantic. Her cottage was protected from the wind and sea on three sides by rock. The open side, all windows, gave her a spectacular view of the sunrise, and, according to her, of ghost ships, mermaids, dead sailors and other fantastic creatures from the deep. In truth, she had never claimed to see mermaids in Newfoundland, only to hear them.

Sheba was the friendliest and most interesting person I
had ever met and I loved visiting her. She was tall and lean and had long bright red hair that fell over her shoulders and all the way down her back in tiny, shell-like curls. She wore brightly coloured dresses and lots of jewellery. She looked directly into your eyes when she spoke, and her eyes, as green as a cat’s, sparkled with joy. If there were such things as friendly witches who used magic for good purposes, that’s what Sheba would be. And maybe she was; I was never really sure. She lived with about three dozen animals — dogs, cats, birds, goats, lizards and snakes. It was a zoo. They made a fuss over you at first, but settled down after a while. So long as you didn’t mind sitting with a cockatiel on your shoulder, a cat on your lap and a goat nipping at your hair, you wouldn’t even know they were there.

Living in a place hidden in fog a good part of the time, Sheba had created a miraculous system of lights that brought sunshine inside her cottage on the darkest days. Her kitchen was an indoor hydroponics garden, year-round. She grew tomatoes, peppers, onions, oranges, lemons, spinach, mushrooms, garlic, herbs, flowers and all kinds of things I had never heard of before that she put in her teas. She made mysterious teas that affected your moods. You never really knew what to expect and she wouldn’t tell you.

I moored the sub to the rock, climbed out with Hollie and waved to Seaweed, who stayed on the bow. There was too much “society” on Sheba’s island for Seaweed.

“Keep an eye on the sub, Seaweed.”

Sheba looked greatly relieved when she saw me.

“Oh! Alfred! Thank Heavens you’re all right!”

She threw her arms around me and hugged me. She was about half a foot taller than I was.

“Hi, Sheba. Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because I read your cards two nights ago and they said you would be in danger yesterday. Were you in danger yesterday?”

“Well …”

“You were! I knew it! But you are all right now?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Good!”

She slapped her hands together. “Come in and have tea. Watch your step. Ziegfried is still making repairs. He will be here tomorrow. Oh, Alfred, I am so happy! My two men will be here at the same time once again!”

I liked the way she referred to us as her “men.” Sheba always treated me as a full-grown man.

The tea had a licorice smell. A goat with sad eyes sniffed at the corner of the wood stove and was about to singe his whiskers.

“Edgar!” said Sheba. “This tea is not for you.”

Edgar looked at me. I shrugged. Sheba sat down opposite me, took my hands in hers and looked deeply into my eyes.

“So. Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know … It started two days ago with a strange feeling.”

“A premonition?”

“Maybe. It was a dark feeling.”

“Like something terrible was about to happen?”

“Yes. Sort of.”

“Good. You must learn to trust those feelings.”

She poured the tea. I had learned to drink her teas without milk. Don’t curdle the passion of a flower with the discharge of a cow’s stomach, she had said.

“When we surfaced, there was a really bad storm.”

“I know! The worst storm in years. And then?”

“Well, the radio said there were three fishing boats lost.”

“So, you went out to look for them.”

“Yes. But two of them were already sunk.”

“How did you know?”

“I found them later, on sonar.”

“At the bottom?”

“No. One was at two hundred feet, the other at seventy-five. They were drifting down slowly.”

“Horrible! And then?”

“I found two men in the other boat.”

“Alive?”

“One of them … one of them …”

I felt a heaviness in my chest. Emotion rushed through me and my eyes started to water. I covered my face.

“Oh, Alfred! Let your tears fall. It’s good for you. Tears are rain from the heart. You must let your heart rain free or the rest of your body will dry up and wither.”

I wiped my eyes.

“It’s embarrassing. I never cry.”

“Of course you do! Everybody does. Ziegfried cries every time he sees a new kitten.”

I laughed. It was true. Ziegfried cried as easily as a little girl. I wiped my cheeks and continued.

“I didn’t realize I was so upset about it.”

“Of course! It is
terribly
upsetting! So, one of them was alive and one wasn’t?”

Every time I tried to speak, my chest got that heavy feeling and my eyes started. I took a deep breath. I noticed Sheba was crying along with me. She cried a lot too.

“He … he told me they were brothers.”

She held my hands again and gently shook them.

“And you were able only to save one of them. Is that what is bothering you?”

I took another deep breath. My chest started to calm down.

“I just wish I had been able to get there sooner. I was too late to save them both. He cried when I pulled him away from his brother.”

“Oh, Alfred. It is so awful, but you saved his life!”

“I know. I just felt so bad having to separate them.”

“So you left the dead brother at sea?”

“No. I promised I would take him too, so I went back.”

“Did you put him in your submarine and carry him to shore too?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Alfred! That was very brave! Now his ghost will not haunt the sea.”

I took a drink of my tea. It filled my mouth with licorice flavour and my mind drifted away to images of a forest, dark and misty, a forest I had never even seen before. It was peaceful but mysterious. Everything about Sheba was peaceful and mysterious.

“But tell me now what you want to do, Alfred. Where do you want to go next?”

“I want to explore.”

“Explore what?”

“Well …”

“Yes?”

“There’s something I want to look for.”

“And that is …?”

“It might sound silly because it probably doesn’t exist.”

Sheba looked so deeply into my eyes I felt like she could read my mind.

“Try me.”

Well, if I couldn’t tell Sheba, who
could
I tell?

“I want to look for Atlantis. But I know it probably doesn’t exist.”

She sat up straight and her face broke into a beaming smile.

“That’s perfect!”

“Do you think so?”

“It is so perfect, Alfred. For thousands of years people have been waiting for someone to find Atlantis again, and now, you are the one to do it. I am so happy!”

“But I’m not even sure it really exists. It might be just a myth.”

“Of course it exists! It’s waiting for you and your submarine to find it. Nobody has been able to find it because they didn’t have the means that you have, or the determination. It is your destiny. Oh, Alfred, what a wonderful destiny you have.”

I couldn’t help smiling from ear to ear. “Well, Jacques Cousteau looked for it with a submersible.”

“Did he
live
in his submarine? Did he travel around the world in it the way you do?”

“No.”

“Well?”

Sheba was great. How wonderful to know someone like her.

THE COTTAGE SHOOK beneath Ziegfried’s feet. He came in with a water tank on one shoulder and a crate of fruit on the other. He also brought sacks of dog food, birdseed, canned food, flour, sugar, honey, raisins, soap, diesel fuel, and many other things necessary for an Atlantic crossing. Ziegfried already knew about my plans to look for Atlantis and he agreed wholeheartedly with Sheba, although he was inclined to agree with her about pretty much anything. He worshiped the ground on which she walked.

“Where there’s smoke, Al, there’s fire,” he said. “Atlantis sure left a lot of smoke.”

He never said he believed it existed, only that it would be
worthwhile to search for it. I didn’t think he believed in mermaids either, but he wouldn’t contradict Sheba, who was absolutely certain they existed.

“But Al, you were on the news again. They said you brought in two sailors. Is that true?”

I nodded.

“And only one of them was alive?”

I nodded again. I was afraid he was going to ask me a lot of questions and get me tearful again. It was bad enough in front of Sheba.

“So, you carried a dead body in the sub, then?”

I nodded once more. Then Sheba rescued me.

“Okay, you two, this pot of stew will not get eaten by itself. Neither will these fresh scones.”

“Heavens Above!” said Ziegfried. “Fresh scones! We must have done something right somewhere along the line.”

He put his hand on my shoulder as he passed.

“You are the bravest man I’ve ever known, Alfred. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

I shrugged. Seemed to me it took less courage to bring the sailors in than it did to talk about it.

While Ziegfried worked on repairs to the cottage I read maps, charts and books. My plan was to sail straight across the Atlantic, stop at the Azores along the way, then turn south when I reached the coast of Portugal. I would sail as far south as Gibraltar, then enter the Mediterranean Sea from there. Once on the Mediterranean, I would explore in
earnest, especially around the Greek islands, although the Azores was also one of the places legend suggested might have been the site of Atlantis. So was North America, though I had a hard time imagining Atlantis off the coast of Newfoundland. Sheba didn’t.

“The Renaissance started,” Sheba said, “when people began digging in their own backyards.”

I looked at Ziegfried. He nodded like a child.

“Yah, but that was Italy,” I said, “not Newfoundland.”

“You never really know, Al,” said Ziegfried, “until you look. What do your exploring instincts say?”

That was a good point. I would have to think about that. Having grown up in Dark Cove, a tiny fishing community, I had learned that everything exciting always happened somewhere else, and usually pretty far away. If I was following Atlantis’ smoke, there certainly wasn’t much of it in Newfoundland. True, the Vikings probably landed here, and buried dead sailors here. Some people claimed that the Irish came too. But that was all thousands of years after Atlantis disappeared. Besides, you couldn’t very well dig up your backyard when your backyard was nothing but rock. My exploring instincts told me to get out into the ocean in my submarine and go somewhere else.

We would carry about three months of supplies with us and pick up more as we went along. Ziegfried and I planned to meet up in a couple of months, somewhere warm. We were thinking maybe Crete. He said he had always wanted to go to Greece.

And so I was busy poring over maps and charts and books on ocean currents and the topography of the sea. There were also history and geography books to examine because there were specific things to look for, such as sunken ships, treasure, submerged temples, and of course, sunken cities. I pored over the books with a passion that surprised even Ziegfried.

“Boy, if your history teacher could see you now, Al, eh?”

I raised my head out of a book. “I’m not
studying.
I’m just searching for stuff. These books are clues.”

“I don’t know,” he said with a grin. “Some people might say it’s the same thing.”

“It isn’t.”

“Okay. If you say so. By the way, who
were
those people who lived on Crete before the Greeks?”

“The Minoans.”

“Were they the ones who worshiped the bull and created that crazy maze?”

“Yup.”

“Oh. Okay, thanks, Al. It’s nice to hear from somebody who knows.”

“I’m not studying.”

“I know.”

Ziegfried wanted to talk about the storm after Sheba went to bed. That didn’t surprise me; drowning was probably the only thing he was afraid of. We spoke in hushed voices as we settled in our sleeping bags in front of the bay window. Hollie made himself cozy on my feet. The room was spread with
cats and dogs, but over the course of the night they collected on and around the sleeping bags, most of them on Ziegfried. The goats stayed outside, as did Seaweed, the toughest of all.

“How did the sub handle in the storm?” Ziegfried asked.

“Great. The changes are amazing. She’s quite a bit faster.”

“How much?”

“Twenty-one knots.”

“Fantastic. Under water?”

“Sixteen.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“And the bike?”

“Five knots, flat out.”

“Fair enough. What about your wake?”

“Perfectly true.”

“Good. And the engine … noisier?”

“Yah, a little, but I don’t mind. It feels safer.”

I knew that was what he wanted to hear. “Good. Good.”

He paused.

“Did you take in much water then?”

“Yah … quite a bit. The sump pumps worked great though. All my stuff stayed dry.”

“Good.”

Another pause.

“Then can you tell me how on earth you got those two
men inside the sub all by yourself, and one of them not even alive?”

“I don’t know, I just did what I had to do, I guess. I got rope burns.”

“I noticed.”

“The pitching of the sub helped a lot.”

“I can imagine. It’s a wonder you didn’t go right upside down. But didn’t the fact that one of the sailors was already dead kind of discourage you from trying, Al?”

“Not really. I promised the man I would go back for his brother. When I think about it now, it’s a lot different than it was at the time. I just did what I had to do. That’s what happens. A funny kind of energy comes over you.”

“Well, that’s what they say. I can’t imagine it though. Seems to me you’re cut out for this seafaring life, Al, more than anybody else I ever heard of. All I can say is, if I’m ever at trouble out at sea, and I sure as heck pray that never happens, I hope it’s you coming for me. Good night, Al.”

“Good night.”

Ziegfried had a way of making me feel ten feet tall.