Journey to Atlantis (7 page)

SEA MINES WERE ghosts from the war. They were designed to blow up when they were struck by the hull of a ship and send the crew to a watery grave. But sometimes they blew up from the vibration of a ship’s engine, or even when they merely detected an electrical current different from their own. They were dropped into the sea by the thousands during the war. Afterwards, special ships called minesweepers went around and cleaned them up. But they couldn’t possibly find them all because many had drifted so far away. Sometimes they drifted for fifty years or more and floated to strange places, such as up rivers with the tide, and buried themselves in mud and sewage, waiting for someone to find
them and set them off. Many years later they were still killing the grandchildren of the soldiers who had been fighting when the mines were first dropped in the sea! Talk about a sinister weapon!

The jet-skiers saw the sub and stopped jousting. They stood up on their motored mounts and stared at me as I drew closer to the mine. My plan was to keep the area around the mine clear until the authorities came out to take care of it. Then I would explain exactly what had happened. I would have tried to reach them by short wave but I couldn’t speak Portuguese.

So I waited and waited, but nobody came. The jet-skiers waited too, and drifted closer. They could see me staring at something, but I think they were more afraid of the sub than some unknown object in the water. I waved to them and pointed to the mine but they didn’t understand. Then I realized, they were even younger than me. They were just kids!

The mine was drifting in. Soon it would be in danger of striking a rock on the floor of the bay. There were swimmers on the beach and people lying on towels watching us, but nobody coming out. I couldn’t wait any longer. I went inside and tied my longest ropes together and made a lasso. I shut the engine and moved closer on battery power to about two hundred feet from the mine, then tied one end of the rope to the hatch and threw the rest over my shoulder and jumped into the water. I swam over and carefully tossed the rope
over the mine. It took five tries, and I shut my eyes every time, as if
that
was going to help. Then I swam back to the sub. My plan was to pull the mine out to deeper water and figure out what to do with it later. The jet-skiers finally seemed to understand what was going on because they stopped inching closer, spun around suddenly and bolted away.

As soon as I climbed into the sub, flipped the engine switch and pulled the rope taut … the mine blew up! It made a terrible blast, like a sharp crack of thunder. I climbed the portal. Rain was falling down in the sunshine. A large wave formed and was rushing outward. It hit the sub and splashed me in the face. I grabbed the binoculars and took a quick scan. I didn’t think anyone had been hurt. People were gathered on the beach and pointing excitedly towards us. There was no doubt in my mind what to do next … get the heck out of there! I jumped back inside, dove to periscope depth and headed straight out to sea. I would have dived deeper but wanted Seaweed to be able to track us. I wanted to get out of the twelve-mile zone before somebody caught us. I would feel a lot more comfortable explaining the situation in international waters.

From two miles out I watched on radar a handful of small boats collect in the bay, but no one came after us. I surfaced, waved a slice of bread in the air and waited for Seaweed. He didn’t show up. Shoot! That was strange. He was so good at keeping us in sight. Something must have distracted him.
Then, I had a terrible thought: where was Seaweed when the mine exploded?

We had to go back

We couldn’t come in on the surface now, not after having fled. If they believed we had caused the explosion, then saw us racing back in, they might think we were coming to do it again. I sat for a moment and tried to think. What would I do if I were protecting a harbour and knew there was a foreign submarine in the area? That was easy, I’d do the same thing the Canadian coastguard and navy would do, I’d bring in airplanes and helicopters. I’d drop sensitive listening devices into the water and set up a radar net offshore with half a dozen ships. That’s what I would do, and so that’s what I decided to prepare for.

I didn’t know how much time we had to get inside the bay and hide, and hiding was definitely what we had to do. If they did bring aircraft, they’d spot us so easily it wasn’t funny, unless we were submerged beneath something. And the only thing we could submerge beneath was a boat.

It didn’t take long to get back into the bay. We were sailing on battery at periscope depth. There were already more boaters in the bay. Probably the water-skiers had come over for a look. There were also some stationary vessels closer to shore. Moored sailboats? I scanned with the periscope. Yes, there were a handful of sailboats a couple of hundred meters off the beach. To the right was a small pier raised on wooden stilts. I wondered how deep it was beneath the pier.

I submerged completely and came in just above the bay floor. Past experience taught me that if Seaweed saw the periscope, there was a good chance he’d be riding on top of it. So much for invisibility.

With sonar I guided the sub to a slow stop directly beneath the sailboat closest to the pier, then shut off the batteries and turned off the sonar. Now we could not know what was going on above, but at least we were undetectable. I would wait until the middle of night, then carefully surface to periscope depth and take a peek. In the meantime I figured Hollie and I could get some sleep, although it was hard to sleep wondering if Seaweed was okay.

It was three-thirty when I let enough air into the ballast tanks to rise to periscope level. I did it gently, trying to make as little sound as possible. I didn’t turn on the sonar, because if they had put any kind of listening devices into the bay they would immediately pick up our sonar waves and know we were there. I climbed onto the bike and pedalled just enough to move the sub out from underneath the sailboat. I didn’t want to bump into it coming up.

As soon as the periscope broke the surface I spun it around searching for lights. There were boats in the bay still, and boats offshore, though nothing was moving. Was it a radar net? Probably. I would deal with that later. I was more concerned with finding Seaweed first. For that, I had to surface.

I brought the sub up so that the portal was just a foot
above the surface but the bow and stern were still submerged. In the darkness, right next to the sailboat, I didn’t think anyone would see us. As quietly as possible I opened the hatch and stuck my head out. Would Seaweed be waiting there, as he so often was? No, he wasn’t. But there was a man in the sailboat, and he was as surprised as heck to see
me.

“Thundering tarnation! What the … who are
you
?”

I was at least relieved to hear that he spoke English. He sounded like maybe he was from England.

“My name is Alfred. I’m from Canada.”

“Canada?
Canada?
But … but you’re the one they’re out looking for. You’re the one who blew up the bay.”

“I didn’t blow up the bay, I was trying to remove a dangerous mine and it blew up.”

“A sea mine?”

“Yah!”

“Really?”

“How else could there have been such an explosion?”

“I don’t know … because you are in a submarine, going around blowing up things. What are you doing in a submarine in the first place?”

“Exploring.”

“You’re exploring in a submarine?”

“Yes.”

“And you sailed here all the way from Canada?”

“Yes.”

He folded his arms together, nodded his head up and down
and looked at me as if he were trying to make up his mind.

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“You are, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

For a minute, neither of us knew what to say. I was guessing he was about sixty.

“Were they looking for me with helicopters today?”

“Well, I guess so! Helicopters, airplanes, boats and scooters.”

“Scooters?”

“Jet-skis.”

“Oh. I would have escaped already but I had to come back for a crew member.”

“A crew member? I thought you were all by yourself. Your submarine looks pretty small for a crew.”

“It’s a seagull.”

“Now you’re putting me on.”

“No, it’s true. His name is Seaweed.”

“Well, I don’t know what to think, but you’d better come up for a drink there, young Alfred. What do you say?”

“Sure.”

HIS NAME WAS REGGIE. He was from Australia. He lived in his sailboat and sailed it around and around the world. But it took him a very long time. His last trip around the world took nine years. The one before that took twelve. He was married six times — to four different women! He said he’d explain that one after he had a drink. He used to be a wine dealer in Australia, but one day he impulsively sold his business and his house, bought his sailboat and never looked back. The Azores, he said, was one of his favourite places to “dry out.” I didn’t know if he meant dry out from the sea or dry out from drinking.

After I carried Hollie up the portal, shut the hatch and
climbed onto the sailboat, Reggie brought out a rope and tire and we tied our vessels together so that the sub’s portal was tucked in tightly beneath the bow of the sailboat, with the tire in between to prevent chafing. The water in the bay was calm.

“Yah, they took a close look at the bay with their helicopters and chased you pretty far out to sea. They’re probably still chasing you.”

“I think they’ve set up a radar net,” I said, and pointed out at the ships on the horizon.

Reggie strained to see.

“Is
that
what they’re doing out there? Well, you’re a clever bugger, aren’t you? I get the feeling you’ve been through something like this before.”

“I have.”

He grinned.

“Here they are … scanning the water for a toothpick in a haystack, and there you are hiding right beneath my boat like nobody’s business. I’d say that calls for a drink!”

He disappeared into the cabin and returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses. He wiped the glasses with his shirt, filled them with wine and handed one to me. I had never had wine before but figured I’d just sip it to be friendly. Reggie raised his glass in the air.

“Well, here’s to the most impromptu meeting I’ve ever had on the water, and to a brand new friendship!”

We clinked glasses and I took a tiny sip. It tasted like very
strong bitter tea without sugar or milk. Why would anyone drink that? Reggie emptied half of his glass in one go.

“So, now, you’re missing your crew. They’ve jumped ship, have they? Well, I have a feeling I know where that seagull of yours is.”

“Really? You do?”

“Yes, I think I do.”

“How? Where?”

“You see that hill over there?”

He pointed to the lights of a little village about a mile away.

“Yes?”

“Well, on the other side of it there is an open dump.”

“Okay … so?”

“Well, at the dump there are a couple of hundred seagulls. I reckon your first mate has gotten himself mixed up in a big seagull party and forgot all about his ship leaving port. Wouldn’t be the first time a sailor got left behind.”

I wondered if he was right. Seaweed certainly liked to mingle with other seagulls whenever we came to shore but had never stayed behind before. The thought of him hanging around a dump didn’t impress me very much.

“Do you think you could tell me how to get there so I can see if he’s there?”

“I’ll do better than that, Captain. I’ll take you there myself.”

So, Reggie, Hollie, and I climbed into a rubber dinghy and rowed to shore. It was still dark. The sun would be up
in an hour. I was worried the authorities might spot me and wonder who I was, but Reggie shrugged it off.

“Nah, don’t worry about that. Nobody will be out of bed for hours, and they wouldn’t care anyway.”

Hollie was delighted to be onshore once again and ran around at top speed. I walked beside Reggie at a snail’s pace. Everything about his movements was slow and easy-going. In his unbuttoned shirt, wrinkled skin and worn-out sandals, he had the look of someone who had been on vacation for so long he didn’t know how to do anything else. I would have liked to walk faster but he kept reassuring me that it wasn’t far and that I needn’t worry about the villagers waking up and discovering me. “For all they know,” he said, “you’re just another bozo on the bus.”

We passed the village and climbed the hill. The horizon had turned blue behind us and we were beginning to hear birds. Hollie settled into a trot beside us and kept his nose close to the ground, attentive to every sound and smell. Once in a while I picked up the scent of something foul, as if we were approaching a dead carcass or something. The higher we went, the more frequent those whiffs of bad air became. Hollie seemed to be very interested in them. When we reached the summit, turned to the left and went around a bluff, a powerful rancid smell hit us. Just as Reggie had said, the beautiful hill concealed an open-pit dump, which looked like a small volcanic crater filled with garbage. On the far side, halfway around the rim, was a large flock of seagulls,
not yet awakened to the day. The first rays of sun were about to break from the edge of the sea.

Staring at a couple of hundred sleeping seagulls, I had no idea how to find Seaweed. Then, something occurred to me.

“Hollie?”

He looked up eagerly.

“Go find Seaweed!”

I didn’t even have to say it twice. Hollie took off as if it were the most important mission of his life.

“Well, look at that!”

Reggie was impressed. I was proud. Hollie ran around the circumference of the dump, dodging piles of garbage here and there and occasionally jumping over things. As he approached one end of the flock, the birds began to unsettle. Two or three hopped into the air, and then — with a sound like a rushing wind — the whole flock rose. They lifted off the ground like a carpet, and their morning cries pierced the air like sirens. Hollie ran beneath them, barking his little head off. He was in his glory.

I waited for a few minutes, while the seagulls spread out in the sky and began to wind upwards in a spiral. Some headed towards the sea, many just settled back on the ground, and one flew directly towards us.

“Seaweed! You rascal!”

I took a handful of dog biscuits from my pocket, tossed one towards him and one towards Hollie, who was racing back. That was not a good idea! Suddenly, hundreds of
seagulls descended upon us and I realized my mistake — you didn’t feed one seagull at a dump! We turned on our heels in a hurry and headed back towards the village.

I was anxious to return to the sub before we were spotted, but Reggie insisted we stop by a certain bakery that would just be opening.

“You can’t beat Portuguese bakeries,” he said, “and the smell of freshly baked bread in the morning!”

He was right. In all my life I never smelled anything so wonderful. We stepped into the bakery in the front of an old house. Loaves of bread and dozens of pastries were stacked on shelves like bundles of gold. I wanted to eat everything! But I didn’t have any Portuguese money. No worries, Reggie said. He bought two loaves of bread and a bag of pastries. The baker already knew Reggie and insisted we take extra pastries for free. When Reggie introduced me, the baker shook my hand and I noticed that his hands smelled good too.

We stuffed out faces on the way back to the boat, then Hollie and I returned to the sub to sleep. Seaweed stayed on the boat with Reggie. They had taken a shine to each other, which was unusual for Seaweed. He probably sensed that Reggie was about as “salty” as a man could be. And Reggie thought that Seaweed was the perfect first mate. As I shut the lights and lay down on my cot I thought how, in a sea-faring life, you sometimes make friends in the strangest ways.