by Philip Roy
I jumped inside, grabbed a bag of dog biscuits and climbed the portal. I had to do everything with my left arm; my right one was too sore now. There was blood on the ladder and it was slippery. I climbed up, stuck my torso out and shook the bag in the air. The rain poured down harder. “Come on, Seaweed! Come on!”
I waited. I had never hoped for anything so much before in my life. I shook the bag again. “Come on, Seaweed!” Now I was feeling really sick and weak. I was afraid I was going to faint. I wondered how much blood I had lost. With a last look through the binoculars I saw the men in the trawler trying to collect their net. They didn’t seem to care about the approaching storm. I couldn’t watch anymore; I had to go inside.
I climbed down the ladder, but was so dizzy now I had to lie down or I was going to faint. I made it to the controls and dropped to my knees. The hatch was still wide open so I reached over and put my hand on the switch. Once I pulled the switch I could dive and leave all this madness behind. But what about Seaweed? Was he even still alive, or were those just different birds on the boat?
I had to lie down. Something inside told me not to fall asleep without shutting the hatch. The sub would fill with water and swamp. I had to protect myself. I had to protect Hollie. But what about Seaweed? My eyes welled up with tears as I gripped the switch, because I had to pull it. I had to before I fell asleep.
But I couldn’t. I lay down on the floor, shut my eyes and fell asleep. The last thing I felt was Hollie licking my face, but he seemed so far away.
When I woke there were about two inches of water inside the sub. The sump pumps were running full blast. The sub was tossing and pitching. Waves were splashing in through the open hatch. My arm was throbbing with pain. My head felt funny, dizzy. I was sick. I tried to raise my head but I was so weak. I was confused. Where were we? Where was Hollie? I managed to turn my head. Hollie was on my cot. So was Seaweed!
I cried with happiness. I reached up for the automatic switch, shut the hatch, then hit the dive switch. As we went down to a hundred feet I fell back down on the floor.
I had to clean and dress my wound. It didn’t matter how sick I felt, I had to do it. I rolled over and crawled on my hands and knees to the stern, where the first-aid kit was. The sump pumps were taking the water away. I felt chilled. If I could turn up the temperature I could dry everything out and warm up. I wondered how much blood I had lost. It wasn’t the kind of wound that bled constantly. It was a long gaping cut on my arm. The skin and fat were just gone. It was white at first but had filled in with blood. Now there was dried blood all over my arm, chest and stomach. It looked really bad. Hollie hopped off the cot when the floor started to show again. He started licking me. He knew I was injured. I glanced at Seaweed. He looked fine. It was another seagull they had shot.
I pulled the first-aid case down to the floor and started cleaning the wound. I poured peroxide over the open cut, and it made me cry because I was so weak and it hurt. I didn’t care. Then I wrapped wound dressing around it, taped it and took tablets for the pain, though I wasn’t expecting them to help much. I just wanted to sleep. I crawled over to my cot. Seaweed hopped off and I pulled myself up and collapsed. I laughed and cried nervously at the same time. All I had wanted was Seaweed to come back, and he had. Then I thought of all the creatures that had escaped from the net. Was it worth getting shot in the arm? Yes, it was. Then I laughed again, cried again and went back to sleep.
Chapter 12
“. . . WHAT’S THE SITUATION, AL?”
“I cut my arm.”
“. . . bad cut? Are . . . okay?
“I’m okay. But it’s swollen and really sore.”
“How . . . happen?”
“Uhh . . . I fell.”
“. . . fell?”
“Yes.”
“. . . bad cut?”
“It’s getting swollen.”
“. . . fell where?”
“Uhh . . . down the ladder.”
“. . . the ladder?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t want to lie to Ziegfried but I didn’t want to tell him I got shot either. He would worry too much, especially when there wasn’t anything he could do. It had taken hours to reach him on the shortwave. There was static but I could hear him.
“How big . . . cut?”
“It’s about four inches long, half an inch wide and really deep.”
“Did you . . . bone?”
“I don’t know. It’s really sore.”
“Can you open . . . hand?”
I tried to open my hand. “A little. Not much.”
“And you fell . . . ladder?”
“Yes.”
He paused. “Al?”
“Yes?”
“Tell me . . . really happened?”
“I’m okay. Really.”
“Al . . .”
“It’s just my arm that’s hurt. I’m all right now.”
“Al . . .”
“Uhh . . . I got shot.”
“Shot?”
“Yes, but I’m okay now. Honestly. It’s just really sore.”
There was a really long pause. “Are you there? Ziegfried?”
“Who shot . . . Al?”
“A fisherman.”
“. . . fisherman?”
“I was freeing some dolphins and turtles from their net.”
There was another pause. And then, “. . . want me to come?”
“No! No! Don’t come. I’m fine, I really am. I just need to know what to do about my arm. I’m afraid of it getting infected. What should I do?”
“You’d better . . . tetanus . . . Al. Also . . . antibiotics. Where are you?”
“I’m in the Pacific but I’m not close to anything. I’ll probably reach the Marshall Islands in a week or so.”
“Find a . . . ship, Al . . . for medical . . . supplies . . . tetanus and . . . otics. Do . . . understand?”
“Yes. I understand. I will. Thank you. Say hello to Sheba and my grandparents, please.”
“Will do . . . sends . . . love. Al . . . typhoon . . . careful.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Look . . . self, Al.”
“I will. Please don’t worry. Thank you.”
“Call . . . tomorrow . . .”
“I’ll try.”
“Bye, Al.”
“Bye.”
I knew this was typhoon season in the Pacific. What did ships do when a typhoon came? Where did boats like that trawler go? According to my radar the trawler hadn’t left the area. Were they just planning to ride out the storm? They must have known what they were doing because the trawler was old. It had spent many years on the sea. But what was their plan when a typhoon was coming? They didn’t seem to be doing anything yet.
Ziegfried said I should seek medical help from a passing ship, that I needed a tetanus shot and maybe some antibiotics. Well, I knew one boat I wouldn’t be asking. But where would I find another one out here?
I was feeling better than before. I was just really weak and felt like sleeping a lot. My arm was swollen and very sore but it was not infected, as far as I could tell. I kept it clean and tried to hold it above my heart so that the swelling would go down. I could move my fingers but couldn’t open and close my hand. I didn’t think the bone was broken, but maybe it was chipped. I knew that bones took longer to heal than muscles and skin.
If a typhoon was coming there was no point in trying to go anywhere. Better to let it pass. If I sailed five hundred miles in one direction the typhoon might follow me there. Besides, in a submarine you can stay beneath the storm. The only thing I needed to do was surface from time to time to recharge the batteries and grab some air. That was hard to do in a storm, but not impossible. I didn’t really know what a typhoon was like.
By the time we surfaced again, ten hours later, the sea was a different world from when we had last submerged. The swells were gigantic now, maybe the biggest ones I had ever seen. But they weren’t cresting, which meant that they hadn�
��t reached their full height yet. I was guessing the winds were blowing forty to fifty knots, which was already a storm. When the rain hit you in the face at that speed it hurt!
I didn’t open the hatch fully because, with only one good arm, it might be too hard to pull it down again. I took a peek and shut it. We stayed on the surface for half an hour, ran the engine and pumped air into the pressurized tanks. It was a punishing half-hour. The waves swung us up and down and tossed us around quite a bit. Hollie and Seaweed were used to it. They hopped onto my cot, which swung freely from bungee cords, so you didn’t feel the movement of the sea as much. They settled down close to each other in the centre and prepared to wait it out.
There was a vessel on radar seven miles away. It must have been the trawler. It wasn’t moving. They must have planned to ride out the storm. They didn’t have any choice now. Probably they would point the bow into the oncoming waves. Still, they were in for a heck of a ride. I wondered where Hugh was. What did sea turtles do during typhoons?
We went back down to one hundred feet. I fiddled around a bit, made hot chocolate, put on some music and sat down on the floor by the observation window and leaned against the wall. Hollie jumped off my cot immediately and joined me. Then Seaweed joined us. It was peaceful. I had a hard time leaving my wound alone. I kept looking at it even though it was so ugly. I wondered how bad it really was. It was going to leave a scar; that was for sure. For the rest of my life it would remind me of the fight to save those turtles, dolphins and sharks. Strange that I would care about saving sharks—they would probably eat me if they could; that was their nature. But seeing that man stand on the boat and shoot them just felt so wrong. Every molecule in my body knew it was wrong. Everything I felt about life—about what was good and bad, what was valuable and not valuable, what was worth living for and not—rose up in me at the sight of him shooting them. If I hadn’t done something about it, it would have haunted me all my life. I just knew. I was glad I had done something. Now I would wear the scar and remember.
I supposed that fisherman was really trying to kill me.
Chapter 13
I HAD HEARD OF mega-waves. They were gigantic waves at sea that few people ever saw and lived to describe. They were supposedly hundreds of feet high. That was pretty hard to believe. A hundred-foot wave was a tsunami, and that was already unbelievably high. That was as tall as three or four houses stacked on top of one another. A wave like that would hit the shore so hard it would flatten houses and tear trees right out of the ground. Were there waves two or three times bigger than that? I didn’t think so. But if you were in a sailboat and a hundred-foot wave came along I bet it would look about five hundred feet high. That’s what I thought, anyway.
I changed my opinion a bit the next time we surfaced.
We were fifty feet from the surface, when something didn’t feel right. I felt the sub roll the way it did in a trough. But that was impossible; we weren’t even close to the surface yet. I rushed to the periscope. The sub was moving sideways. I took a quick peek. We were still underwater but the water was grey, not black. It should have been black. We were in the trough of a giant wave. We hadn’t come up to the surface; the surface had come down to us.
I hit the dive switch, grabbed Hollie with my left arm, raced to my cot and threw myself onto it, holding Hollie as snugly as I could. If the wave sucked us up, it was going to roll us like a shell in the surf. It was going to be a very rough ride. Seaweed could fend for himself better because he could jump into the air.
The stern went down sharply. We were going up. I just hoped that by the time the wave threw us, the tanks would be full of water and we’d submerge before the next wave grabbed us again.
After a few seconds we levelled out. I saw a lighter grey coming through the observation window. We were riding the crest of the wave. I held on as hard as I could with my arms and legs. It was frightening. The sub rolled upside down and we started to fall. Hollie and I fell off the bed, hit the ceiling and rolled a little. That hurt! Then the sub righted and we fell back. Then it turned upside down again and rolled around and around. I couldn’t hold on to Hollie. He was lucky he was so small and quick on his feet. A bigger dog would have been hurt. Seaweed was fluttering in the air the whole time, but even he was banging against the walls. Now we were diving again. I felt the next wave’s trough tug at us again but it wasn’t enough to pull us up. We went down quickly.
I dove to two hundred feet. I checked Hollie and Seaweed. They seemed all right. If they had bruises I couldn’t see them beneath their fur and feathers anyway. I had banged my forehead, back and arms. I sat and lifted the dressing off my wound. It was bleeding again. I was sore everywhere. I decided not to attempt surfacing again for at least ten hours. I didn’t know how big that wave was but I wouldn’t laugh at stories of mega-waves anymore.
Ten hours later, we came up very slowly. At fifty feet I didn’t feel any tug whatsoever. At twenty-five feet I felt the spinning movement of current, but that was typical in a storm. So, I rose to periscope depth but stayed ready to fill the tanks and go back down. Through the periscope I saw a dark, stormy sea. The waves were high, maybe thirty feet or so. We were tossing around a lot but wouldn’t somersault. Hollie and Seaweed jumped onto the cot anyway. I sat at the controls, turned on the engine and cranked it up. I wanted to keep the batteries full. That would only take ten minutes or so; we hadn’t used much power. I turned on radar and was surprised to see a vessel in the water just three miles away. The signal was appearing and disappearing but that was probably because of the waves. Or maybe it was Hugh, but I didn’t think so because he would have swum far away by now.
The vessel wasn’t moving. I wondered if it was the trawler. Probably. I was curious to know, and so, after we went back down to fifty feet, I motored in that direction on battery power. Quarter of a mile away I surfaced again. I picked her up on radar right away. Strangely, I also picked up something on sonar, about half a mile down and falling slowly. Something had sunk.
From quarter of a mile I couldn’t see anything through the storm: no lights, nothing. I motored closer. Maybe it was Hugh. But what was half a mile below and drifting down? It was pretty big.
As I closed in on the signal through the storm, I caught a glimpse of a capsized lifeboat. I was pretty sure it was from the trawler. It had the same orange stripe. The trawler had sunk.
I tried to make a search of the water around the lifeboat but it was very difficult. If I’d had the use of both arms I probably would have opened the hatch and tried harder to search but I didn’t. I wasn’t going to risk getting swamped, especially when I didn’t see any signs of life.
A strange feeling came over me. There were powers bigger than the trawler and the storm. Bigger than the sea. It wasn’t something I could explain. It was just a feeling. I felt bad for the crew. They were all dead now—though it could have been us too. This was the risk all sailors took. I couldn’t help but wonder: if I had not pulled their net down, would they have left the area in time and survived the typhoon? Maybe. I didn’t really think so, but maybe. On the other hand, a lot more sea creatures would have died.
I knew what Sheba would have said: she would have called it karma. It was karma that the trawler had sunk, though I never really understood what she meant by that. She would also say that their ghosts would haunt the sea now. I wasn’t sure about that either. All I knew was that today those fishermen had died. Someday, hopefully far, far away, my turn would come. That wasn’t a good feeling, but it wasn’t a bad feeling either.
The typhoon passed and took the wind and rain with it. The sun came out strong again and the sky turned blue. But the sea still rolled in large swells. They were twenty feet at least but were wide at the bottom, round and smooth. The sub rode on top of them with so little tossing and pitching it seemed almost calm. The surface lost its choppiness and became smooth and silky. It looked like silver. Each day the swells became smaller until eventually the surface spread out flat. Now, there was
no wind, waves, rain, nothing but an almost eerie calm. And then, like a ghost, the fog appeared.
I had never seen fog like this before. You couldn’t see it coming; it just appeared. It wasn’t fog that settled and made your hands and face wet. It was lighter than that. Light passed through it, yet I couldn’t see the horizon. Hollie stood in the portal with me and we could see the stern of the sub very clearly, and the water a little beyond that, but the water beyond that just seemed to disappear into nothingness. It was the strangest feeling to open the hatch and climb out. With no sounds from the sub, no sounds from the sea or sky, there was nothing but a spooky stillness that made me feel as though we were in a dream. We couldn’t see, hear or feel anything. The only thing we could do was smell— that very slight smell of something burning.
And then, there was a beep on the radar. I thought of Hugh right away. But the signal was strong and not moving. It was ten miles away. I decided this time I would sneak up on whatever it was. So, I submerged to periscope depth, cranked up the batteries and motored towards the signal.
Forty-five minutes later we were close but I couldn’t see anything through the periscope. Sonar told me there was a ship here, probably a freighter by the size of her. But she was just sitting there. That was weird. I surfaced but kept my hand on the dive switch, ready to go down at the first sign of danger. Ten minutes later nothing had happened so I climbed the portal and opened the hatch. The ship was right beside us but I couldn’t see her. I smelled her though. Then I heard something. I thought I must have been losing my mind. It sounded like an elephant. Then, I heard a lion. Okay, I thought, now I am dreaming.
But I wasn’t.
Chapter 14
THE FREIGHTER WAS DRIFTING. In the fog there was no visibility, wind or waves, only stillness. It felt as if we were floating on air. It was weird and a little creepy. And I had definitely heard an elephant and a lion.