Submarine Outlaw

by Philip Roy

  The following night I decided to moor close enough to Bonavista to walk into town in the morning and find a telephone. Cape Bonavista, with its bright lighthouse, was easy to spot. But the town didn’t have much of a harbour and it was difficult to find a cove to hide the sub. Back and forth I scanned the coast with the periscope before choosing a spot close to town. Seaweed stayed with the sub as I climbed a hill, passed through a woods and stepped onto the road.

  I had no idea which day of the week it was. No one was around. Maybe it was Sunday. Then I saw a school bus. Eventually I saw a church, some stores, a bowling alley, and . . . a telephone booth. I put a quarter in, called the operator, and was connected to Ziegfried.

  “Al! Where on earth are you?”

  “Bonavista.”

  “Bonavista! Where did you tie up?”

  “A few miles from town. I had to walk.”

  “How’s the sub?”

  “Perfect. I have a crew.”

  “A crew?”

  “A seagull.”

  “Hah!”

  “His name is Seaweed. You would like him; he’s got a great eye for things and is good company.”

  Ziegfried laughed.

  “I met a wonderful lady too.”

  “You met a lady? Where would you meet a lady? Al . . . don’t tell me she’s a mermaid?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so. Did you ever hear of the Ghost Ship of Bonavista Bay?”

  “Oh yes. I know people who have seen her. Have you seen her, Al?”

  “I don’t know. I saw something. It followed us on the radar, then there was nothing.”

  “Al. You said, ‘us.’ Who’s ‘us’?”

  “Seaweed and me.”

  “The seagull?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen, Al. The coastguard is searching for you. If they think you’re a threat, they’ll bring in the navy. If the navy thinks you’re a spy sub they won’t think twice about firing at you. The first shot would be a warning shot, Al. And Heavens Alive, if they ever do that, surface right away and raise a white flag. They’ve got such sophisticated missile systems they could hit you on the nose from a hundred miles away.”

  “Well, they can’t hear me when I’m just pedalling. I already escaped from the coastguard once.”

  “Gosh, Al, I thought you might have to run from pirates someday; I never thought you’d be running from the authorities.”

  He paused.

  “That makes you an outlaw.”

  “Don’t worry about me; the sub is really small and can hide anywhere. They’ll never catch me.”

  “I hope not. And if they do, perhaps they’ll realize you’re not a threat and will just let you go.”

  “They have to catch me first. By the way . . . that lady’s name is Sheba, and she is really nice, and, she keeps birds.”

  “Does she now?”

  “She’s really interesting.”

  “Is she now?”

  “Yup.”

  I started laughing.

  “Well, that’s good, Al. Keep your eyes on the horizon now.”

  “Will do.”

  After talking with Ziegfried I went into a store to buy some pop and candy — things I didn’t have on the sub. I swung open the door, and there, standing at the counter, were two sailors from the coastguard! I was startled but quickly realized there was no way they could know who I was. As I went to the back of the store for pop I heard them talking with the clerk.

  “So you think maybe it’s a Russian sub, do you?” said the clerk.

  “Who knows? Whoever it is, they’re pretty shrewd. They gave us the slip twice. But we’ll catch them. The navy’s got a tight radar net ten miles off shore. We’ll catch them when they try to get through that.”

  The second sailor nudged the first one.

  “Joe. You’re not supposed to say anything to anybody, you know that.”

  “Oh, who’s he gonna tell? Don’t tell anybody I told you that, okay, buddy? I didn’t say anything.”

  The clerk shrugged his shoulders.

  “Don’t worry; I didn’t hear anything. You don’t suppose that sub’s carrying nuclear missiles, do you?”

  “No, no. It’s just a tiny thing. It’s one of those mini-subs, you know, that sneak into harbours to spy on naval bases and such.”

  “Joe, will you shut up? We’re not supposed to say anything.”

  “Oh yah. Sorry. Listen. Don’t repeat anything I told you. I didn’t say anything.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t breathe a word.”

  When the sailors left the store I went up to the cash. “Were those guys with the coastguard?” I asked innocently.

  “Yah. They’re chasing that Russian sub.”

  “What Russian sub?”

  “The sub that everybody’s talking about. The sub that’s spying on us. Haven’t you heard? Where’re you from anyway, I haven’t seen you here before?”

  “I’m from the country. I’m just visiting here for the day. Do you know where the coastguard ship is, I’d love to get a look at it?”

  “It’s up at the lighthouse. But don’t tell anybody I told you; they’re trying to be really secret about it.”

  “Okay, I won’t. Which way is the lighthouse?”

  “Just take that road there. Or, follow those two sailors who just left.”

  I did exactly that. Before long, I caught up to them. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to talk to my pursuers.

  “Hey, are you guys with the coastguard?”

  “We sure are. What’s your name?”

  “Alfred.”

  “Hello, Alfred. My name is Joe, and this is Eddie.”

  “How are ya?” said Eddie.

  “Fine,” I said. “Where’s your ship?”

  “Just off the point,” said Joe. “We’re keeping a close eye out for that submarine.”

  “Oh yah. I heard about it. Do you think it’s dangerous?”

  “Well, you never know. If it’s spying on us it can’t be up to any good. But don’t you worry about it; we’re gonna catch that thing any time now.”

  I nodded and chewed my candy.

  “Hey, could I look at your ship? I’ve never seen a coastguard ship up close.”

  That, at least, was the truth.

  “Sure you can. Just come up to the lighthouse and you’ll see her. Are you thinking of joining the coastguard someday?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s a good life,” said Joe, “if you like the water.”

  Joe and Eddie were so friendly I wished I could have told them I was the submariner. I even wondered if Joe might have kept it a secret. Then I thought: nope, probably not.

  “So . . . what will you do with the spies when you catch them?”

  “Oh . . . the navy will put them in jail; interrogate them. They’ll be put on trial, and probably locked away in some prison somewhere for fifty years.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “But . . . what if it’s just somebody local, somebody who built their own submarine?”

  Joe and Eddie burst out laughing.

  “Well . . .” said Joe, “in the first place, nobody’s got that kind of technology, except the navy, and us.”

  “The coastguard doesn’t have submarines, Joe,” said Eddie.

  “Well . . . the navy. And secondly, even if they did, they’d never be able to outsmart the coastguard and the navy. Nope. This submarine might be clever, but we’ve got a radar net, and tomorrow the Sea Kings are coming. That will put an end to it for sure. Look. There’s our ship.”

  The road came to an end at the lighthouse. Down below, in the water, sat the bright red and white coastguard ship. A tinge of nervousness struck me when I saw it.

  “Sorry, Alfred,” said Joe. “If it were any other time we’d invite you down to visit the ship but right now we’re on high alert and visitors are not allowed.”

  “That’s okay. I’m just glad to see it.”

  I was ab
out to say, “I hope you catch that sub,” but couldn’t quite get the words out. Joe and Eddie waved as they went down the hill. At the last second I had a thought.

  “Hey! When do you sail?”

  “Tonight!” yelled Joe.

  I saw Eddie nudge Joe again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The coastguard slipped away in the night, but didn’t go far. I watched through the periscope as she went out gently, just a few miles offshore. I knew she was listening in all directions with every device on board, playing her part in the radar net. I could only hope that, as before, she couldn’t detect us on bicycle power. My plan was to pedal around the cape and sneak down the coast. But the presence of Sea Kings would make that a lot more difficult. Sea Kings were helicopters that could spot anything in the water in the daytime. No doubt they would fly up and down the shore, checking every cove and harbour. My daytime hiding places would have to be a lot more secretive.

  It was a long night of pedalling. Seaweed kept me company but the nighttime had finally caught up to him and he found a cozy spot on the floor and went to sleep. I listened to the radio. The news said there were reports of an unidentified submarine off the coast of Newfoundland. The navy wouldn’t comment on whether or not they were investigating. I couldn’t believe it; we had made the national news. We were famous . . . sort of. But all I really wanted was to be free to explore. If we could just escape this net.

  By morning we rounded the cape into the mouth of Trinity Bay. Now we faced a difficult choice. Straight across the Bay was about twenty nautical miles, which we could sail by engine in about two hours. But it was open water all the way. The other option — to hug the coast — would take us all the way in and around Trinity Bay, which, by a combination of pedalling, battery and engine power, would take at least four to five days. What to do? I decided to sleep on it and started searching for underwater formations to hide us from the sky. Then something occurred to me. Joe and Eddie said the coastguard and navy were watching their radar at night, and that the Sea Kings would be out in the day, scanning the coastline like hawks. What if I sailed straight across the mouth of the bay, on the surface, right in the middle of day — the last thing anybody would expect? It seemed pretty risky, and yet, perhaps the best strategy was the one nobody would think of. I remembered what Joe had said — nobody could outsmart the navy and coastguard. The truth was — that was my best chance.

  A little offshore I dove to two hundred feet and sat on the bottom. I decided to sleep first and cross the bay in the late afternoon. That would give the Sea Kings time to arrive. My biggest fear was to run into them on our way across.

  Seaweed took to the sky as I went down. I hoped he would be there when I came back up. Eight hours later, he was. With the hatch wide open and the engine cranked as high as it would go, we set off across the bay. I sat down with a cup of hot chocolate and watched the screens, once in a while climbing the portal to join Seaweed in searching the sky.

  All was quiet until about halfway across when the radar beeped. There was a vessel sailing in the other direction about eight miles away. I looked through the binoculars. Probably it was a freighter. It never changed its course. It would have known we were there but would not have been able to see us. Would that make it suspicious? Perhaps. A little further on there was another beep in the same lane of traffic. Maybe they were sister ships. They might have been navy ships, but they never changed their course.

  Soon I spotted land. I wanted to get as close as I dared, then dive and finish by pedal. There was barely half an hour left; then, just twenty-five minutes; then twenty; then . . . another beep on the radar. It was ten miles behind us. Suddenly it was nine miles and closing.

  “A Sea King! Quick! Seaweed! Get inside! We have to dive!”

  In a panic I grabbed a bag of raisins and shook it. Seaweed started down the portal. I shut the engine, sealed the hatch, filled the tanks and dove as quickly as possible. I took a quick glance at the ocean depth before shutting off the sonar and dove to two hundred and fifty feet. It was the deepest the sub had ever gone. Seaweed quickly pecked at the raisins, then squawked for more.

  “Quiet, Seaweed. We have to be very quiet.”

  Without radar or periscope I had no idea what was happening on the surface or in the sky. There was no way to know if the Sea King had seen us or not but I was pretty sure they couldn’t see us now.

  “Seaweed, we have to wait until dark.”

  He seemed kind of restless so I played with him. I tossed him raisins, one at a time. I threw them high or low or off to one side. He jumped at them like a dog catching a ball.

  When I knew it was dark I started pedalling. It would take at least two hours to pedal in. At two hundred and fifty feet we would strike the bottom long before we reached the shore so I frequently jumped off the bike, scurried over to the observation window and stared down with the floodlights. A Sea King would have powerful floodlights too, but would have to know pretty much where we were coming up to be able to catch us in their light. I was more concerned they would drop a cable with sonar, or that they had placed another ship in the area already.

  An hour from shore I caught a glimpse of the ocean floor. Actually, Seaweed saw it first and pecked at the window.

  Now the tricky thing was to come in without radar or sonar. We had to surface and watch through the periscope for ships or rocky promontories. And there was no light, except for the blinking lights on shore, which guided us in. My plan was as before: find a cove, sneak in beneath a fishing boat and hide.

  We rose gingerly and I opened the hatch and let Seaweed out. Nothing showed through the periscope but shore lights so I climbed the portal and took a good look. Clusters of lights blinked here and there on the water, which meant a dock or a few moored sailboats. As I pedalled closer, I discovered the lights were coming from a tugboat hooked to a barge of scrap metal. No doubt the tugboat was going to pull the barge to St. John’s for recycling. Suddenly I got a wonderful idea.

  Keeping clear of the tugboat, I pedalled in an arc and came up behind the barge. I dropped a line into the water to determine the depth. Seventy-five feet. That meant there was plenty of room underneath. Barges were wide but not very deep. The only thing I didn’t know was when it was leaving.

  Under shelter of night I moored the sub to the back of the barge, then climbed on to have a look around. It was like a floating junkyard. There were lots of pipe, iron girders, aluminum rails, steel rods, empty tanks and wheels. The metal was packed tightly and it amazed me the barge could even float.

  I went to the front cautiously and peeked at the tugboat. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. There were a few dim safety lights here and there but the cabin was in darkness. The tugboat was connected to the barge by a heavy chain that disappeared beneath the water between them.

  And so, sitting on the ocean side of the barge, my feet dangling over the side, feeling restless, I proceeded to do one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. I pulled a pack of matches from my pocket, lit one and dropped it into the water. The match made a fiery plunge to the ocean. I imagined it a WWI airplane falling from the skies. I lit another and watched it burn a brilliant streak all the way down to the water. It was kind of hypnotic. I lit several more and watched them burn brightly before disappearing into blackness. But one of the matches ignited too close to my fingers and I threw it sideways to avoid getting burnt. The match landed on the floor of the barge, where, in a mixture of gas and oil, it spread into a larger flame. I stared with amazement as the flame grew. Jumping to my feet, I stepped on it, trying to snuff it out, but the flame was floating on a pool of spilled fuel. Suddenly it roared up to my height and I had to back away. I couldn’t stop it. For a few seconds I stared in disbelief. Then I realized — this would be seen from shore.

  I looked around for a pail or something to hold water. But the water was too far to reach anyway, unless I jumped in, and then I wouldn’t be able to reach the top of the barge again. I looked at shore. Surely
people would see the fire and come out to investigate. Then they would see the sub. What should I do? What should I do? All my life I’d heard people say, “Don’t play with matches!” Now I knew why.

  If the fire continued to spread, I knew it might cause an explosion. I stared hard at shore. Did a light just go on? Yes. Someone had started up a boat and was coming out. I jumped onto the sub and unhooked it from the barge. A floodlight scanned over the water. I jumped inside, shut the hatch and went down to periscope level. Sure enough, two boats were racing out. I dove to fifty feet and sat quietly and listened.

  In a few minutes I heard the motors of two small boats. I flipped the sonar switch. It revealed the barge and tugboat, two small boats at the scene and two more on their way out, nothing else. I engaged the batteries, went a mile straight out and surfaced. From that distance the fire on the barge was tiny. Thank Heavens there was no explosion. Still, I felt terrible. I might have blown the whole thing sky high.

  With several boats in the area I took the chance to switch on the radar. It was clear within a ten-mile radius. I turned on the radio. They said a big storm was coming. All oceancraft were advised to take cover. That was funny; there weren’t any signs of a storm. I looked around for Seaweed, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was a good time to leave, but I couldn’t go without my crew. And so, I opened a can of beans for supper, got comfortable in the portal and watched the fire burn. It burned for most of the night. They must have decided to let it burn itself out without spreading.

  For hours I watched the barge and the boats around it, until a thin line of red appeared on the horizon and I remembered the old saying:

  Red sky at night, sailors’ delight;

  Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

  Well, if they were predicting a storm, the sky seemed to agree. Now I had to go, or at least dive. But where was Seaweed? I waited as long as possible, then went just beneath the waves, leaving the periscope up. Maybe, with his amazing vision, he would see the periscope from shore. I climbed onto the bicycle and started to pedal. But the morning was my bedtime and sleep was catching up with me. If only there were a place hidden from the Sea Kings, where I could steal some sleep, then look for Seaweed again just before dark. A couple of miles out, the ocean floor went down to one hundred and fifty feet. I engaged the batteries, went out and dove to the bottom, put the lights low and drifted off to a peaceful sleep.