by Philip Roy
It was peaceful waking, too. But that was at a hundred and fifty feet. Rising to the surface I discovered that the storm had rolled in during the day. It wasn’t raining yet but the wind was very strong and the swells were high. This was the kind of weather where you wanted to stay indoors, or, on the ocean floor. On the other hand, this was a great opportunity to sail out of the area altogether since the coastguard and navy would not be on the go, nor would the Sea Kings be in the air. I had an important objective first, of course — to find Seaweed.
There wasn’t much time. Twilight had settled early. I was three miles offshore and visibility wasn’t good. Turning on all systems I sailed full speed towards the barge. Half a mile away I stopped — hoping the tossing waves would hide the sub from shore. I stood up on the portal with the harness and scanned the sky for any sign of my friend. Around the barge was a flock of birds struggling in the wind. Was Seaweed amongst them?
Before long, one of the birds separated from the others, rose high into the air and began to fight his way in my direction. It must have been Seaweed. He had spotted me.
“Come on, Seaweed!” I yelled. “You can make it!”
It wasn’t easy for him. The wind tossed him around like a sheet of paper, and sometimes threatened to knock him into the sea. But gradually, with a determination that really impressed me, he came closer. Suddenly the rain started and came down hard. It became much more difficult to see. One moment I could see Seaweed; the next I couldn’t. I was afraid he might get injured trying to land on the sub in such high winds. I needn’t have worried; he was too smart for that. Coming out of the sky in a desperate lunge he made a crash landing away from the sub, then merely paddled the rest of the way. When he was close, he took to the air again. I ducked inside and he followed immediately after. Inside, he shook the beads of water from his head and shook his feathers out. I promptly offered him two slices of bread, which he gobbled in a flash, then blinked as if to say thank you.
“Glad you made it, Seaweed.”
I shut the hatch and we headed out to sea.
Chapter Seventeen
Until you have witnessed a storm at sea, you can’t imagine how violent it can be. Giant waves throw you up in the air like a leaf, then hurl you down and crush you beneath tons of water. They spin you around and around like a washing machine, and cover you in an attempt to drown you. Sometimes they simply smash against you like a wall of bricks. Not for a second can you find any peace.
We dove to one hundred feet and switched to battery power. We weren’t far from Grates Cove and the mouth of Conception Bay. I figured if we could get across the bay during the storm we’d be pretty much home free. St. John’s wasn’t far from the other side, and, with all the sea traffic in and out of the capital city we would be next to invisible. I had never been to St. John’s before but Ziegfried said you could find really good pizza there.
With the radio on and Seaweed cozy in the observation window, I climbed onto the bike and started to pedal. We had ten hours of battery power. I intended to increase it to eleven by pedalling through the night. And then, I heard something on the radio that disturbed me.
Along with warnings for fishermen and sailors to stay off the water, the radio said that the coastguard had received a Mayday from a sailboat caught in the storm, but that they had to wait until the storm lessened before attempting a rescue. As I pedalled the bike I couldn’t help thinking that somewhere out in the storm, perhaps not so far from me, was a family in deep trouble. They were signalling for help but nobody was coming. The more I thought about it, the more upsetting it was. I remembered being swept over the side of the sub in the last storm and how frightening that was. But this was worse. Was there anything I could do?
I decided to surface and turn on the short-wave. Maybe somebody would know something. Maybe I could reach Ziegfried and ask his advice. Coming up, I could feel the storm had become even worse. Nothing came through the short-wave but static. I flipped through the channels, hearing bits of sound, different languages, but nothing understandable. I scanned the radar. Nothing. The storm was tossing us around so much I had to hold on tightly. Seaweed kept shifting his weight from foot to foot. He wasn’t too happy about the storm either.
“I know, I know,” I said, “we should go back down where it’s quiet.”
But the thought that there were people out there, desperately hoping and praying that someone would hear them and save them, kept me from diving. I decided to try the short-wave again. I went around and around the channels. And then I heard it: a man’s voice. He sounded desperate. “ . . . please help . . . north . . . northwest . . .”
He said some numbers but I couldn’t make them out. There was too much static. He said it again.
“ . . . S.O.S. . . . distress . . . help . . . northwest . . .”
I got part of the coordinates that time, looked at my map and tried to figure out where they could be. The area was too wide; they could have been anywhere. I tried reaching them on the short-wave.
“What . . . are . . . your . . . coordinates?”
There was a pause, and then his voice again, more frantic. This time I got it. I stared at the map. They were at least twenty-five to thirty nautical miles away. In such a storm, that might as well have been a hundred. But I made a decision then that I would do absolutely everything I could to try to help them.
“Hold on!” I said. “I am coming!”
“ . . . how long? . . .” I heard him say.
I thought about it. Three or four hours might have been realistic, I didn’t know for sure, but I wanted to give them hope. Something told me they needed hope as much as anything else.
“Two hours!” I yelled. “Hold on!”
I opened the medicine cabinet and took some seasickness pills, then opened the hatch to give the engine lots of air. Water rushed down the portal in waves. It collected on the floor and engaged the sump pumps. I didn’t like the sight or sound of the water coming in, but so long as the pumps kept it in check we’d be okay. I cranked the engine all the way up and took my seat on the bicycle. It was going to be a very rough ride.
A short while later the radio connection was lost. While that was worrisome, I knew it was probably just the storm. The problem was, they wouldn’t be staying in one place. They were drifting with the current and being pushed around by the wind, and I couldn’t know which way they were going until they came up on radar. I could only head straight for the coordinates they had given me. If I guessed they had drifted north, when they had actually gone south, I would miss them altogether. I had to go to where they were and hope they hadn’t drifted more than ten miles by then.
The pills helped, but not completely. After an hour of a punishing ride I had a headache and seasickness. How I wished we could have dived and sailed by battery. But that just wasn’t fast enough. I watched Seaweed struggle to get comfortable until he got so fed up he hopped onto my swinging bed, and settled down there.
After two hours I thought I was close to their original coordinates but there was no sign of them on the radar. That could have meant a number of things but I chose to believe they had simply drifted out of range. I had to pick a direction and search for them, and fast. Securing myself with the harness, I attempted to drop a line overboard to determine the direction of the current. But that was impossible because the storm was tossing us around too much. And the wind seemed to be coming from every direction and pulled on the line this way and that. In general, I knew the current was coming from the south, except that there were places where it spun around differently. And then, the force of the wind was so strong it might even push a small boat against the current.
There was no time to waste; I climbed back inside and turned north. After ten minutes there was no sign of them. After fifteen, still no beep on the radar. At twenty minutes I couldn’t stand it; I turned around and headed back. I kept trying the short-wave but there was nothing but static. Twenty minutes of going south I knew we weren’t exactly where we we
re before because of the current. It was now almost three hours since I told them I was coming. I felt a terrible sickness in my stomach, which was not from the seasickness. The thought that I had missed them — that they might have drowned — horrified me. I tried not to think of it and kept sailing south. And then . . . a faint beep on the radar.
“We found them, Seaweed!” I yelled. “We found them!”
They were ten miles southwest. I pointed in that direction and kept my eyes on the radar. At nine miles I could tell already they were drifting south. Each mile after that I corrected our course to intercept them.
“Hold on!” I yelled, even though no one could hear me but Seaweed.
The sea was nothing but walls of water through the periscope. When I climbed the portal it was the same, except that I could also see the sky, a whirling gray mass of wind and rain. As we approached their location I realized I had to be careful not to run into them. But I couldn’t see them. Where were they?
Then I thought I saw something. The thing was, I was expecting to see a sailboat. It never occurred to me it might be upside down. Not only had it capsized; it was almost entirely under water and not easy to spot. But there, clinging to its hull, and to each other, were four people. They were wearing sea jackets and life jackets. They had tied themselves together with rope and were half lying across the hull on their stomachs. Every wave was washing over them and they looked exhausted. There were two adults and two children. When they saw me they waved frantically and yelled, though I couldn’t hear them.
I took an inflatable buoy and filled it, tied it to a rope, then tied the other end to the hatch. I came as close as I dared without letting a wave make us collide. It was hard to throw the buoy in the wind. It took six tries before the rope crossed the hull of their boat. They grabbed it and put it over one of their children, then untied her from their ropes. I saw them gesture to her to hold on tightly. Then, they let her go. I pulled as hard as I could. With every pull I wrapped rope around the portal so that it couldn’t escape from my hands. Within minutes I had pulled her alongside the sub. She was really young — just six or seven. She was very frightened and crying.
“It’s okay!” I yelled. “You’re going to be all right!”
I pulled with all my might as she climbed the side of the sub. I climbed out to make room for her. She was shivering uncontrollably and her face was blue.
“You’ve got to climb inside!” I said.
She didn’t bother to look, just obediently put her feet inside and found the ladder. Once I knew she was safe, I pulled the buoy off her.
“Go inside and hold onto something!” I said.
With her frightened face she nodded up at me. I unleashed the buoy rope and began throwing it again. I pulled her brother in. He was about nine or ten years old. Then I pulled their mother. She was a lot heavier but she also pulled herself, so it was much faster.
“Thank you!” she said, with tears running down her face. “God bless you and thank you!”
“You’re welcome. It’s going to be crowded inside. Hold on to something!”
She nodded as she went down. I unravelled the rope again and threw it for the father. He was very heavy in the water but pulled himself over quickly. As he climbed the sub he looked at me strangely, I think, because of my age. He grabbed my arm and looked into my face.
“Thank you, son.”
“There isn’t much room inside,” I said. “Hold on tight until we dive.”
He nodded. He had such a strange expression on his face.
With everyone inside I deflated the buoy and pulled the rope in. I came down the portal, squeezed past the father and son and flipped the hatch switch. The mother and daughter were huddled together around the observation window. Everyone was shivering terribly and their words were broken. I pointed to the space behind the bicycle.
“Please sit there,” I said to the father. “We need to distribute our weight evenly.”
“Yes, of course.”
He sat down.
“If you take your life-jackets off you can sit on them,” I said.
“We’re fine,” said the mother.
“We’re going to dive,” I said “where it’s nice and peaceful. You will see.”
“Is it safe?” said the little girl.
“Becky,” said her father. “Yes, it’s safe. Just do what the captain says.”
I filled the tanks and we went down. “How deep are we going?” said the boy.
“Just a hundred feet,” I said.
I engaged the batteries and headed west.
“It’s so quiet. We’re on battery power, are we?” said the father.
I nodded.
“Yup.”
He took off his life-jacket and sea-jacket and nodded to his wife to do the same. They all took them off.
“There’s water in here,” said the girl.
“There are pumps running, honey,” said her father. “They will take all the water away. You will see.”
I looked at her.
“That’s right.”
“Hey!” said the boy suddenly. “There’s a seagull on his bed!”
“That’s Seaweed,” I said. “He’s my buddy.” The boy and girl smiled.
“He has a seagull for a pet, Mommy,” said the girl.
“I know, dear. It’s really nice.”
She hugged her daughter tightly.
“Everything’s going to be all right now. Everything’s going to be all right.”
Chapter Eighteen
I made hot chocolate and passed it around with bread and jam. Becky fell asleep on her mother’s lap so I coaxed Seaweed off the bed with some bread, and then Jenny, Becky’s mom, lay down on the bed with her. Ricky, her son, made himself comfortable in the observation window. He was quite happy to talk to Seaweed, and feed him bits of bread. John, their father, asked me if he could see the engine. I could tell he just wanted to talk privately.
“I suspected nobody would come,” he said when we squeezed into the engine compartment. “The storm was too wild. By the time it lessened it would have been too late for us. It’s a miracle you were out there, son.”
He shook his head.
“I tried to motor out of it but it kept changing its path and we’d be right in the thick of it again. It chased us for two days.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I think I can get you to St. John’s in about eight hours. It’s hard to say exactly. I’ve got ten hours of battery power. We could do it faster on the surface but it would be really rough.”
“No, this will be just fine.”
His lips were trembling and I thought he was going to cry. I hoped he wouldn’t.
“I will never be able to repay you for what you did for us.”
“I just did what I thought was right. You don’t have to repay me anything. There’s only one problem.”
“What?”
I explained my experience with the coastguard.
“You’re the Russian sub! You’re the one they’re looking for! We heard about you! Oh, isn’t that something! Don’t you worry, we can straighten that out!”
“I don’t know if we can straighten it out. First, they’ll want to examine my sub, and they’ll take a long time doing it; then they’ll say it doesn’t pass all kinds of official standards and I’ll never get it back. All I want is to be free to explore.”
“Listen. I know people in the government. I am a lawyer; I can investigate the legal aspects of this.”
“Just the same, I’d feel a lot safer if I could drop you off somewhere where they wouldn’t catch me.”
“Yes, of course. I understand. Why don’t we look at the map and choose a spot?”
We went back and stared at the map. Ricky was trying to play with Seaweed but was falling asleep. I handed John a wool blanket and he put it under Ricky’s head.
“You know, it occurs to me that if you handed us over to the coastguard, safely, of course, that it would go a long way to
improving your relations with them. Firstly, they would learn firsthand that you are a friendly vessel. Secondly, they would still be able to take responsibility for the rescue, which would make them feel a lot better, since that is part of their job. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I guess so. Do you think they will let me go?”
“I think so, once they catch a glimpse of you. They might request that you report to a certain location at a later time, but, of course, that would be up to you. As it stands now, you are essentially an outlaw; more seriously, a suspected spy. That means the navy is within its right to fire at you, should they deem that necessary. You surely don’t want that. Once they realize you are actually a friendly submarine, merely exploring your own coastline, they’ll treat the matter quite differently. That’s much safer for you, don’t you think?”
“I guess so.”
To contact the coastguard we had to surface. John piled the life-jackets around Ricky to keep him from rolling around. We went up, but the storm was still raging and I did not open the hatch. The short-wave was still full of static, but it was easier to reach the coastguard. John made the call. “This is the captain of the sailboat in distress. We have been rescued by a friendly submarine. It is bringing us in. Can you rendezvous? I repeat: this is a friendly submarine; can you rendezvous?”
“ . . . the coastguard,” came the reply. “Identify your location.”
John looked at me.
“Go ahead.”
John gave our coordinates. There was a pause. Then the coastguard replied, “We will rendezvous. Please identify submarine.”