by Philip Roy
Coming through the woods, I crossed a long field and slipped in among the reconstructed buildings. It was dead quiet. Tourist season was pretty much over, but there were clusters of people here and there walking through the buildings and climbing the fortress walls. People were brought in on a bus and had to walk from where they were dropped off to enter the fortress. There they met soldiers and townspeople of the eighteenth century, who were really convincing.
For a couple of hours I just drifted in and out of the buildings, chatted with the costumed housekeepers and warmed myself in front of open-hearth fires. Then I climbed the fortress walls and stared out over the swamp from which the English had come. I had seen the Fortress of Louisbourg on TV, and read about it in books, but the real thing was much better.
I went back into the town and peeked inside the door of an eighteenth-century restaurant. The smell of home cooking was too much for my poor belly, and I stepped inside and looked around. A stern-looking lady in a big apron came out and stood in front of me.
“We’re closing. Are you with a school group?”
“No.”
“Your parents?”
“No.”
She looked at me strangely.
“Here by yourself? Are you lost?”
“No. I’m just enjoying the smell.”
“Enjoying the smell?”
She looked at me from head to toe.
“Sit down,” she said.
It sounded like an order.
“I don’t think I have enough money.”
I reached into my pocket.
“Sit down!” she barked.
This time it was an order.
Her name was Angelina. She told me to wrap a large cotton napkin around my neck; she was going to bring me some pea soup.
“Do you like pea soup?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had it.”
“You never had pea soup?”
“Nope.”
She clicked her tongue and disappeared. She came back with a large metal bowl filled to the brim. She stood and watched while I took my first sip. A smile spread across my face.
“You like it, eh? It’s good, eh?”
I nodded. It was the best thing I ever tasted.
She beamed.
“Keep eating that and don’t go away.”
Next, Angelina brought me a plate of baked halibut, mashed potatoes, carrots and string beans. I thought I was dreaming.
“You’ve got a hollow leg,” she said.
She brought me apple pie and ice cream next. I gobbled that down almost the way Seaweed ate. Then she brought me a thick piece of gingerbread cake, with whipped cream. I was starting to feel the roundness of my belly. While I ate the last bit of cake, she stared at me closely.
“I think I’ve seen you somewhere before,” she said. “Are you from around here?”
“No.”
“Hmmm. You look familiar, but I can’t put my thumb on it. Where are you from?”
“Newfoundland.”
“Hmmm. No. It’s not that.”
“I probably just look like somebody else. Other people have told me that.”
“Well. We’re closing up. The last bus is leaving soon. You’d better skedaddle.”
I got up and untied the napkin. My belly was so full I was sleepy.
“Thank you. That was the best meal I ever had.”
I really meant it.
“Well, you’re welcome.”
She paused.
“Just a minute.”
She ran into the kitchen and came back with a plastic container and lid, wrapped in a plastic bag.
“Here’s some more pea soup. It’ll just get thrown out anyway. Take it home and heat it up. Here’s some gingerbread too.”
I took the bag and put my jacket and hat on.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Now, hurry, or you’ll be spending the night inside the fort, and I don’t think you want to do that.”
Actually, I intended to do exactly that. I left the restaurant, went down the road towards the bus, keeping close to the walls of the buildings. When I saw a narrow alley I ducked into it. I heard someone coming around locking the doors. Before they could see me I ran inside one of the buildings, hid behind some coils of rope and waited. A man came to the door and called, “Anyone inside?”
There was silence. He stepped inside the door. I shut my eyes.
“Anyone? We’re closing.”
He shut the door and locked it. It was almost dark. Through a second-floor window I saw the twilight. I put my soup and cake carefully on the ground, leaned back as comfortably as possible, and fell asleep.
It must have been a few hours later when I woke to the smell of rope and wood and absolute silence. It was pitch black, and it took me a while to find my bearings. I searched for the soup and gingerbread and found them by my feet. I pulled them from the bag and shoved them into my jacket pockets. There was no way I was going to leave those behind.
A quick search of the building revealed I truly was locked in. But I was able to open a second-floor window and shimmy down with some of the rope. Once on the ground I started to wander around again. A heavy fog had moved in. This made the whole fortress seem, well, kind of spooky. If you happened to believe in ghosts, this wasn’t a good place to be. It was lucky I didn’t believe in ghosts.
That’s what I was thinking when I caught a glimpse of the candle. It was close to one of the buildings and was moving towards me. In the fog I couldn’t see anything else. Then it turned into a passageway. I hid behind a corner and stood very still. There must have been workers around still, I thought.
I sneaked around another way, expecting to see the candle in the street. But there was nobody there. There wasn’t a single sound, not even a rustling of wind. Then, I heard voices. They sounded distant, as if they were on the other side of a wall. They were speaking French, and were laughing. But there were no lights in any of the windows. Then, at the bottom of the street, I thought I saw one of the old soldiers pass. It was just a silhouette in the fog but it looked like a soldier. I turned around and went down the street. There was no one there! Turning around, I saw the candle again, right where I had just been standing!
I rushed up the street, but kept ready to crouch out of sight at the first sign of anyone. But there was nothing there, not even the sound of voices that had been there before. I scratched my head. Was I imagining things?
For the next hour I wandered around not seeing or hearing anything. I began to wonder if I had really seen a candle at all. Then, I heard voices coming from the fortress walls, where the dungeons and cellars lay. Peering across the courtyard I saw the candle. This time I went straight after it. Halfway across, it disappeared. A strange fear took hold of me. The closer I went to the walls, the more I felt it, as if there were a force in the walls acting on me. Thirty feet away I stopped. Icy shivers went up my spine. Six ghostly figures came out of a dungeon towards me. They cut the darkness with a single candle. I dropped to the ground and crawled out of the way. But they didn’t see me. As they went by, I recognized them, soldiers and ladies, taking a midnight stroll, no doubt in the spirit of Halloween. When they had passed, I caught my breath and laughed. Good thing I didn’t believe in ghosts.
In the fog it was difficult to find the sub. I was untying the rope when I heard the most mournful cry imaginable. I wanted to climb inside and get the heck out of there. But what kind of explorer was afraid of a noise in the dark?
Okay, I thought, I’m going to find out where that sound is coming from. I climbed into the sub, engaged battery power and turned towards the center of harbour, in the direction of the howl. It was loud and pitiful, like someone crying over the dead, except that it didn’t sound like a person at all. Neither did it sound like an animal. Suddenly I saw a dory drifting on the water and was hit with a fresh wave of fear. I had always heard of the “old hollies,” the cries of a dead fisherman in a drifting dory. When you heard them
it meant foul weather was coming. Well, here was a drifting dory that didn’t seem to have anyone in it, and the howls coming from it would have woken the dead.
My heart was beating quickly as I came upon it, fully expecting to see something really frightening and ready to jump down and shut the hatch.
“Ooooooooooowwwww!” came the howl.
I was breathing deeply and trying to calm my racing heart as I peered over the side into the belly of the dory. There, right in the middle, with a rope tied around its neck and the other end tied to a stone, was a small dog. He had just opened his mouth to howl again when the sub sneaked up on him. Cowering down with his tail between his legs he peered up at me. I took a deep breath and exhaled.
“Well! You poor thing! What are you doing out here all by yourself?”
Timidly, the little dog began to wag his tail. He was very small — no bigger than Seaweed — and very thin. I had to laugh. I had come face to face with my first ghost.
Chapter Twenty-one
I named him Hollie. He was, without question, the runt of the litter. In fact, if you took a hundred litters and took the runts from each one, then made a litter out of all the runts, Hollie would be the runt of that one. He was so ugly he was cute. One of his eyes was a little bigger than the other. One of his ears had been bitten off mostly and the other was twisted sideways like a tree root. His lip didn’t quite cover his teeth properly so it always looked like he was either smiling or angry. But he was never angry because he was too timid. Having been afraid of everyone and everything, Hollie never had a chance to develop the capacity to be angry. I had found him, after all, with a rope around his neck, tied to a stone, which meant that somebody had intended to drown him. Likely they threw him off the wharf and he landed in the dory. But why would they have untied it? Were they so anxious to dispose of him they would throw away an old dory too? Whatever the reason, I felt lucky to have found him. I had always wanted a dog.
But there was one amazing thing about Hollie: he was smart. Whatever he lacked in looks, he made up for in brains. If I pointed to a spot, he would scurry over there and sit. If I said, “Jump!” he would twist his head and stare at me strangely. But when I jumped, he would jump too. Then, the next time I said, “Jump!” he would jump. He loved to learn, and I loved to teach him, although sometimes I wondered who was teaching whom.
I was a little nervous about how Seaweed and Hollie might get along. A dog and a seagull didn’t seem likely travelling companions. It wasn’t Hollie I worried about; he would have made friends with anyone. But seagulls, as a rule, don’t care much for dogs.
I was laying out a blanket in one corner as a bed for Hollie when I heard the unmistakable sound of Seaweed’s beak on the hatch. He had a habit of tapping the metal before he hopped down the portal. When he came down and looked around he must have seen Hollie, but he never let on that he did. He simply squawked, which was his way of saying, “Where’s breakfast?”
I watched Hollie’s reaction. He curled up on the blanket and looked a little worried, as if to say, “You don’t expect me to bark at him, do you?”
But Hollie didn’t fail to notice that Seaweed received crackers for squawking, so he immediately made a pitiful bark and I threw him a cracker too. Then I learned that seagulls and dogs can count. If I tossed either of them more raisins or crackers, I wouldn’t get away with it. Even as high as twelve or thirteen, both would know if the other received a single bite more, and would complain bitterly. Otherwise, they tended to ignore each other and keep a respectable distance — except when Seaweed took an interest in Hollie’s blanket.
The blanket lay on the starboard side of the observation window and it was the one spot in the whole world that Hollie could call his own. He often left it to run circles around the inside of the sub, as if he were chasing an imaginary rabbit, but would always return to it, pull it this way and that, then settle like a hen on its nest. Now, Seaweed usually rested on the port side of the window, unless it was stormy, when he would hop onto my bed. But I noticed him inch closer and closer to the blanket until he reached over with his beak and pulled on it, just at the moment Hollie had returned. For one tense moment dog and bird stared at each other, and I wondered if they were going to fight. Instead, Hollie simply pulled the blanket out of Seaweed’s reach. A little while later, the same thing happened again — Seaweed took hold of the blanket and Hollie pulled it away. The next time, Hollie was lying on the blanket when Seaweed tugged at one corner.
“You’re pushing your luck, Seaweed,” I said.
Hollie looked up without raising his head and I heard a little growl. It wasn’t very loud but it was menacing, with a sense of, “something’s-about-to-happen.”
Fortunately, Seaweed was smart enough to realize it. After that, Seaweed stayed on his side of the window and Hollie stayed on his.
The waters of Louisbourg were indeed a graveyard of sunken ships and junk. But that was no surprise to me because I had seen pictures in the fortress of divers picking the harbour clean of cannon, cannonballs, muskets, pottery shards, dinnerware, and everything else on an eighteenth-century galleon. If there had been any treasure I’m sure they would have found it. All the same, it was exciting to run back and forth across the harbour with the floodlights on and my eyes glued to the observation window. Seaweed watched too and occasionally pecked at the window.
There was something ghostly about the skeleton of a sunken ship. They had often killed people on their way down, and so, in a way, were like murderers. That’s what was going through my head when Seaweed started pecking loudly at the observation window.
“What is it, Seaweed? What do you see?”
I strained hard but saw only a few wooden beams crisscrossing over some rocks and broken things — and those were soon out of sight. Without the sun, the water was nearly as dark as night. The floodlights lit up a narrow circle of light that kept moving as we glided over the seafloor. When we passed the beams, Seaweed stopped pecking. I stopped the sub. He had already proven himself a reliable spotter, so I couldn’t ignore his pecking. Putting the sub in reverse, I slowly backed over the same spot. Sure enough, Seaweed started pecking again.
“What is it? I don’t see anything.”
I decided to turn the sub and come from the side. This gave a different perspective. Sure enough, Seaweed pecked again. I stared and stared but couldn’t see anything but wooden beams and debris. I sat and thought about it. The bottom was seventy-five to eighty feet deep in places, and the water was cold. But I did have a wet suit.
I figured I’d wait a little while and make one more pass from the other direction. If Seaweed still pecked at the same spot, I’d attempt a free dive.
In the meantime, I made two round piles of cereal on the floor roughly the same size but didn’t bother counting the pieces. The crew took a quick glance at each other, then gobbled up the flecks, and, in Hollie’s case, licked the floor clean. Neither took the trouble to count.
We made our fourth pass over the beams and Seaweed pecked at the glass as if he were trying to pick something up.
“Okay. I’m going in.”
Leaving the floodlights on, I surfaced and suited up. With the flashlight in one hand, I took deep breaths and prepared for a cold shock. Boy! Was it cold! The water seeped into the wetsuit and grabbed my skin with its icy fingers, but warmed quickly as I moved around. The floodlights pierced the water thirty feet or so but didn’t reach the bottom. Switching on the flashlight, I continued until I saw one of the wooden beams. The weak glow of the flashlight caught a tiny piece of something shiny, then nothing. I made one sweep of the area, then surfaced. Coming up beneath the sub was like swimming into a halo of light. But on the surface the fog had reduced visibility to zero. I took more breaths and went down again. Once again there was a brief sparkle of reflected light, then nothing. I tried to see it once more before surfacing but couldn’t find it. On the next dive I planned to focus on the spot of the reflection but didn’t see it. After two more d
ives I still hadn’t seen it. The idea of climbing into a warm bed and listening to the radio was becoming very appealing.
Maybe I’ll try one last dive, I thought.
I took breaths and went down with my eyes concentrating hard. This time I saw the glitter — just a tiny fleck of reflected light. I swam beneath one of the beams from where the glitter had come. There was nothing but rocks covered in sea growth. Perhaps the glitter had come from a broken seashell. I was about to surface when the shape of one of the rocks caught my eye. Unlike the others, it was almost like a box. I gave it a kick. Some debris fell off the side. It wasn’t a rock at all; it was a chest!
My heart beat quickly, but I had to surface. When I reached the surface I had to gasp for air and had a slight headache, but I was so excited I felt like yelling. Then I remembered the boxes of sardines and winced. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, I told myself. Besides, I had to figure out how to raise the chest all by myself. It wasn’t very big — about the size of a small suitcase — but things underwater had a way of gaining weight.
I climbed into the sub and made some tea to warm up. Probably the best way to raise the chest would be to make a net of rope, wrap it around, then pull it up by winding coils around the hatch. It would be slow, but I could rest in between and not drop it.
I pulled out a hundred feet of rope, sat on the floor and began to fashion the net. My idea was to leave enough space for the net to fit over the box, then quickly tie up the loose ends and secure the chest inside. Of course it had to be done very quickly.
While I worked on one end of the rope, the crew worked on the other. Seaweed seemed to regard the whole thing as some kind of snake and repeatedly attacked it with his beak. Hollie began by pawing the end of it, but quickly fell into a wrestling match with it, rolling around on the floor more like a cat than a dog. Suddenly we heard the distant sound of seagulls through the open portal. Seaweed responded with an ear-splitting caw. Then he hopped over to the portal and climbed out. Hollie followed him to the bottom of the ladder and watched him go. As Seaweed disappeared, Hollie whimpered and let out a tiny bark. He ran around the inside of the sub looking for another way out, then returned to the portal and barked again. He looked at me with desperation.