Journey to Atlantis

by Philip Roy

  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.”

  Chapter Twelve

  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 wa
s 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.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER said that divers scoured the floor of the bay and found pieces of the mine. This evidence was matched with first-hand accounts by the jet-skiers, who said they saw the submariner trying to pull the mine out to sea. The jet-skiers, just twelve- and thirteen-years-old, said they thought the submariner was very brave but had been injured by the blast. And so, what started out as a search for an attacking foreign submarine, turned into the story of a heroic, solitary submariner sailing the seas for the cause of justice. “The people of Graciosa feel a debt of gratitude to the lonely submariner, and dearly hope he is not suffering too much from his wounds …,”read the morning paper, as translated by Reggie.

  “Now you are a local hero, Alfred. Now we can walk through the village proudly and eat in the café for free.”

  He chuckled.

  “No, thanks. I think I’ll keep my presence a secret.”

  I had been in the newspaper before and knew just how easily they could change the way people thought about you. I had also learned that news stories were like movies — they tried to make them as entertaining as possible and didn’t care too much whether they were really true or not. Reggie went on to read, for instance, that the submariner had been identified as a Swiss national, because the jet-skiers said that his flag was red and white — someone said a white cross on a red background. When that claim was contested on the basis of Switzerland being a land-locked country, it was defended by the fact that it was also a “neutral” country, the home of the Red Cross, Saint Bernard dogs and a reputation for rescuing people.

  “Well,” said Reggie, “you can’t argue with that. I guess you’re from Switzerland.”

  I was just glad that the chase had been called off and that I could sneak out of the bay at night without being seen. But I ended up hanging around for a few days anyway, because it was fun. Like me, Reggie was nocturnal. He liked to sleep after the sun came up, sleep into the late afternoon and stay up all night. Occasionally, like me, he would change his sleeping schedule to enjoy the day. One of his favourite things to do in the Azores, he said, was to take a hike into the hills, find one of the hot springs and have a soak. It was good for the body and good for the mind. So that’s what we did. It was particularly exciting for Hollie, who seemed to understand perfectly that we were out for a walk of considerable length, and paced himself well and drank plenty of water. Seaweed, on the other hand, joined us for about five minutes. Then he took to the air and probably went to the dump.

  Graciosa is beautiful. It is a little bit like Newfoundland because it is rocky, but a lot greener. There are small farms and green fields and treed hills. The biggest difference is that it is a lot warmer. As we climbed into the hills, with a great view of the island and sea, we worked up a heavy sweat. Hollie was panting.

  “It’s not too much further,” said Reggie, “and believe me, it’s more than worth it.”

  The trail led to a small lake on top of a hill, which had once been a volcano. Beside the lake were the hot springs — small pools of water that flowed up from deep within the earth’s crust. Some of them were so hot you had to be careful where you stepped. We stripped down to our shorts, stepped slowly into the water and found comfortable spots to lie down. After a few minutes of getting used to it, I thought it was the nicest feeling in the world. Hollie sniffed at the water, licked it, pawed it, barked at it, then finally settled down in a shady spot and went to sleep. It had been quite a hike for him.

  “So, Alfred,” said Reggie, “where to from here? Where do you go next and what do you intend to do?”

  Reggie talked with his eyes closed and his toes sticking out of the water.

  “I’m looking for Atlantis.”

  “Really?”

  “Yah, sort of. I mean, nobody knows if it really exists or not. But if it does, it’s probably in Greece somewhere. Some people say it might be around here, but more likely it’s off the island of Thera, in the Mediterranean. That’s where Jacques Cousteau went looking for it.”

  “Did he find it?”

  “He found lots of broken pots and statues an
d stuff. But that might have been dumped out of ships. Nobody knows for sure.”

  “Interesting. I don’t think it’s around here. Nobody ever talks about it here. But they do talk about it on the Med. And you’re a lot more likely to run into mermaids there. And that says something.”

  I raised my head. “Do you believe in mermaids?”

  “It’s not so much whether I believe in mermaids or not — there’s definitely something there — it’s more a question of what they are. But if you asked me twenty years ago I would have said you were crazy.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I believe in something, but I can’t say what it is. Let me put it this way: the longer you stay at sea, the more you realize you are not alone.”

  “Oh. What else is there?”

  “Well, ghosts, for one. All the sailors I know who circumnavigate the globe, and it’s a more regular group than you might imagine, have ghosts appear on their boats from time to time. Some keep regular company with them.”

  “With ghosts? Really?”

  “Yes indeed. The sea is a tragic and lonely place, Alfred. I mean, there are those of us who wouldn’t be anywhere else, who couldn’t be anywhere else — I kind of suspect you’re a bit like that — but when all is said and done, it’s a tragic and lonely place, and that just draws the ghosts.”

  “Oh. And mermaids?”

  “Well, now that’s a different kettle of fish altogether. Mermaids aren’t scary creatures or anything, and I don’t believe they’re out to pull a man to his death, like some people believe, but I think they’re kind of mischievous.”

  “Have you ever seen one?”

  “I can’t say that I have, but I’ve heard them, and it’s not a particularly nice sound. It’s very screechy.”