River Odyssey (9 page)

“
Oh, mon Dieu!
This is probably the most exciting thing I’ve ever done!”

I was glad. You got used to seeing wrecks when you lived in a submarine. All the same, I was a little excited too.

“I’ll turn on the floodlights when we’re closer. We won’t see much without those. And we’ll never be able to see the whole ship, just parts of it as we pass over it.”

Down, down, down we drifted, quite slowly because even with sonar it was difficult to tell if there were pieces of the ship sticking up, and I didn’t want to hit anything.

“Sixty feet.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“You won’t see anything yet.”

“It’s pretty dark.”

“I’ll hit the lights at seventy-five feet.”

“This is kind of spooky.”

“Be warned. It might scare you.”

“It can’t be that scary. It’s just old twisted metal under water, right?”

“Yes, but… it can look pretty scary. Seventy feet… seventy-five … here are the lights.”

“Wow. They’re really bright. But I still don’t see anything.”

“You will. Eighty feet.”

“Nothing.”

“Eighty-five feet.”

“Nothing.”

I smiled. It was fun having Marie on board.

“Ninety feet.”

“Noth—ahhhhhh!”

Marie screamed and jumped away from the window. Hollie ran over to me and hid between my feet. I picked him up, stopped the sub and came to the window. Marie’s eyes were wide with fear but she was quickly calming down.

“
Oh… mon … Dieu!
That scared the heck out of me! It’s just so … spooky! Look at it!”

I scratched Hollie’s ears and looked down through the window.

“Yup. There she is.”

Marie took a deep breath.

“Sorry for screaming. It just caught me off guard. It looks like it is reaching up at us, trying to grab us.”

The sub’s bright lights created a world of shadows, and the river current created movement, so there were lots of things to look at besides old twisted metal. Long, stringy weeds stuck out of holes everywhere and waved like tentacles. The current pulled patches of debris in and out of dents and holes and they really did look sometimes like they were reaching up at us. But Marie calmed down.

“Wow! It’s like looking at another planet. I mean, I’ve seen such things on TV, of course, but somehow, when it’s right outside your window, it’s different.”

The wreck was pretty beaten up, as wrecks always are. There were gashes in her side and huge holes that we could even have sailed through. But I would never take such a risk. My experience with the old wooden wreck at Anticosti Island was still fresh in my mind. My leg was still sore.

We glided over the entire wreck, much of which was covered by silt. No doubt the river would eventually hide all traces of her, just as sand from the Sahara Desert blew into the Mediterranean Sea and covered ancient temples and cities the sea had swallowed. I learned that on our second voyage. Given enough time, the powers of nature can hide anything.

We turned, dropped a little closer and glided over the wreck again. It was so interesting. Two hours passed like nothing. I was feeling a little concerned for Seaweed because I knew he couldn’t spot us. And then, Marie saw something.

“Alfred?”

“Yes?”

“What’s
that?”

I came over and looked down. “I don’t know.”

“But what do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, but I suppose it looks like a person bent in half.”

“It does, doesn’t it? Do you think it’s a body?”

I looked harder. “It probably isn’t. Things have a way of looking like something else underwater, especially when they’ve been there for a long time. Chances are, if you touched it, it would be nothing but a big clump of weeds stuck together.”

“Do you think we should try to get closer just in case it’s a body? Because, if it is a body, then we have to report it.”

“Hmmm.”

I didn’t really want to move closer because there were so many tentacles dangling free, and while most were surely just weeds, some of them could be old rope, or even metal cables. I didn’t want to get the propeller wrapped up in a cable.

“Just a little closer. Then we can see what it is.”

“Okay. Just a little closer.”

But it wasn’t easy to move just a little closer. The current across the surface of the wreck was creating a turbulence that I didn’t realize until we were almost touching it. Before I knew what was happening the sub started to tilt sideways.

“What’s happening?”

“Umm … just a bit of turbulence, but we’d better get out of here.”

And then I heard the motor whine. “Shoot!” I raced to the panel and shut the power off.

“What? What happened?”

I ignored Marie’s question. I was too preoccupied. I stared down through the observation window and watched to see if we would drift free. We didn’t. Slowly the sub turned and faced away from the current, like a kite on a string.

“What is it, Alfred? What happened?”

“Ummm … there’s a cable jammed in the propeller.”

“Oh! No!”

“No, it’s okay. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. It’s no big deal.”

“Oh. That’s good. I was frightened there for a moment.”

I didn’t want to lie to Marie—this had never happened before—but I couldn’t let her panic. I needed to sit calmly and think it through and make smart choices. To do that, I needed her to be calm. The truth was: we were stuck.

MY MIND RACED
through the possibilities and I had to keep slowing it down. It was so important to think clearly. When a cable was wrapped around the propeller, the thing to do was go out and unwrap it by hand. If we were on the surface, that’s exactly what I would have done. But we were a hundred feet down. Since that was my maximum depth for diving it was not impossible for me to go out, unwrap the cable, swim to the surface, catch my breath and swim back down. But, of course, I couldn’t get out without flooding the sub. When we built the sub, we tested it for exactly that—flooding. We sank it twice on purpose, and I practised opening and sealing the hatch underwater, and sealing myself inside when the sub was filled with water, which was certainly one of the scariest feelings in the world. The hatch now had an automatic sealing mechanism. The sub would flood, but the hatch would shut by itself and the sump pumps would remove the water, but not as fast as it would rush in. We had tested for that too. Ziegfried had insisted upon testing everything. I understood his obsession for testing better all the time.

The sump pumps could not keep up with water flooding through an open portal. The hatch would have to open and shut immediately. If it didn’t for any reason, the sub would fill completely in just seconds. And though I would probably survive by swimming to the surface, Hollie and Marie wouldn’t.

“What are you thinking, Alfred?”

“What? Oh. I’m just thinking it through. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”

“That’s good. I was so worried. What will you do?”

“Well, there are a number of ways to fix the problem. I just have to decide which method I want to try first.”

“But what if it doesn’t work?”

I stared at Marie and tried to look as calm as possible, even bored. “It’s no big deal. It’ll just hold us up for a little while. I just don’t want to damage my propeller. Give me a few minutes to figure out the best way to unhook the cable, okay?”

She nodded her head and went back to combing Hollie’s fur with her fingers. I suddenly regretted having a passenger. It hadn’t struck me before just how much responsibility it was. It was a lot! This was my vessel and I was the captain. Marie’s safety, her life actually, was completely in my hands. I didn’t like that feeling. I didn’t feel old enough for that kind of responsibility yet.

Most likely what happened was that a cable had been pulled into the whirl of the propeller and twisted around it, stopping its spin. That’s why the motor started whining; the driveshaft was blocked. The motor was not designed to push against dead resistance. That was almost certainly what had happened, though I couldn’t know for certain without looking. Since the cable likely twisted up in one direction, it was possible that it would release if I put the motor in reverse. That might work. The only thing I didn’t like about that was that every time the propeller pushed against the dead resistance of the cable, it risked getting damaged or even snapping off. Then, we’d have no propulsion at all. The sub would surface, but it would free-float down the river. Oh boy, what a disaster that would be!

I had an idea. Instead of engaging the batteries to turn the driveshaft, I could simply pedal the bike. If I spun the pedal very slowly, I could turn the propeller just a little. I climbed onto the bike and tried pedalling in reverse. Nope. Nothing. Then I tried forward. Nope. The propeller wouldn’t budge. Shoot!

“Is it working?” said Marie.

I could tell she was trying hard to stay calm.

“Ummm … just a minute.”

Man, I wished she wasn’t here! I realized it wouldn’t bother me as much if Hollie and I drowned as much as if she did, strange as that was to think. We were sailors. It was a risk we lived with every day and it was a choice we had made. Even though Hollie was just a dog, I knew he felt the same way, I just knew it. Marie was our passenger. She was our responsibility. Gosh, I wished she wasn’t here now.

I tried raising the sub just a little. I pumped air into the tanks and we rose about five feet. The cable didn’t let go. I pumped air out of the tanks and we fell and bumped the wreck, and that made a loud noise.

“Oh! What was that?”

“Nothing. We just bumped the wreck a little. No big deal.”

Without being able to turn the propeller I couldn’t even turn the sub around to look at the cable. It was so frustrating!

“Is there anyone we can call?” said Marie. She sounded alarmed.

“Yes. I can float a cable to the surface and call for help if we need to. But I don’t want to do that just yet, okay? Please don’t worry. I’ll get us out of here.”

“But you will call if you have to, right? Promise?”

“Yes, I promise. I will call for sure if we need to.”

“I think it’s cursed, Alfred.”

“What?”

“The wreck. I think it’s cursed, just like they say. Really, I do.”

Marie was shivering with fear now. That was understandable. I just hoped she wouldn’t panic. I wouldn’t know how to deal with her panic.

“I don’t think it’s cursed, Marie. We just got stuck on a cable. It was our own fault. We went too close to the wreck.”

“But so many people died here! This place is a graveyard … ”

She was biting her lip, holding onto Hollie and starting to cry. At least she was trying not to panic. I had to figure out something fast. If I did call for help, it would take hours before anyone could come. They’d have to put boats in the water and send divers down. All they’d have to do is release the cable. But they would surely seize the sub. And everything would be photographed and filmed for the news. My exploring days would be over.

“Will you call, Alfred?”

“Yes… just give me a chance … ”

If it were just Hollie and me, I could open the hatch and go out. I felt confident I could open and shut the hatch. The sub would fill half, maybe even three quarters, with water, and Hollie would have to swim, but the sump pumps would keep him from drowning. Hollie wouldn’t panic, he’d just get soaked. But I couldn’t do that to Marie. She would panic for sure, and possibly drown. Boy, I would never take another passenger on my sub again, except rescue victims.

“Will you call?
Please?”

I felt bad for Marie. It was terrible to be so afraid. I knew that. If it were just me and Hollie I would sit, take my time and really think this through. There was no hurry. We had a couple of days of air in the tanks, at least, that I could pump into the sub as we needed it for breathing. If she could just give me a little time.

“Please!”

Marie was going to panic.

“Yes, I will call.”

“Oh! Thank you! Thank you! And someone will come, right?”

“Yes, they’ll come. I’m floating the antenna now. As soon as it reaches the surface, I’ll make the call.”

I flipped the switch. A little motor unwound the antenna cable and a small floatation pulled it up quickly. I turned on the short-wave radio. It crackled with static.

“Oh, good!” said Marie.

I put on the earphones and waited for a good connection. I waited. It never came. I could hear Marie outside the earphones. “Are they there?”

“Yes, they’re there.”

There was no one there. And I knew why. The antenna cable had a maximum capacity of one hundred feet, in the ocean, with little or no current. We were sitting in a river a hundred feet down and the current was pulling the cable sideways. There was no way it would make it even close to the surface. Nobody could hear us. Marie would surely panic when I told her that. I had to think fast. And so, I pretended to make the call. As much as I hated to lie to anybody, I didn’t feel I had much choice. When you were trying to rescue a panicking victim in the water, and they climbed on top of you in their panic, thinking somehow that you could save them that way, you were taught to hit them right in the face and knock them out even, if you had to, otherwise they would drown you and both of you would die. Better to give someone a bruise and save their life, and your own.