Journey to Atlantis (12 page)

SOMETIMES YOU MEET someone, and know right away you will become good friends.

I slept through the entire day and most of the night. I brought the sub up a few hours before sunrise, opened the hatch, tossed Seaweed some dog biscuits and took Hollie out for another run on the beach. This time, I moored the sub between rocks at the breakwater and left it awash, the bow and stern submerged, just half of the portal sticking out of the water. When we returned from our walk I made a proper breakfast and we sat on the hatch and watched the sun come up. Hollie was happy. The life of a submariner was sometimes peaceful beyond words.

When I felt confident we were well enough hidden, I brought Hollie back inside, put the radio on for him, gave him a new ball, went out and shut the hatch. I intended to practise diving here, where divers supposedly brought up sponges from the bottom and my guidebook said there were rumours of a sunken city.

In the three years since I had met Ziegfried and we began to build the sub, I had learned to free-dive to nearly a hundred feet and hold my breath for two minutes. It didn’t seem like such a big deal now but there was a time when forty-five seconds and forty feet were way beyond my reach. Improving on that had taken me a
lot
of practice.

The water beneath the sub was only seventy-five feet, so I swam out a little ways, to where I guessed it was ninety feet, did my breathing exercises and went down. The sea was as warm as a bathtub. The early morning sun pierced the water for about thirty feet or so. Compared to the dark water back home, it was like another planet.

It was easier to dive more deeply and hold my breath longer in warmer water, and this made diving more fun. I was having such a good time in fact that I just kind of assumed I was alone in the water.

I wasn’t.

At the bottom I discovered sponges attached to rocks, just like the sponges Sheba kept in her bathroom back in Newfoundland, except maybe a little rougher. I put my hand on one and squeezed it. It felt the same, but was attached to the
rock and wouldn’t come off with a strong tug. It would have to be cut off. I decided to return to the sub for a knife. I turned … and froze! No more than fifteen feet away was a large shark! It came straight towards me then veered off at the last second. Its mouth was open and I saw rows of jagged teeth. It all happened so quickly I never had time to think. I was frightened but didn’t panic. The shark swam around in a circle then came back. It was fast! I had to return to the surface for air but was afraid to move. The shark came towards me again so quickly I saw its whole body shake with exertion. I got ready to duck. Just then, a slim brown body went over my head, straight towards the shark! The shark veered again and vanished. The figure was holding a knife in his hand. He turned and faced me. He smiled.

We swam to the surface. I saw that he had a floating burlap bag he was filling with sponges. The bag was tied to three plastic jugs, which acted as a buoy. He didn’t have a boat; he had swum out from the beach all by himself. He was pretty excited to have found me and said something in an excited voice that I didn’t understand. Then, he gestured that we should dive again. Wasn’t he afraid of the shark, I gestured? He shrugged, not at all! He started breathing exercises, just the way I did them. So … I joined him.

Together we went down and I watched as he expertly cut sponges from the rock and put them in a smaller bag. He worked quickly but calmly. I kept watch for sharks.

His name was Omar. He was my age and my height. He was very lean and in amazing shape. We made about ten
dives together, which was great practice for me. I saw two more sharks but they didn’t bother us. I could tell Omar did a lot of diving the way he moved so gracefully in the water. Beside him I felt rather clumsy. He let me hold the knife a couple of times and showed me how to cut the sponges free. I chose two nice ones to bring back for Sheba.

When Omar’s bag was filled, we swam towards shore. I pointed in the direction of the sub, which we couldn’t really see from where we were. He wore a questioning look on his face. I said, “submarine,” but that didn’t help. I started to swim towards the sub and gestured for him to follow me. I would just have to show him.

Omar was fearless against sharks but absolutely frightened of the submarine. He stared at it as if it were a sea monster and wouldn’t come close to it at all. I tried to coax him but he shook his head. So, I climbed up, opened the hatch, went inside and brought out Hollie. When he saw Hollie, he broke into a big smile and started to relax. Eventually he came over and climbed up, but would not come inside.

Later, we sat on the beach and communicated by drawing pictures in the sand. Seaweed dropped by when he saw us scratching with a stick, and so, the first thing I had to explain was that Seaweed was part of the crew. That wasn’t easy. Then Omar explained that he was from the desert. As far as I could tell from his sand pictures, he sometimes travelled through the desert by camel, with his family, and sometimes came sponge diving, all by himself. That was his favourite thing to do; I could tell by the way he smiled when
he drew himself diving. But he missed his family then. I asked him how many brothers and sisters he had. He drew twelve figures in the sand. Wow. Beside his father he drew three women. Did his father have three sisters, I asked? No. Three wives. Oh.

From another picture Omar drew, it looked as though they also had a farm in the desert. I couldn’t understand how anyone could have a farm in the desert, but he drew a picture of a mountain, and put the farm on the side of it. Then he drew rain clouds and scratched them out. There wasn’t enough water? He nodded.

The hardest thing for Omar to understand was the submarine. Why didn’t it sink? The only way I could really show him that was to coax him inside. That took a long time. He came down the ladder as cautiously as a cat and looked around with wide eyes. He caught sight of the pellet rifles and nodded his head approvingly. I picked one up and gave it to him. That made him so happy he hugged me. Then I showed him the engine compartment and the piles of toys still wrapped in their plastic packages. Would his brothers and sisters like these things, I asked? Yes, indeed. But when Omar saw the engine, his mouth dropped and his eyes grew very serious. He tried to explain something to me, something very important, but he was gesturing too fast and I couldn’t understand. I gave him a piece of paper and pencil and he very carefully drew a long diagram. When he handed me the paper, I stared at the picture and tried to figure out what it
all meant. He kept pointing to the engine and the diagram on the paper, which included a map. Was there another engine? Yes. Did he want me to see it? Yes. Did he want me to
fix
it? Yes. Was it far away? Not too far, he said, three or four days by camel. Would I come, he asked? Yes I would!

But I did have a few concerns. Where would I hide the sub for so long? Three or four days out meant three or four days back. I would also probably need a few days to work on the engine, maybe more. That meant at least a week and a half. I could take Hollie with me, for sure, but what would I do with Seaweed? I didn’t mind leaving him for a couple of days, but nine or ten days was too long. Could a seagull survive in the desert if he had enough water? I would have to ask Ziegfried. I needed to consult with him about fixing the engine anyway. Which tools should I bring? Which spare parts? Although he had taught me many things in the last three years, I was still only an apprentice when it came to engines.

We took the pellet rifles over to the beach, set up targets and practised shooting for hours. When we ran out of pellets we combed the beach for tiny round pebbles that fit in the rifles. It was the most fun I had had in the longest time. I asked Omar if anyone might discover us. Should I worry about my passport? He said, no, nobody would come. And when we went into the desert, I would wear a cloth around my head, just like him, and no one would know me. Cool.

“WHAT’S THE SITUATION?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a diesel engine. They use it for pumping water uphill to irrigate their fields.”

“I see.”

Ziegfried was quiet for a while. I could picture his face. He was adding up things in his mind. His mind was like a computer, accurate and thorough. It was always beyond me.

“Chances are it’s a very old engine. If it is, there’s not a lot you can take apart, which is a good thing. Perhaps something’s interfering with the fuel injection, or the oil, or both. Keep in mind, all an engine sometimes needs is just a really good tune up and a really good cleaning. People add oil to their engines endlessly, never thinking to change it. So, you’ll
want to bring fresh oil with you. Bring enough to soak the engine. Drain it, fill it, run it, drain it … and fill it again. Take the head off, and you’ll probably want to flush the cylinders with diesel. Clean the engine first, flush it, dry it and feed it new oil. Clean the oil and air filters. Then you’ll have a better idea what might be wrong with it, other than any obvious visual defects. Bring all your universal hoses, adaptors, wire, bolts, the whole shebang, plus your tools, of course. Don’t forget your files. Keep a list and I’ll bring replacements for anything you leave behind.”

“Okay. What about Seaweed?”

“He should be fine, I think, but you’ll want to soak all his food in water. Watch out for snakes, though. Birds and snakes are mortal enemies. And watch out for yourself, Al. Snakes, spiders, scorpions … the desert sun … Holy Smokes, are you sure you want to go?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay. But keep my little buddy real close to you. I don’t want to hear about him getting stepped on by a camel or bitten by a snake.”

“Will do.”

Ziegfried meant Hollie, of course. He had a soft spot for all birds and animals, but especially for Hollie, because Hollie was such a runt, although he was probably the smartest runt that ever stood on four legs.

After studying the maps, Omar and I discovered that if we met up on the coast just north of Gabes, he on camel, me in
the sub, we could shorten our trek to the foothills of Jebel Biada, the mountain where the pump engine was. Just two days by camel would be enough to get us there, he said. I had to take his word on that, having never actually seen a real camel myself, or a desert. I asked him if we would see the salt lakes on our way, but try as I might I couldn’t get him to understand what I meant.

It would take two days for him to meet me. That was fine. That gave me time to explore the bay for the sunken city and to find a suitable place to hide the sub. Omar told me to watch out for sharks and to be tough with them. Treat them like wild dogs, he said. Kick at them, rush at them, never let them think you are afraid of them. Okay, I said. I asked if he knew anything about the sunken city. He shook his head, but I didn’t think he really understood what I was asking, and I was too tired to explain.

He left with his sack of sponges, which now included a pellet rifle and a whole bunch of toys. He would sell the sponges in the market, walk across the island about five miles, take the ferry to the mainland and walk another fifteen miles to get home! Once there, he would explain everything to his father and prepare the camels to meet me. We shook hands warmly; he hugged me and went on his way. I watched him disappear down the beach, the long sack hanging over his shoulder.

I climbed into the sub, sleepy now, but determined to turn my sleep around for the week. I didn’t want to be falling
asleep when we were riding camels. The radar showed no traffic so I submerged and went out into the bay, keeping just twenty feet or so above the bottom so that I could look down through the observation window. I coaxed Seaweed in with a snack, because he was such a good scout at the window. But three hours of zigzagging around the bay revealed nothing but old urns, broken pottery, and a few wooden boat skeletons. I realized now that there wasn’t just the sand of the sea to contend with, there were thousands of years of sand blowing from the land and settling into the sea that could hide a sunken city just as easily as a land city. Atlantis might be a lot harder to find than I thought.

Hollie never showed any interest in the observation window because he couldn’t smell anything. Seaweed gazed diligently with a patience only a seagull could muster. But after three hours he hadn’t tapped on the glass even once. Okay then. I settled on the bottom and went to sleep.

We planned to meet north of Gabes, on the beach where an old freighter had run aground. I didn’t remember seeing one, but Omar insisted it was there. He said he would light a fire on the beach at night and that is how I should find him. I had no trouble finding the old ship. It was a Greek, steel-hulled freighter, rusted to a reddish brown, deck and cabin included. The ship had run aground on the sandbar ages ago and lay on her side about a hundred feet from shore. The problem was, I couldn’t find any suitable place to moor
the sub, especially to keep it out of sight for a whole week. Back and forth I cruised along the coast, looking for a sheltered cove, but it just wasn’t that kind of shoreline. It was all open and exposed. Finally, I stumbled upon the most obvious idea — why not moor the sub to the freighter itself? If I left it awash, with the portal sticking up just a couple of inches, and moored it on the seaward side, no one would ever notice it.

Then I found something even better. Pulling up alongside the stranded ship, I climbed out and jumped onto it. After a bit of exploring, I discovered part of the bridge was submerged and part exposed, with a covered roof. Would it be possible to tuck the sub right in beneath where the bridge was on its side, such that the portal came up through a window into the cabin? Then it would be hidden from the beach and the sky as well. The only way anyone would discover it would be if they climbed onto the old ship and looked inside, into its murky interior. What were the chances of that?

But motoring the sub underneath the crooked old ship wasn’t easy. There were so many odd surfaces to bounce sonar waves off I wasn’t sure what I was seeing on the screen. Several times the sub gently bumped against the rusty metal and made a terrible squealing sound, like a wailing pig. I wasn’t too worried about the ship shifting its position; it probably hadn’t moved in thirty years, but I was a little concerned about getting stuck. I had to go completely under the surface to get the portal inside the bridge. Once inside, I carefully surfaced until the portal was about a foot out of
the water. It was dark and kind of creepy. I would wait until the sun came up and review the situation.

It was another whole day before Omar would arrive. I decided to spend the morning organizing parts and tools, and a week’s supply of food for the crew. In the afternoon I would practise diving, the afternoon being when sharks were least likely to be feeding. I would take a nap before dark.

It turned out to be a good idea to spend a day at the ship. It gave Seaweed a chance to get used to it. There were lots of little crabs and various things to keep a seagull busy should he return before us. That’s what I was most afraid of, that he’d return, not see us for a few days and wander off. So long as he could see the sub, he ought to assume we would eventually return, as always. I just didn’t know how long he would wait. I would leave an old shirt of mine on top of the hatch, just to help prod his memory. Seagulls, I knew, were the ultimate masters of survival. And Seaweed was remarkable among seagulls. Still, I would worry about him.

In the tail end of twilight I saw four camels walk onto the beach. What strange looking creatures they were. Their movement was odd too, at least from a distance, and in the growing darkness. I climbed into the sub, took out the dinghy and inflated it, but left Hollie behind, because I didn’t know how he would take to the camels and didn’t want to lose him in the dark if he ran away.

Omar had a fire burning by the time I reached the beach. But he was not alone. He had brought his father and uncle.