Ghosts of the Pacific

by Philip Roy

  “Don’t!” I yelled. “Don’t!”

  The bear turned and looked at the man in the boat. I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Don’t shoot him!”

  The man looked at me and lowered his rifle. Now, I couldn’t leave. I had to go over and talk to them. In the first place, they had saved my life. In the second, I was afraid that if I left, he would shoot the bear.

  I surfaced and motored over. The little kids were still waving when our vessels touched. The older people weren’t but they were smiling politely. I leaned out of the hatch. “Thank you for warning me about the bear.”

  “It almost killed you,” said the man with the rifle.

  “I know. Thank you for saving me.”

  “You’re welcome. How come you have a submarine?”

  “I’m an explorer.”

  “You’re an explorer?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you exploring?”

  “Well, right now I am on my way to the Pacific.”

  “The Pacific?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “This is one of the ways you can get there from Newfoundland.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes.”

  The young man bent down and spoke to the older people in the boat. Then he raised his head. “Come and have supper with us.”

  I followed them to Igloolik, about ten miles away. It surprised me they would travel so far through icy water in an open boat. The man with the rifle asked if he could ride inside the sub, but I explained that I had promised not to take passengers except in the case of emergency. It was too dangerous. He nodded his head then asked if he could ride on the hull. I said, no way, it was far too dangerous. Then I wondered, was he crazy?

  Igloolik didn’t look like much from the water. It was just a collection of flat, plain houses that appeared as if they had floated in on the tide and stayed. The land was treeless and barren. The only things that stood up were the houses. I saw about a dozen fishing boats lying on their sides on the pebbled beach. I wondered what they fished for here.

  I dropped anchor in twenty feet, inflated the dinghy and paddled over with Hollie. The young man was standing at the water’s edge to greet us. We shook hands and he told me his name was Stephen. Then he introduced me to everyone else, telling me their names and making sure I said hello to everyone, even the kids. But I couldn’t remember a single name, except Stephen’s.

  They made a fuss over Hollie but told me to keep him close because of the local dogs. I picked him up right away.

  The people of Igloolik were the friendliest people I had ever met. I knew right away I could trust them and didn’t worry about leaving the sub alone. Stephen promised me no one would climb inside it. He took me on a tour of their houses to meet their elders. The elders were old men and women with extremely wrinkled faces, sparkling eyes and big smiles. They were so friendly I almost wondered if they thought I was a lost relative returning home. Then we went to meet the oldest man in the community. His name was Nanuq. As we walked to his house, followed by a crowd of kids, I asked Stephen why he was going to shoot the bear. He shrugged his shoulders. “Why not? Polar bears are good hunting. It was an easy shot.”

  “But . . . why kill it? Do you need it for food?”

  “Yes. It is good to eat. But also the polar bears scare the seals away.”

  “Do you kill seals too?”

  “Yes. Seals are very good hunting too.”

  “But don’t you eat fish?”

  “Also fish are good for eating. But fish every day is not so good.”

  When we reached the house, the old man was sitting at the door. He must have been watching us come. He was ancient. His skin was wrinkled like a dried potato and his hair was dry and straight like white straw. I had the feeling that people here aged twice as fast as anywhere else. I wondered if that was true.

  The old man’s eyes were dark and shiny, like pools of deep water. He stared at me, yet he seemed far away. I said hello. He nodded his head up and down thoughtfully, then, very slowly he said, “The sea . . . is dying.”

  “What?”

  He took a deep breath and said it again very slowly. “The sea . . . is dying. If the sea dies, the world dies.”

  I looked at Stephen. He smiled.

  “Why do you think the sea is dying?” I asked.

  Nanuq looked out the window. Then he looked back at me. He did everything slowly. “No fish. No hares. No seals. No wolves. No bears. No whales. No caribou.”

  I looked at Stephen. “Is that true? Are there no fish?”

  “There are some. Not like before.”

  Nanuq shook his head. “No fish.”

  “What about seals? We have lots of seals in Newfoundland.”

  “No seals.”

  “But . . . we saw a polar bear today.”

  “No bears.”

  “He means, not like before,” said Stephen. “Now, the bears are like ghosts. The wolves are like ghosts. The caribou are like ghosts.”

  The old man seemed sure of what he was saying, but I did not want to believe him. How could I? It was the worst thing I had ever heard. How could the sea die? It couldn’t. It was too big. It was too important. Maybe there were fewer whales and fish and everything else but the sea couldn’t die. It just couldn’t. And yet, something about the way the old man said it really bothered me. He said it softly and slowly, as if he really knew, not like he was trying to convince anyone; more as if it were a secret he had heard on the wind or from ancient spirits or something like that. I wished Sheba had heard him say it. Then she could tell me what she thought.

  After visiting Nanuq, we went to a hall and sat down for a community dinner. I was served caribou meat with bannock and sweet tea. Bannock was a kind of fried bread that was really good. The tea was delicious. The caribou meat was delicious too but it kind of bothered me to eat it. I wouldn’t kill a polar bear and I wouldn’t kill a caribou either. But this was part of their way of life up here and they were honouring me with this meal. I didn’t want to insult them by refusing to eat what they ate. And so I ate it. Hollie ate it too.

  Stephen asked me how long I was staying in Igloolik. A month? I almost choked on my bread. I apologized and said that I couldn’t stay at all. I had to sail through the Arctic before the ice came together again. This he understood. I was glad. Then I asked him if he knew how far the ice reached across the Arctic. He said the ice would be there until I reached open water. I asked him how far that was. He said far.

  After supper we walked back to the sub. I let Stephen climb inside and look around. I figured that was okay because we never submerged or moved. We shook hands again and I thanked him for the visit. He told me I was welcome to stay with them any time and that I should stop by on my way back from the Pacific. As we sailed away, I saw him and a few others climb into their boat. They were carrying their rifles.

  Chapter 6

  NAVIGATING THE FURY and Hecla Strait was the first time I ever actually felt trapped in my submarine. Had I known what we were in for ahead of time, I might have turned back.

  The strait was impassable to regular ships year-round because the ice never cleared. Never. An icebreaker was required to get through. Arctic ice was older and thicker than Antarctic ice because it was surrounded by land and didn’t have warmer summer currents passing through to allow a melt between winters. Old ice met with new ice and grew thicker. There was supposed to be less ice than before but I wouldn’t know; this was my first time in the Arctic.

  Fury and Hecla were two ships of William Parry, the explorer who had tried to find a way through the Arctic in 1822, but failed. He wintered in Igloolik. He probably met Stephen and Nanuq’s ancestors. Cool. Parry tried but couldn’t get through the strait so he named it after his ships. That seemed like a good name for it because of the fury of the ice.

  The strait was a hundred miles long, fifteen miles wide and three hundred feet deep in the eastern mouth. The ice w
as five to ten feet thick. That’s what the books said and that’s what I saw. All we had to do was submerge beneath the ice, motor through the strait, which would take about ten hours, and surface on the other side. That sounded easy enough. There was just one problem: I didn’t know if the other side was ice-free or not. What if it wasn’t and we couldn’t find any place to surface? Then we’d have to motor back. But we could sail on battery power only for twenty hours. Once we ran out of power I’d have to pedal, and that was really slow. And, except for sonar, we were blind underwater. But we couldn’t fully trust sonar because of the ice. I couldn’t even know for sure if we were sailing in the right direction. I had read that whales had the same problem. They got trapped under the ice and drowned. That was awful.

  A voice inside told me not to do it. It was too dangerous. But the only other way through the Arctic was to sail all the way back through the Hudson Strait, then north around Baffin Island into Lancaster Sound, which was the same distance as sailing to Nova Scotia. And Lancaster Sound might be ice-blocked too. It was another three hundred and fifty miles due north.

  If we were facing a solid wall of ice ten feet thick I might have turned around. But we weren’t. There were patches of open water. When I stood up on the portal with the binoculars and scanned the ice ahead of us, it looked like a white and grey swamp with sharp ridges, and small patches here and there that looked like quicksand holes. If we could just find a few of those holes along our way we could surface, run the engine and recharge the batteries. That would be great. We just had to find them.

  I decided to try a two-mile stretch first. If that seemed too difficult, I wouldn’t go any further.

  I submerged to a hundred feet, set our speed at ten knots and sat down at the sonar panel with a notepad and pencil. I didn’t have charts for the strait, but sonar gave a decent outline of the floor and I traced it with a pencil on paper, even though I knew this was a very imperfect kind of tracking. If we retraced our steps just a couple of miles north or south of this route the topography might look entirely different. Still, it gave me some kind of information and made me feel less blind.

  Ten minutes later, when we should have been about two miles in, I started to surface very slowly. I was expecting to strike ice with the portal and didn’t want to strike it hard. At about seven feet from the surface I heard a gentle crunch above us and we came to a stop. It didn’t bother me; that’s what I expected. I looked at the sonar screen but all I saw was a confusing mix of lines and shadows, none of which I could trust. I had to search for ice holes like a seal, except that I couldn’t see the light shining down the way seals could because the observation window was on the bottom of the bow.

  I submerged to twenty feet, pedalled a short distance, came up again and struck ice gently at six feet. After two more tries the sub came right up and we surfaced. I peeked through the periscope for polar bears before opening the hatch and sticking my head out. What a strange world this was, this sea of ice. It was how I imagined a colder planet would look: caked in ice, like a scaly, frozen skin, billions of years old.

  Submerging again, I decided to try a ten-mile stretch. Feeling confident we wouldn’t strike ice at a hundred feet beneath the surface, I increased our speed to twelve knots, sat down at the sonar screen and traced the topography again. Forty-five minutes later we surfaced. This time we struck ice at eight feet from the surface. On our second try we were only three feet from the surface and I heard a loud crack above. Maybe we could have pushed through but I didn’t want to risk getting stuck. After four more tries I started to feel discouraged. But turning back was not a decision I could make lightly. So, I kept trying. After three more tries we broke through a thin sheet of ice and surfaced completely. It had taken nine tries this time. Yikes. But at least I could run the engine now and recharge the batteries. And we only had eighty-five miles to go.

  We continued sailing. Every forty-five minutes we came up and I searched for holes in the ice. It usually took about six tries. There were enough holes around if I just kept trying. But it was really tiring and I couldn’t wait to get through the strait. I sure wouldn’t want to sail through the whole Arctic this way.

  When we were halfway through, Seaweed decided he wanted out, so we stayed on the surface for a few hours. I was inside cutting up vegetables for stew and Hollie was chewing the stub of a carrot when Seaweed came flying through the portal so fast he scared the heck out of us.

  “Seaweed! What’s going on?”

  He was breathing hard and looked upset. That was weird. I looked him over but he seemed okay. I climbed the portal and stuck my head outside. I didn’t see anything. Then, just fifty feet away, perched on top of a jagged bergy bit, like a silent, ghostly warrior, was a huge snowy owl. It must have chased Seaweed back to the sub. It was beautiful. I grabbed my camera. The owl stared at me while I took its picture. My Arctic guidebook said that snowy owls had been known to chase wolves away. Wow. Seaweed was lucky he had made it back to the sub in one piece. The Arctic was a dangerous place for all of us.

  Our next attempt was not successful after six tries so I decided to keep going. I felt confident we could find breathing holes if we just searched long enough. I climbed up on the bike for a pedal. Hollie hopped onto the treadmill. We listened to a recording of African music that Sheba had given me. It was peaceful and soothing and helped keep us calm.

  Forty-five minutes later I tried to surface again. I kept striking ice six to ten feet from the surface. After four tries I felt really frustrated. This was insane. I decided to try one last time. We struck ice at twelve feet, then the ice shifted and we rose several more feet, but not quite to the surface. As we went up I heard the ice scrape against the hull. It was a tight squeeze. Then, we stopped. I knew we were just a few feet from the surface, which meant that the top of the portal was either just above or just below the surface because it rose three feet above the hull. I pumped more air into the tanks but we didn’t rise any further. Shoot! Oh, well, then I figured we’d go back down. I let water into the tanks but nothing happened. That was strange. I filled the tanks for a steep dive. Nothing happened. We were stuck!

  Chapter 7

  THE ICE FORMED A cocoon around us. I went to the observation window and looked down. Dark, chunky ice pressed against the window. I flicked on the floodlights but they were blocked by ice. I tried raising the periscope but it was blocked by ice. Don’t panic, I told myself. There’s no need to panic, just think it through.

  If only I knew how far the top of the hatch was from the surface. Maybe it was above; maybe below. If it was below and I opened it, freezing water would flood in. But I could shut it. I’d get soaked and frozen but I could dry off and warm up. At least then I would know. Besides, what else could I do? If we just sat there the ice would thicken and seal us in for days, weeks, or maybe forever.

  So, I climbed the ladder, took a few deep breaths and braced myself. I was going to unseal the hatch, push it up a tiny bit, hold on to it with both hands and be ready to pull it back down. I could push against the wall with my feet if I had to. I had done that before.

  One, two, three . . . I opened the hatch just a crack. A drop of water hit me in the face, then a splash. I braced myself for a flood.

  But it never came. Instead, I saw blinding sunlight. I lifted the hatch wide open. Another splash hit me in the face. I stuck my head out. The top of the portal was exactly level with the surface. It was like sticking your head up when you were swimming, except that I was dry. Suddenly I remembered I had filled the tanks with water. If the ice released us we would sink fast. I rushed back inside and pumped air into the tanks. We rose a few more inches, stopped, then a few more. Then the ice squeezed together beneath the hull and pushed us right up. Yes! We were on the surface now.

  The sea moaned and groaned all around us. Chunks of ice were rising over other chunks and others were being pushed down. There were bergy bits sticking up like wisdom teeth with deeper roots. Nowhere was there flat ice. Everything was
in movement too—a very slow movement, except for the smaller pieces falling off bigger pieces, and chunks suddenly appearing and disappearing.

  I went inside for the binoculars, strapped on the harness and stood up on the hatch. As far as I could see, the ice sparkled and reflected every imaginable colour, though mostly grey and blue because of the shadows. I couldn’t see the horizon. I couldn’t see land. I couldn’t see anything but ice stretching out endlessly. And we were stuck in the middle of it.

  This was not ice you could walk on. It was like a rocky beach, except the rocks were not smooth and round; they were sharp and jagged, and there were holes where you might disappear and freeze to death in minutes. We had to stay where we were and wait for the ice to shift again and free us. I wondered how long that would be.

  A long time.

  Seaweed climbed the ladder, looked around very carefully, then came back down. I was glad. I didn’t want him to get eaten by a snowy owl. Hollie climbed the portal with me, took a few sniffs and looked around, then wanted back down. He didn’t care for the blinding sunlight. He was happy to return to his cosy blanket and continue mauling his rope.

  I ran the engine and recharged the batteries but didn’t put the motor in gear. I knew I had to keep the propeller free of ice build-up, but didn’t know what might be in the way already, and didn’t want to spin it against resistance. Instead, I spun it gently by turning the bicycle pedals. Although that was enough to keep it clear, I figured I’d have to do it every hour or so.

  But that wasn’t enough. Each time I turned the pedals I felt more resistance. After a few hours they wouldn’t turn at all. Now, even if we could dive, we couldn’t sail. If there was ice around the propeller, how would it ever melt in this water? It wouldn’t. So, I would have to go out and clear it. To do that, I’d have to put on the wetsuit. Rats.