Seas of South Africa

by Philip Roy

  I was about to go back to the sub then, and leave, but there was one thing I wanted to know. Why had he gone to the police station? Was it possible he had tried the motor of his dinghy and discovered it had been sabotaged? Was that it? It was kind of hard to believe that a pirate would complain to the police though, unless the police were corrupt too, which was what the waiter had been suggesting. But the whole thing didn’t make sense, and it made me so curious I thought I’d swing by the beach and just take another peek at the dinghy.

  The old man was sitting in the same spot. I knew he saw me when I came over; I saw his head turn. He was just pretending not to see me. In the dark, I wasn’t sure if the dinghy had been moved or not. I thought maybe it had. “Did a big man try to move this boat?” I asked the old man. He didn’t answer. I reached into my pocket, found a dollar bill, and put it down on the sand in front of him. He picked up the dollar, looked up at me, and nodded. Then he got to his feet, pulled his thumb across his neck as a way of warning me to be careful, and disappeared in the dark. Now I knew. It was time to get out of here.

  Just as I was about to leave the beach, I noticed the dark sailboat motoring down from the north of the island. It looked like a ghost on the water. They must have gone right around the island when they discovered the bridge in their way. I stepped closer to the water to try to see them more clearly. Then I heard heavy feet in the sand. I never had a chance.

  Chapter Six

  THE FIRST BLOW STRUCK me on the head and knocked me down. I hit the ground at the edge of the water and got wet sand in my face. Before I had a chance to get up, he grabbed hold of me, pulled me halfway up, and hit me again. He struck me on the side of the head and I went flat against the sand. My ears were ringing and I was seeing black and red spots. He hit me really hard. Then he grabbed me, pulled me up, and I saw his knife flash through the air. He’s going to stab me, I thought. I’m going to die.

  “Pour sand into my motor will you, you little crook!”

  Who was he calling a crook? I was so dizzy now I thought I’d faint. I hoped he didn’t hit me again.

  “You sank Maggie’s Delight! What did you do with Maggie? Did you kill her?”

  He pulled me around so he could look me in the eye. One side of my face was burning and swelling. “You know a lot more than you should, kid. You and me are gonna get better acquainted. The first thing you’re gonna do is show me that little submarine you’ve got. Then maybe I won’t cut your liver out, which is what I was going to do. Or maybe you think I won’t do that, do you?”

  I knew he would. I knew he would do anything. Now I felt certain he had killed Maggie, and probably other people, too. I also knew I had to escape from him, somehow, somewhere between here and the sub. He had been drinking. I could smell it on him. Perhaps he would trip and fall. Perhaps I could push him or trip him—anything just so I could run. He couldn’t throw the knife at me in the dark. He probably couldn’t throw straight when he was drunk, either. For now, I just had to go along with him.

  “I’ll take you to the sub. It’s at the north of the island, outside the wall.”

  “Kid, if it’s not where you say it is, you’re gonna hurt really bad. You understand me?”

  “I understand. It’s there. I’ll show you.”

  We started walking. This time, he didn’t let go of me. He held my wrist, and his hand felt like a vise. I could feel my hand losing blood. “You’re holding my wrist too tight.”

  “You’re lucky you still have a hand. I should’ve cut it off. You put . . .” He stopped. Three men appeared in front of us in the dark. He spun around quickly, pulling me with him. There were three men behind us, too. We were surrounded. They were young men. They reminded me of the Somali pirates I had seen on TV. I saw light reflect off something in one of the men’s hands. It was a knife.

  “Did you think we wouldn’t fin’ you, boss?” said one of the men. “You thought you ’ad lost us forever did you? Thought y’d never see us again, hey?”

  “Boys . . . don’t think I was cutting you out . . .”

  “Where is it, Jonnyboy?” said another man. “We know you got it wit’ you.”

  “Boys . . . did you think I would bring it here? You’ve got to be crazy . . .”

  The men kept closing in, like a pack of dogs. My heart was beating fast. Were they going to attack me, too? Probably. I was waiting for a chance to break free and run, but his grip on my wrist only got tighter. I glanced up the beach towards the trees and chose which way I would run. Would they chase me? Would they catch me? They weren’t as big as him, but there were six of them. If I could just get free of his grip, I would run as fast as I could.

  He spun me around again, to face the men in front of us. Now, I saw two more blades. He saw them, too. I felt him reach for his knife with his other hand. This was my chance. I had to take it now; I might not get another. I raised my foot and kicked down on the side of his knee as hard as I could. It caught him off-guard, as I hoped, then I smashed my other fist against his hand, pulled my hand free, and ran up the beach with everything I had in me. I heard yelling and scuffling behind me. They were attacking him now, but I didn’t stop, and never turned around. I ran off the sand, between the trees, and onto the first street I saw. I ran to the end of it, and down the next. I ran so fast I thought my lungs would burst. Near the end of the second street, I turned my head to see if anyone had chased me. No. Nobody had.

  I stopped and bent over to catch my breath. I felt sick from running so hard, and from what had just happened. Those men had clearly come here to murder him. They had probably been following him for a long time. It sounded like he had cheated them. But they had caught up with him.

  I felt conflicted. I wondered if I should have tried to help him, or if I should maybe even go back now and see if he was okay. But that was crazy. Even if I could have saved him, which I couldn’t, wouldn’t he just kill me anyway, once I had taken him to the sub? Would he treat me differently because I had helped him? I had no reason to think he would. He wanted my sub. It was the perfect vessel for a pirate. I’m sure he would have killed me for it, whether I had helped him or not. Still, it didn’t feel good running away from someone who was in trouble.

  I walked and ran back to the sub, looking over my shoulder the whole way. There was mist in the air now, and scattered fog was drifting across the north of the island. It made me a little nervous as I retraced my steps through the fort. There were so many dark shadows. What if the other pirates had come this way after they had killed him? Or, what if he had escaped from them and was still looking for me, angrier than ever? Was it possible he had fought them off? No, I didn’t think so. I didn’t see how that was possible. But what if he had, and was hiding in the shadows right now, waiting to catch me and cut out my liver?

  More likely, he was lying on the sand, bleeding to death, or was already dead.

  The fog covered the rocks and the portal of the sub. But I knew where the kayak was, and was able to find the sub by paddling straight out from the wall. I climbed onto the portal, opened the hatch, jumped in, and greeted my crew. They were happy to see me, but not as happy as I was to see them. What if I hadn’t returned? I hated to think of what would have happened to them. After I deflated the kayak and packed it away, I fed the crew, put the kettle on for tea, sat on my cot, and considered what to do.

  Part of me wanted to head out to sea and sail away. Part of me wanted to see if I could spot the pirates from the water. But it was dark and unlikely that I’d see them. And another part of me wanted to go to the police and tell them everything that had happened. Had it been anywhere else, I believe I would have done that, but I didn’t trust the police here, or think it was safe for me to tell them what I knew.

  So, I decided to sail away. I surfaced and turned on the engine. No one would see us in the dark, especially in the fog. I climbed the portal to take one last look at the north of the island before leaving. Only patches were visible, but the moment my eyes fell on it, I felt a na
gging in my conscience. I didn’t really want to admit it, but something was bothering me. What if the pirate who had beaten me and threatened to kill me, what if he was lying on the beach, wounded, but still alive? What if he was bleeding to death but would survive if he could make it to a hospital? Could I sail away thinking maybe I had let him die, even a terrible man like him? Or would it haunt me for the rest of my life?

  I felt the side of my face. It was bruised and swollen and very sore. If those men hadn’t come for him, he would surely have killed me. And then he would have killed Hollie and Seaweed, and Little Laura, and stolen the sub. So why should I go back and check on him? I didn’t know, but the very fact that I had to ask myself that question told me it would haunt me. I had to return so that I could know I had done the right thing. It was enough that he had attacked me. I didn’t want him to haunt me, too.

  So I shut off the kettle and sailed down the mainland side of the island slowly and cautiously. It was shallow, but that was not a problem as long as I didn’t try to submerge. At the first sign of trouble, I would simply turn around, crank up the engine, and take off.

  It was hard to see the beach clearly in the darkness and fog. I tried to identify the spot where I had run through the trees, but too many places looked the same. I went down until I was sure we had passed the spot, turned around, and started back up. Maybe he had gotten to his feet and walked away, or maybe they had carried him, or . . . I hated to think of it . . . buried him already. If I didn’t see a body on the beach, I would sail away. I wasn’t going to search the whole island for him.

  After a while, I thought maybe we were next to the beach where the fight took place, but I wasn’t sure. There was no body on the sand, at least none that I could see. I stopped the sub, stood up on the hatch with the binoculars, and stared through the mist. No, there was nothing there. Maybe he had survived, after all. Maybe they had stopped fighting, or he had taken them to whatever it was they were looking for—money probably, or the treasure he had talked about. But no, there was nobody here. I started the engine again, and continued.

  Just a little further north, where the sand gave way to a rocky area, I thought I saw a dark shape on the ground. I stood up on the hatch again, and looked. Yup, looked like a body to me. I shut the engine, inflated the kayak, closed the hatch behind me, and paddled to the beach. I looked carefully to make sure there was no one else around. The closer I got to the dark shape, the more certain I felt it was him. When I climbed out of the kayak and pulled it up onto the beach, I knew for sure. He was lying face down on the rocks, not moving at all. I had seen dead bodies before. There’s something different in the look of a dead body, even in the dark. It’s hard to explain, but once a person is dead, their body is no different from the body of a dead cow, or even a dead tree. It is no longer a person. It becomes something else.

  Even though I was certain he was dead, I approached carefully. What if he were playing dead? What if he were wounded, but still alive, just waiting for me to get close enough that he could stab me?

  I stepped closer, reached over, and poked him with the paddle. It was like poking a heavy bag of sand. He was definitely dead. I came closer still, bent down, and pulled him over. He was so heavy! I figured I’d better check his pulse. I didn’t want to, but thought I should. His hands were large, and scarred, like his face. I put my fingers on his wrist, where the pulse ought to be. There was no warmth there, the way there should be in a living body. I couldn’t find a pulse. I moved my fingers several times looking for one. I pressed harder. No, there was nothing there.

  I stood up and stared at him. He had been stabbed many times. I could see the tears in his clothing and the darkness of blood. There was blood on his neck and chin. He had such a frightening face. He had been such a frightening man. But a strange feeling came over me, I didn’t know why. I suddenly imagined him as he might have been when he was just a little boy—because there had been a time, a long time ago, when he had been a boy, just like any other boy. Here, now, he was lying dead on a beach, murdered. How sad it was, that a little boy, any boy, would ever end up like this. Who even knew all he had done in his life? How many crimes had he committed? Had he ever done anything good? Had he ever loved anyone? Surely somebody must have loved him, once upon a time? As I stood and stared at him, I started to feel terribly sad for him. I could barely hold back my tears.

  But I did.

  Chapter Seven

  SHOULD I WALK TO the police station to report the murder, and tell the policeman there everything I had witnessed? But what if he told me to stay around to testify, and what if I couldn’t leave for a long time? What if he didn’t believe me, and kept me under suspicion? After all, I hadn’t entered the country legally. I had never shown anyone my passport. Maybe he would put me behind bars until he sorted it all out. What would happen to my crew then? No, there was no way I could risk telling the police. I had been warned not to trust them. For a moment, I wondered if I ought to pull the body into the water, tow it a few miles out, and give it a burial at sea. But then I would be destroying the evidence of the crime, which would be helping the murderers, and creating another crime. And what if I got caught with the body? Everyone would believe I had killed him. No, I couldn’t do that. I didn’t see how I could do anything but leave. I would have to let somebody else find the body. But then, what if it were found by young kids playing on the beach? As I stood over the body and tried to figure it out, I caught a glimpse of a small mast in the fog. The dark sailboat!

  That settled everything. I ran to the kayak, pushed it into the water, and raced to the sub. As I climbed up and opened the hatch, I saw the sailboat approaching slowly through the fog. Maybe they were coming to collect the body and hide what they had done.

  There was no time to deflate the kayak. I tied it to the hatch, jumped inside, started the engine, and cranked it up. As we motored away, I looked back with the binoculars, but couldn’t tell if they were stopping or not. Probably they were. I sailed around to the sea side of the island and half a mile out from shore. I deflated the kayak, folded it, and put it away. Then I put the kettle on again, sat at the radar screen, and waited for them to show.

  I drank a cup of chamomile tea, with honey, but couldn’t seem to settle down. My crew knew when I was upset or excited. They could feel the difference in my mood. And if I was calm and relaxed, or nervous and agitated, they reflected that. Seaweed stayed on his feet, ready to climb up the portal and jump into the air. Hollie picked up his ears, listened extra carefully to every sound, and sniffed the air. But not Little Laura. She cakewalked around the floor like a tiny penguin, picking up tiny bits of rope and wood that Hollie had dropped, and carrying them all the way up to her cage. She reminded me of Jack in the Beanstalk. It was so much work for her. Finally, it occurred to me to tie her cage closer to the floor. So I did. I hung it from a rope just two feet off the floor. She watched me do it, trying to bite me the whole time. But now, her climb was a lot shorter, and she went up and down a lot more often.

  Half an hour later, there was a beep on the radar. A vessel appeared at the northern corner of the island. They were coming now.

  I submerged, raised the periscope, and waited. Without lights, they were hard to spot. Sometimes they appeared as a dark shadow on the water, and sometimes they seemed to disappear. The closer they came, the better I could see them. The further from shore we were, the less fog there was. A mile out, there was none.

  They came within a quarter of a mile of us, and I was starting to wonder if they had located us with a portable sonar device. But they hadn’t. They came past and kept going, never knowing we were there. I engaged battery power and followed them. They were towing the orange dinghy.

  They motored out three miles, and stopped. I surfaced a quarter of a mile away, climbed the portal, and watched them through the binoculars. They lit two lanterns and hung them from the mast. There were six pirates in the boat.

  The first thing they did was climb into the dinghy, reach
down and lift something heavy out, and drop it into the sea. I was certain it was the body, even though I couldn’t see it clearly. Then, they started searching the dinghy. They were looking for something, but couldn’t find it. They argued. I saw one man push another into the water. Eventually, they all climbed back onto the sailboat and went inside the cabin. I waited. A little while later, they came charging out of the cabin as if they had discovered something. They pulled the dinghy right out of the water and turned it upside down. They shone a flashlight on it. There was something attached to the bottom. It looked like a black garbage bag. I saw them get excited when they pulled it free. One man held it up in the air and I heard them cheer from quarter of a mile away.

  The pirates headed back towards Mozambique Island. They must have thought they were safe now that they had destroyed the evidence of their crime. They turned off their lamps, motored around the north of the island, and back down the mainland side in the fog. I followed them. I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t let them get away with it. It wasn’t right. I didn’t know what I could do, but I couldn’t leave without doing something.

  I had to surface to round the island again, but kept our distance. Through the binoculars, I watched them drop anchor down by the bridge. Five of them climbed into the dinghy and paddled to the beach, leaving one pirate behind to keep watch. I heard them laugh and shout. But the man on the boat was shouting with frustration and anger. He wasn’t happy being left behind. I motored a little closer to see him better. He was carrying a small machine gun over his shoulder, the kind I’ve seen harbour police use in other countries. He was standing on the stern of the boat, watching his companions leave, no doubt to go to the café to celebrate having found whatever it was they had found.

  I watched for half an hour. I could tell by his movements that the man on the boat was unhappy. He was hitting and kicking things. Finally, one of the other pirates yelled to him from the beach. I swung the binoculars over and saw him wave his arm. There was another man there, a small old man. I wondered if it was the man who had kept watch over the dinghy. It sure looked like him. The pirate on the boat put down his gun, jumped into the water, and swam to the beach. He greeted his companion happily, and they disappeared in the dark. The old man sat down on the sand and stared at the boat. I was sure it was him. This was my chance.