by Philip Roy
We hid the bike in the bushes, not far from the sub. I took a careful look at the road with the binoculars. We were sure we hadn’t been followed, but I wanted to check anyway. My gut feeling was nagging me now that I had seen those guys on the corner.
“Do you think that was them, Los?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. There are lots of gangs in South Africa. You can’t tell who is bad and who is good just by looking, so you have to be really careful. Have you decided where to leave the sub?”
“Yah. I’m going to sink it.”
“What?”
“It’s the only way to leave it here and not worry about it. There’s nowhere else to hide it.”
“What do you mean, sink it? How can you sink it?”
“I’ll set it on the bottom, climb out, and shut the hatch. Then, when we come back, I’ll swim down, open the hatch, climb inside, and bring her back up. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, but I’ve done it before. And it’s one way that nobody will ever find it. I’ll sink it right here in this little cove, where there’s no current. It won’t go anywhere.”
“But . . . won’t water rush in and flood the sub when you open the hatch under water?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s crazy.”
“No, because I shut the hatch right away so only a couple of feet of water will get in, and the sump pumps will remove that in about fifteen minutes.”
“But won’t the sub come up to the surface then?”
“No, because I will let water into the tanks to keep it on the bottom. It won’t surface until I pump air into the tanks.”
“So . . . you will climb inside the submarine while it is flooding, and shut yourself in?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I thought I was crazy, but you are definitely more crazy than me.”
“Maybe.” Actually, I didn’t think so.
We prepared for the trip before bed. I packed a can of fruit and some trail mix for Little Laura, some dog biscuits for Hollie, water, cookies, pizza, money, binoculars, a flashlight, and the tool bag I used for Hollie. This time, I was bringing it for Little Laura. I set the alarm so that we would rise an hour before the sun. Los lay down with the crew. I got cosy in my cot and listened to them shuffle and snore until I fell asleep.
Bright and early, we ate our last feed of pancakes and drank a pot of tea. I changed my t-shirt and shorts, brought the sub up near the surface, and took a good look around with the periscope before opening the hatch. Los made it to the bank himself with a big commotion in the water. He refused my help. Hollie swam it. I went back inside and coaxed Little Laura into the tool bag with a slice of peach from a can. Once she was inside, I closed the bag. It was a good carrier for her. She had lots of space, and felt protected. I carried her up the portal and swam her over to Los on the bank. Then I returned to the sub, grabbed the flashlight, pizza, money, and things, tossed them to Los, and asked him to hold the flashlight under the surface and point down. I shut the hatch, let water into the tanks, and submerged slowly, until the sub settled gently on the bottom.
It was sixty feet deep, which meant that the top of the hatch was a little less than fifty feet down. I always felt nervous when I had to open or close the sub under water because the water rushed in so powerfully and it took all of my strength to shut the hatch. I also had to do it while holding my breath. The whole action took only about eight seconds from the moment I started unsealing the hatch from the inside, to the moment I finished sealing it on the outside. The more times I did it, the faster I was. Still, it was unnerving.
Standing on the ladder, I tried to think if I had forgotten anything. No, I didn’t think so. I took a few deep breaths, went through the order of what I had to do, then spun the hatch, pushed it up, and climbed out. Water flooded in with a weight like a house falling on me, except that it was a house that I was able to move inside. Even so, the force of it threatened to knock me down, and I had to hold on and climb out with all my strength. Once I was out, it wasn’t hard to shut and seal the hatch. I turned, raised my head, and swam up towards the light.
Chapter Sixteen
THE MOTORBIKE WAS made in Russia. It probably wasn’t as old as it looked; it was just old-fashioned. It was noisy, tough, had tires like crocodile skin, and could climb any hill. The only thing I had to watch for was if we hit a bump unexpectedly. Then Hollie and Little Laura would go up in the air, and I’d have to grab them before they were tossed out of the sidecar. I rested my hands on them, just in case.
Hollie loved the motorbike. He stood on my lap and watched the countryside pass while he drooled on me. Little Laura seemed content in the tool bag, so long as she was close to Hollie. But we had to wait half an hour on the edge of town before Seaweed spotted us, flew down, and joined us. Waiting made me nervous because I had noticed an old car full of young men winding through the back streets of Richards Bay, as if looking for someone. I followed them with the binoculars as they made their way slowly in our direction. It was hard not to imagine pirates lurking around every corner. More likely, they were on the water somewhere, looking for the sub. In any case, I was relieved when my first mate finally dropped out of the sky and we could leave for the open country.
Seaweed didn’t care for the bike because of the noise and bumps, but he would rest on the back of my seat when the road was smooth. I was a little worried there might be birds of prey in the South African sky, but I didn’t see any, except for some small brown hawks. Seaweed probably looked like an eagle to them. He behaved like one, too. He had an extremely strong sense of self-importance and self-preservation. The only thing he was afraid of was snowy owls, and we wouldn’t find any around here.
Los tended to drive the way a crow flies, cutting across plains whenever the road twisted too far in the wrong direction, or going over a hill instead of around it. I just assumed he was heading west, taking the shortest possible route to Ladysmith, but soon realized that the higher the sun rose, the more it fell on our backs. Either his sense of direction was terrible, or he was heading north on purpose. “Los!” I yelled finally.
He was lost in his thoughts and didn’t answer for a while. “Yah?”
“Where are we going?”
“To Ladysmith.”
“Yah, but why are we heading north?”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to see elephants?”
“Yah.”
“Well, we’re taking a detour through the Umfolozi Reserve. It’s not far.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
It wasn’t easy to talk when we were riding. The engine was noisy, and so was the wind. I could tell that Los’ mind was somewhere else, and he wasn’t in the mood for talking. I didn’t mind. I was happy to watch the grassy landscape go by. It was always interesting to spend time on land that wasn’t surrounded by the sea. And I really did hope to see elephants, and maybe zebra and ostrich, too. I looked across the wide plain. This was Africa. It was pretty amazing.
For the first while, we didn’t see anything but grass, bushes, sand, and rock. I had thought maybe Africa would look like India, but it didn’t. It didn’t feel like it, either. The air was drier, the light clearer, and the smells earthier. In India, the air smelled like water. In Africa, it smelled like the earth. If you imagined India as like a leopard, then South Africa was like a horse. Or maybe a zebra. And then, I saw one.
It stood in the field like a large pony. But it was as if some pranksters had come by with buckets of paint and painted black and white stripes all over it. “There’s a zebra!” I yelled to Los. He just nodded his head a little. Then we went around a turn, and I saw three more. “There’s three! Look, Los! Zebras!” But he just nodded again. He had obviously seen lots of zebras.
But there was something magical about them to me. And they were playful, like young deer, or dogs, running around the field chasing each other. A little while later, I saw what I thought were six bushes in a circle in the centre of a long field. Then, one of them mo
ved, and I realized they were ostriches. “Los!” I yelled, and pointed.
“Watch this!” he said, and we left the road suddenly and raced across the field. He aimed straight for the ostriches. They raised their heads, saw us coming, and started to run. And man, could they run! Maybe on a smooth highway, at full speed, we might have caught them, maybe, but not on a bumpy field. We didn’t even come close. Not only were they fast, they were huge. Their legs stood higher than my head. What a bizarre place this was, with black and white ponies, and birds as tall as moose. What would we see next?
Well, the next thing we saw was a large round stone in the middle of the road. It looked like a cauldron turned upside down. Los came to a sudden halt, and jumped off the bike. I climbed out, and so did Hollie. I looked at the stone, and I looked up at the sky. “Where did it come from?”
“It crawled here.”
“Crawled here?” Hollie ran around the stone, sniffed it, and gave a little bark. It wasn’t a very convincing bark. I looked closer and saw a neck and face appear. It was a giant tortoise. The tortoise raised its head and gazed at me as if it were apologizing for blocking the road. It looked tired and old, as old as the world.
“We should lift it off the road,” said Los. “It might get hit by a truck.”
I looked around. There wasn’t a soul in sight for miles and miles in every direction; and no sound except for the idling of the bike’s engine. “What trucks would ever come through here?”
“Safari trucks.”
“Oh.” I stared at the tortoise. “Can it bite?”
“Yes. It can bite through your arm. And if it bites, it won’t let go.”
“Yikes.”
“Don’t let it bite you.”
“I won’t.”
Los took one side of the tortoise, and I took the other. Carefully, we picked it up and carried it. It was extremely heavy, but we were able to move it off the road. It didn’t seem to mind us moving it. I looked at the trail it had created behind it, and the ground in front of it. On both sides there was nothing but dry, dusty ground stretching endlessly. Where was it going? Where had it come from? I stared across the wide open landscape until it disappeared in a sunny haze on the horizon. Then I looked down and watched the tortoise move a few inches. There was such a sense of hopelessness about it.
But that was just my perception. This tortoise had been on the earth a heck of a lot longer than I had. And it knew where it was going and what it was doing. We were the ones who were searching. We were the ones who didn’t know what we were doing. As I stared across the land, I felt a sudden guilt tear at my heart. We humans were threatening the whole world for every other creature. We had no right.
Chapter Seventeen
BACK ON THE BIKE, we rode in silence for a long time. The vastness of the landscape was hypnotic. It was beautiful. It seemed so endless; it was hard to imagine that anything could ever hurt it. And yet, the land on the earth was smaller than the oceans. And what was bad for the oceans was bad for the land, because everything was connected. And I had already learned that the oceans were in trouble. Many people believed they had already started to die. Los was absolutely right; we had to stop polluting the earth before it was too late. But it was hard to imagine it being too late when you looked across a beautiful landscape like this.
After we rode through a dozen rolling hills, we entered a valley. Just over the crest of a small hill, Los coasted to a stop and shut off the bike. The air was silent and still, though my ears were ringing from the noise of the engine.
“I think we are in the Umfolozi Reserve now,” said Los. “We better not get off the bike here in case there are lions. Keep your eyes open.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. We sat on the bike and stared across the valley. There were clusters of trees on both sides of a river. In the river, there were hippos. I watched them with the binoculars. They looked like fat grey cows with enormously fat heads. Los told me that hippos killed more people than lions did. They were extremely moody and aggressive, and they would attack you and drown you if you came near them in the river. Good to know.
Then, through the trees, came a family of the tallest creatures in the world. They appeared as if they had been waiting backstage to make an appearance. Like tall marionette puppets they stepped gracefully, and a bit stiffly, through the trees, though their heads were taller than the tree tops. They moved slowly and confidently. They made me think of dinosaurs. I tried to picture dinosaurs here, as they would have been so many millions of years ago. This was probably a jungle then, with rivers and swamps. But they were all gone now. Extinct. They died out and had been replaced by other species. Was that going to happen again? Were we about to lose the giraffes and zebras and ostriches, also the whales, sharks, dolphins, polar bears, and everything else? As hard as it was to believe, it was beginning to look like it. We had lost many species already. So many others were threatened. Why were we so destructive? What was it about human beings that made us this way? It didn’t make any sense. If the world died, so would we.
But there were many people who weren’t like that, who were trying to stop the effects of global warming, save the animals, and clean up the pollution. And Los was one of them. I wanted to be, too. As I watched a young giraffe run to catch up with its mother, I realized that this would be my last voyage purely for exploration. The purpose of my next one would be to do something active for the environment.
“We can’t stay,” said Los. “If the rangers see us, we’ll be in trouble. If they think we are poachers, they’ll chase us. They might shoot at us.”
“Shoot at us? Okay, let’s go. I don’t feel like getting shot. It’s bad enough being shot at by pirates. But I wish we had seen elephants. I wonder where they are.”
“Elephants move around a lot. They could be anywhere.”
Los started the motor. Suddenly, he stopped. “Alfred?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to drive?”
“Drive? Uhhh . . . sure, why not?”
So, Los showed me how to work the gas, brake, and clutch. It wasn’t so different from the sub in theory, but steering and balancing were, especially when it was bumpy. Sometimes the sidecar wheel would lift right off the ground. I started out slowly, practising braking and changing gears. It didn’t take long to get the hang of it, and soon I was riding at about thirty miles an hour. It was fun, though I couldn’t watch the scenery anymore because I had to keep my eyes on the road. After half an hour or so, I was feeling pretty confident. Riding a motorbike was a lot easier than I had expected. And then we came around the corner of a small hill, with a rock face on one side, and a sand dune on the other; and down the road in front of us was a small herd of elephants.
“Stop!” Los yelled. So I did. It took me just a few seconds. The elephants were standing on the road about three hundred feet away. One of them was a lot bigger than the others, and it had tusks. “That’s the male,” said Los. “The others are females. And there’s a baby. We’d better be careful. Male elephants can be very aggressive when there’s a baby around.”
“What should we do? Turn around?”
“Yes. We’d better turn around.”
“Okay.” I was trying to remember the sequence of the gear shift, and the difference between the brake and the gas, when the male elephant started to run towards us.
“He’s coming,” said Los.
“I know.”
“You’d better turn around now.”
“I know. I’m trying to. I just . . .” Then I gave the engine too much gas; it bolted forward, then stalled.
“Hurry up!” said Los. “He’s coming!”
The elephant came towards us like a train engine that started slowly, but was picking up speed. I started the motor again, put the bike in gear, and started to turn. But as the bike twisted around on the road, the engine wasn’t responding to the throttle. Maybe the fuel line was pinched. It wasn’t getting any gas. So, I turned the throttle up. Suddenly the bike shot
across the road and into the sand dune. Hollie went flying off Los’ lap, hit the sand, and rolled. The tool bag, with Little Laura inside, slammed into the bottom of the sidecar. Los held on tightly, but I went up and over the handlebars.
Los jumped out. “Run!”
I turned and looked for Hollie. He had picked himself up, but was covered with sand. I reached over and grabbed him. But what about Little Laura? What if the elephant crushed the bike? I had to grab her, too. So I reached into the sidecar for the tool bag.
“What are you doing, Alfred? Run! Run!”
The elephant roared. It was almost upon us. I could feel the weight of its steps coming up through the ground. But with Hollie and Little Laura in my arms I just couldn’t get out of the way in time. Suddenly, Los jumped up, ran onto the road, waved his arms in front of the elephant, and yelled at the top of his lungs. The elephant didn’t stop. It raised its trunk to strike him. Los turned around and ran. The elephant went after him. I dropped the tool bag and Hollie into the sidecar, pulled the bike around, kick-started it, and drove onto the road in the other direction. I turned my head to look for Los, but couldn’t see him. The other elephants had left the road for the field.
A couple of hundred feet away, I stopped the bike and turned around. There, on top of the rock face, was Los, waving. I had no idea how he got up there so fast, except I suppose having an elephant chasing you could make you grow wings.
We waited until the elephants moved on, then I rode back and picked up Los. He had tears on the knees of his pants. He climbed in and we took off. A little further down the road, we parked the bike under a tree, sat down on the dry grass, and had some lunch. I brushed the sand from Hollie’s fur, opened the tool bag, and let Little Laura out. She seemed okay, maybe a little shook up. Los pulled up his pant legs and examined his knees. He had cuts and scrapes but nothing serious.
