by Philip Roy
Chapter Twenty-two
“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.
Chapter Twenty-three
THE CAMELS HATED Hollie. On top of that, they were terrified of him. It was the strangest of meetings — four large, bad-tempe
red camels and one little dog. Hollie dominated them and intimidated them from the start. I wondered if it were partly because they never really got a good look at him. But I had to hide him from them or we would never have gotten him onto their backs and on our way. I had to wrap him up in a scarf and lift him onto the camel’s back in a woven bag. And that’s where he remained most of the time, making his little belly-growl on and off for the first couple of hours, which the camels couldn’t hear, fortunately, although they seemed to suspect he was there because they would occasionally look back nervously. But the camel drivers — Omar, his father and uncle — were strict with the desert beasts. They made it very clear from the beginning: the camels were not pets.
Omar didn’t look anything like his father or uncle. I even wondered if he might have been adopted. Either that or the desert sun had aged the older men before their time, because they were as wrinkled as dried-out potatoes, like my grandfather, whereas Omar’s skin was as smooth as an apple.
The men greeted me loudly with words, which I was pretty certain were blessings, took my hands in theirs and hugged me. Then, when they saw the sack of tools I was carrying, they nodded their heads respectfully. I had to admit I was feeling pretty important.
That feeling of importance diminished quite a bit the first time I fell off the camel. It was just the irregular movement of the beast; I failed to get into rhythm with it. The second time I fell, my feeling of importance left entirely. It was a long way to the ground and it really hurt. It wasn’t going to happen a third time. Hollie, fortunately, had better balance than I did. I tried to make myself feel better by telling Omar that I had spent so much time at sea, my land balance was rusty. He smiled and nodded his head sympathetically, which was kind because I knew he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.
The camels were pretty stinky and definitely bad tempered but it was still fun riding them. I was surprised how slow it was, but it might only have appeared slow because of the extreme wide-open spaces. When we left the beach and crossed a small rise in the land, the desert opened up endlessly and just sort of vanished into a haze on the horizon. Once we were away from the water, the temperature rose at least ten degrees, very suddenly. Omar gave me a white dishdasha (a long gown) to wear over my t-shirt and shorts, and helped me wrap a blue cloth around my head, leaving only a slit open for my nose and eyes. This protected me from the hot sun and kept me cooler. I wished I had brought a mirror and camera.
Two hours into the trek I was already terribly sleepy. The movement of the camel, bobbing and weaving like a poorly built dory, had such a slow steadiness to it, which, combined with the intense heat and absolute stillness, was like a sleeping potion. The barren landscape, that was fascinating to look at for the first hour or so, gradually began to remind me of the sea, except that the sea would keep me awake because it was always moving.
We reached Chott el Fedjaj, one of the salt lakes. It was a salt lake all right; there wasn’t even any water! Only salt! I thought they should have called it a salt field. But they could have called it a crystal lake too, because in places it sparkled like crystals. It did something else. After an hour moving across the lake I spotted a very long camel caravan on the far horizon, passing in the opposite direction. I called out to Omar to look at it, but he didn’t see it. “Look!” I shouted. “Look at all the camels!” There must have been hundreds of them in a straight line, loaded up with all kinds of strange packages. Then, when I looked again, they were gone. They were never there. That was my first, and best, mirage.
By the afternoon, Seaweed, who had been following in the sky mostly, after an unsuccessful attempt to get comfortable on a camel’s back, headed back to the sea. I watched him spiral upwards, slowly, until he reached the highest level I had ever seen him reach. I knew he was looking for the sea. When he saw it he straightened out and sailed towards it. I had mixed feelings watching him go. Probably it was for the best. He would find the rusty old ship and the submarine, and would hang out there until I returned. But now I was more aware of the time. I would work on the engine as soon as we arrived, and wouldn’t stop until I was done.
We spent one night in the desert, which was unbelievably cold! Maybe it was the contrast with the day, I didn’t know, but the desert sand didn’t retain heat at night the way beach sand did. I slept with my clothes on, wrapped up in my sleeping bag, Hollie on my feet. The nice part of it was that, once we had set up the tent, which was a long, sloping, black cloth tent, and made a fire, and eaten, Omar’s father and uncle started playing music. They brought out a stringed instrument, something like a small round guitar, and a wooden flute set in a stone-like gourd. When they started to play, I recognized the sound instantly. I had heard this kind of music on the radio. Omar and I kept the beat by hitting sticks together. But I couldn’t keep my eyes open for long and was the first one to crawl into the tent. I didn’t even remember falling asleep. Crossing a desert by camel was completely exhausting. The heat just sucked all the energy out of you.
On the morning of the second day we could already see the mountain we were aiming towards. Under the burning sun the mountain sometimes looked twice its height, and sometimes disappeared altogether! It was unbelievable. We tossed and pitched in a straight line towards it like ants crossing a beach. As morning passed into afternoon, and afternoon dragged into evening, I fell into a kind of hypnotic state, a bit like sleepwalking. The desert wasn’t a place to be alone with your thoughts; it was a place to lose your thoughts and just listen to your breath. I thought Sheba would have liked it; it reminded me of how she described her yoga exercises. Personally, I would be happy to get back to my submarine.
It was dark when we got in. I couldn’t even remember the last couple of hours on the camel. I plopped down on my sleeping bag as soon as the tent was set up and fell asleep instantly. When I got up in the morning, I saw that we had reached the foot of the mountain. Strangely, the mountain started as abruptly as if someone had simply drawn a line in the sand and said, “Okay, here’s where we’ll put the mountain.”
There was a small wooden shack with pipes running out of it. The pipes snaked up the sides of the mountain. The mountain itself looked too dry for growing anything, but Omar insisted that it did. Inside the shack I found the engine. It was indeed an ancient two-cylinder diesel. Someone had hooked it up rather cleverly to a pump to drive water up the mountain from a deep well. As I looked around the interior of the shack, I saw thin slits of golden light pushing in through cracks between the wooden boards. If the sun was coming in, then so was the fine desert sand that floated on the air with the slightest breeze and found its way inside everything. Sealing those cracks was something they would have to do. Sand was the enemy of an engine.
I carried in my tools and set to work. Hollie dropped into a corner with his ball. He was happy to be out of the sun and off the back of the camel.
First, I sprayed anti-rust fluid on the engine bolts that hadn’t been removed in ages, and let it sit to loosen them up. Then I removed the bolts with a wrench, following the reverse of the pattern that had been stamped onto the head of the engine, many years before I was born. Although the engine itself wasn’t all that big — about half as big as a desk — I needed Omar’s help to lift off the head. Inside, I found the pistons covered with a very thin layer of fine, clay-like muck, which must have been a mixture of desert powder and engine oil. Whatever it was, it was not good for an engine. The muck was everywhere.
But the real shock came when I drained the engine oil. I knew it hadn’t been changed for a very long time because the drain cap was so hard to get off. I had to spray it, let it sit and pry it with vice-grips. Ziegfried was right, whoever had been looking after the engine had merely added new oil. My grandfather was a bit like that too. Oil was oil, he used to say, it turns black the second it goes into an engine, why waste money on new oil? My grandfather thought that when his boat engine coughed and hiccuped, it was supposed to sound like that.
I watched the filth
y oil drain into an old can I found in the shack. As the flow lessened, it thickened. Eventually it stopped trickling out and fell in clumps, like when milk goes sour and turns into glue. I squeezed the oil between my fingers and felt the fine powder of the desert. It was amazing this engine had been able to run at all. Well, I would follow Ziegfried’s directions. Then we would see.
I spent the whole day inside the shed, not coming out even once. Omar spent most of the day with me, which was a mixed blessing. At first, he stared over my shoulder with a kind of awe that reminded me of my watching Ziegfried, although Ziegfried was a master, I was just an apprentice. Eventually Omar got bored and kept trying to coax me outside to show me the mountainside, which I would have loved to see. But the thought of Seaweed sitting all alone beside the submarine made me work without stop. Then, unfortunately, Omar brought in his father’s flute. How I wished he hadn’t, because he couldn’t play at all. He kept blowing into it, making the strangest, annoying sounds, and never seemed to tire of it. Half a dozen times I opened my mouth to ask him to stop, but couldn’t quite get the words out. I didn’t want to insult him. Maybe it was really important to him, I didn’t know. I just thought he should stick to sponge diving; he was really good at that.
It was evening when I poured brand new, crystal-green oil into the old engine. I filled it up to the top and let it sit. I had cleaned out the filters, washed them with diesel fuel and let them evaporate dry. I had replaced the fuel line because the old one had looked like a cheap garden hose that someone had left outside for about twenty years. I cut a section from a longer hose that I brought, fit it and clamped it tight. Pumping fuel from the tank, I spun the flywheel and flicked the switch. There was a sound like a vacuum cleaner when the hose is plugged. “Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr …” and then it died. Nothing. Then began my series of checks that would have made Ziegfried proud. I went over every part that could have possibly prevented the fuel from reaching its destination. I couldn’t find anything. I tried to start it again — the same sound, then nothing. Omar’s father and uncle came in and stared over my shoulder and nodded respectfully. As evening passed into night they asked if I would like to return to the tent to sleep. I thanked them and shook my head. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway. They brought me tea, went out, and a little while later I heard music.
