Seas of South Africa (7 page)

I TOWED THE SAILBOAT
around the island and out to sea. It slowed us down quite a bit, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the pirates would come after us. But they would have to find another boat first, and it would have to have radar, and be fast, if they hoped to find us. I hadn't seen any boats like that on the beach, but there probably were some in boathouses, or under tarps. If they ever did manage to locate us, I would see them coming on radar first anyway, and we'd simply submerge and disappear. Unless they had sophisticated sonar, and a couple of very fast boats, and maybe a helicopter or plane, they were no threat to us on the sea.

But this was the first time I had made such a big decision without really thinking it through. There was so little time; I had to act. How could I not? I already
was
involved. I had witnessed their crime, and their dumping of the body, and had found their cache of weapons, drugs, and treasure. They were perfectly prepared to continue acts of piracy, to sell drugs, kill people, and who knew what else? If knowing that didn't make me responsible, what did? There had been a chance to take it all away from them, and so I took it. They never saw me coming or going. They would never even know what had happened.

Five miles from shore, I shut the engine off, climbed out, and jumped onto the sailboat. The sun was coming up. I went inside the cabin and looked around. It stank really badly, even worse than rotten fish. It made me feel like throwing up. There were at least three dozen guns of different types, and there were boxes of ammunition. Some of the guns were old, and some new. The bags of white powder looked like icing sugar, but must have been drugs. There were seven of those. There were six bundles of money wrapped in elastic bands. Two of the bundles looked like American twenty-dollar bills. The others were of different sizes and from countries I didn't know. Probably they were African. All of the money was dirty. The gold and jewellery in the heavy plastic bag was old and had come from the sea. Some of it was encrusted from lying in salt water for probably hundreds of years. There were coins, too. As I looked around, I knew what I had to do. I had to scuttle the boat.

What a strange feeling it was to step through the cabin, pick up the money, put it into the bag with the treasure, and carry it out. I felt like a criminal. On the other hand, I was stealing from pirates to try to stop them from hurting more people, or at least to make it harder for them. And that was surely the most responsible thing to do? I supposed I could have sent the money and treasure to the bottom of the sea, too. But why not use it for something good? Unlike guns and drugs, there was nothing bad about money itself.

I had to step over and around the guns and ammunition. I climbed out of the cabin, jumped onto the hull of the sub, and looked back. I had a sudden urge to throw the bag back onto the sailboat, to keep everything together. I looked down at it in my hand. The money had black spots on it that looked like dried blood. The other pirate had been murdered for this bag. This was blood money. I felt an urge to get rid of it right away, before it could bring me any more trouble. I even swung my arm a little, as if I would throw it back. But there was no sincerity in my swing. I didn't really want to do it. I wanted to keep it.

I wrapped the bag inside a burlap sack and hid it under the potatoes in the coldest compartment of the sub, my root cellar, where the crew wouldn't touch it. Then I heard a beep on the radar. A quick glance showed a vessel turning the north end of the island. They were coming. I watched the screen for a moment. They were coming fast. They must have found a speedboat. I had to hurry.

I grabbed the crowbar and a fifty-foot length of rope,
jumped to the sailboat, and smashed in the windows. That would let water in faster. Then I climbed part way up the mast and tied the rope as high as I could reach, just as the other pirate had done. I jumped back to the sub, started the engine, steered to the side of the sailboat, and pulled her over. When she was down, I shut the engine off, untied the rope from the mast, dropped it into the portal, grabbed the binoculars, and scanned the water. As I caught sight of them racing towards me, I saw two of the men in the boat holding binoculars and staring back. They had seen everything. It was time to go.

The sailboat started to sink quickly because the cabin filled with water right away. No doubt the weight of the guns and ammunition was helping to pull her down. She'd be under the water before they even reached the scene. So would we. I took a last look at her as she rolled over and exposed her keel. “I'm sorry,” I said, as she began to pitch. I couldn't believe I was watching another boat go to the bottom of the sea, and this time I was the one sending her there. But there was no time to think of anything else. I took one last look at the approaching boat. I could see it clearly enough without binoculars now. The men were waving their arms wildly but apparently had no guns to shoot. I jumped inside the portal, shut the hatch, hit the dive switch, and submerged.

As we went down, so did the sailboat, though she fell more slowly. I didn't wait to watch her settle. I engaged the batteries, motored half a mile towards the island, and surfaced to periscope depth. I wanted to see what the pirates would do next.
Through the periscope, I saw their boat sitting in the water where the sailboat had gone down. They were standing up and staring at the water, but there was nothing they could see, and nothing they could do. Would they hunt me now, as they had hunted the other pirate? Of course they would. And if they ever found me, they would kill me, too.

But we weren't staying around. I wanted to sail to the Cape of Good Hope and see some of South Africa. I wanted to see zebras, ostriches, lions, elephants, giraffes, and rhinoceroses. My guidebook said there was a colony of penguins just south of Cape Town. I wanted to see that, too. And I felt confident that when we left this area, and sailed hundreds of miles due south, we'd never see these pirates again. But I never realized just how serious the pirate threat had become in Africa, how far south it had spread, or how persistent and vengeful pirates could really be. It wouldn't take long to find out.

It was two whole days of sailing before I dared to bring the crew to shore again. Hollie really needed to get out and run on the beach; he had been cooped up too long. Especially since Little Laura was sticking to him like glue. Whenever he slept, she crawled in against his belly where it was warm and slept too, or cleaned her feathers. Then she began climbing onto his back, and would hold on even when he walked around the sub. Her claws were small and sharp; he must have felt them through his fur, but he never complained. Still,
I saw that longing look in his eyes, to have the freedom of the beach to run wild.

And there was something I wanted to do on shore that I couldn't do on the sub because I didn't have enough fresh water—wash the money. It smelled like rotten stinky cheese. It also had blood stains on it. I wanted to count it, but before I could count it, I had to wash it. I knew you could wash money with water and soap because I had forgotten money in my pockets so many times when my pants went through the washing machine. If the money was too old, it might rip apart. If it was new, it was okay.

A couple of hundred miles south of Mozambique Island was another city called Angoche. My guidebook said it used to be a major slave-trading port. For hundreds of years, people were taken from their villages, forced onto ships, and sold into slavery. Looking at the pretty green land from the water, it was hard to imagine that happening here.

Angoche was bigger than Mozambique Island, and had a large river estuary. But I wouldn't risk mooring here because of the pirates. Instead, I chose a spot a little further south, where a smaller river emptied into the sea.

Before I inflated the kayak and rowed to shore with the crew, I checked with radar to make certain there were no vessels within ten miles of us. Then I put the money and some soap in the tool bag I always used for carrying Hollie around on land. It was a nylon mesh bag with a wooden frame, and hung from a strap over my shoulder. I hung the binoculars
around my neck, let Seaweed out, inflated the kayak, and climbed in with Hollie. I shut the hatch with Little Laura inside. It was too soon and too risky to take her in the kayak.

I paddled about three hundred feet to the beach, pulled the kayak up on the sand, and let Hollie out. He ran like a convict who had just escaped from jail. “Don't run too far, Hollie! Stay close to me.”

The river wasn't much more than a large ditch. It ran shallow over stones, and its banks were made of sand. But the water was fresh. I reached down, cupped my hand, and tasted it. I pulled the tool bag off my back, put it down, and lifted out the money. We had about half an hour to an hour at most. Anything longer and the sub might be discovered on radar by another vessel, and I wouldn't know. I had to wash the money as quickly as I could. Hollie wouldn't want to go so soon, I knew, but it really wasn't that safe being here in the first place.

I started to wash the American bills first. I pulled a handful out from the elastic bands, put them down on the sand, poured soap on them, picked up one, and the brush, and started scrubbing it quickly in the water. When it was clean, I put it down and grabbed another one. After I had done five, I raised my head and took a peek at the horizon with the binoculars. Then I dropped my head and washed five more. I raised my head every five bills, which was a hundred dollars.

It was tiring washing the money, and I soon realized it was going to take a lot longer than half an hour to do it all. Too
bad there wasn't a washing machine that I could throw all the money inside. There probably wasn't a washing machine for five hundred miles of here. I wondered where the pirates were. I could imagine how angry they would be if they could see me now.

After the seventh pile of five bills, I raised my head to scan the water again, and got a heck of a fright. Half a dozen people were standing in the sand, staring at me. Hollie was standing next to them. I jumped to my feet. For a second, I thought they were the pirates, and an icy chill ran up my spine. But they weren't. They were just people who lived in the area. I could tell from the looks on their faces that they were as surprised to see me as I was to see them. Then they saw the money in my hands and on the sand beside me, and their eyes opened wider.

There was an older man who was probably the father, a woman, a younger woman, and three boys. I smiled and waved, and they smiled and waved back. “Hello!” I said. The father said something back. They couldn't take their eyes off the money. It felt awkward. I didn't know what else to do so I reached down and picked up one of the American twenties and a handful of bills from one of the African piles. “Would you like some?” I said. I reached it towards him.

They stared at me as if I were crazy. The father stepped closer and looked at the bills. Suddenly he jumped back as if something had bitten him. I think he saw the spots of dried blood on the money. He started speaking loudly and turned
around and opened his arms wide, trying to gather his family together. They all looked frightened to death. Then, they turned around and ran away. I watched them run across the sand and disappear beneath the palm trees. They never even looked back. Why were they so afraid? It was only money. Surely they didn't think I was a pirate?

Chapter Nine

I CLEANED A THOUSAND
dollars before returning to the sub. Cleaning money was a lot of work, and was really boring. Judging from the size of the piles, I was guessing I had about twenty thousand dollars in American bills. Two of the other piles were South African rand. Two were from Nigeria. Handling it made me feel sick, it stank so badly. I put the thousand dollars in my money tin and the rest of the money back into the burlap sack and shoved it under the potatoes.

The treasure didn't stink. It had lain under the sea for hundreds of years, so even though it was encrusted, it was clean, and smelled clean. There were seventeen gold coins, Spanish
or Portuguese, I didn't know which. There were three large gold rings, two gold necklaces with pearls, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds on them, and two large gold bracelets with similar jewels. It was a small treasure, but I bet it was worth a lot of money. All of it fit into three of my tea tins. I wrapped it in plastic bags and put the rest of the tea on top to hide it. But then the tins weighed a ton. If anyone picked them up, they would know right away there was more than tea inside them. So, I spread the treasure out. I wrapped each individual piece in a small plastic bag, and buried it under the tea, coffee, sugar, oats, beans, spices, jam, and peanut butter. Then I tried to forget about it.

The money was different. It stank so badly it was ruining the potatoes, although maybe the potatoes were going bad anyway. I had to keep that compartment shut. I planned to use some of the money to buy fresh fruit and vegetables as soon as I had the chance. But I had to find a way to clean the rest of it first, before the whole sub started to stink. Even when I tried to sleep I could smell it, the scent of stinky cheese. It made you want to clear your throat all the time. I had to cover my nose to fall asleep.