The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [25]
Motionless, Karlsson frantically rummaged the times he had shared the hootch jug with Bilibin, tried to draw to mind the old guard's gossipy gab, pluck words out, but what words...
Then from beside Karlsson in the blackness, a bray in Russian:
"Nothingfifteen drops won't cure!"
Karlsson's right elbow was being gripped by the largest hand imaginable, which told him what his eyes could not in the dark : Melander.
Fresh silence at the other guard post. Deeper, tauter silence, it seemed to Karlsson, unrelenting as Melander's grip.
At last:
"Swig fifteen more for me and make a start on my woes as well. Christ's season be merry for you, Pavel Ivanovich!"
TWO
AS IF in mock of some dance the Russians just then were gyrating through in the Castle, the Swedes' vast voyage southward started off with an abrupt two-step to the west.
On the first of the Tebenkov maps, Melander had shown Karlsson the pair of south-going channels threaded like careful seams among the islands of Sitka Sound. Karlsson had glanced down and immediately up: "At night? Likely in rain?"
That granite nubbin of opinion pivoted the escapees to the third possible route, veering up the channel from the Kolosh village, around Japonski Island, then outside the shoal of Sound isles. Such a loop was longer than the other channels and unsheltered from the ocean currents, hut at least it was not a blindfolded plunge into Sitka's labyrinth.
This was however the inauguration for Braaf and Wennberg into paddling in untame waters, and as promptly as this, it began that these men were brave and afraid and back and forth between the two.
Both Braaf and Wennberg were chocked with anticipation that the canoe was going to buck, slide down nose first, rock to one side and then the other, then start over, on and on in a nautical jig horrifying to join in the wet dark. None such ruckus happened. Ballasted deep by the provisions, the canoe rode steady, almost with nonchalance, in the night water of Sitka. What proved obstreperous instead were the paddles in the hands of Wennberg and Braaf. The pair of novices splashed much, and more than occasionally whunked the canoe side. Then Braaf caught the tip of his paddle amid a stroke, spraying water forward onto Wennberg's back and down his neck.
The blacksmith's devoutly muttered string of curses inspired counsel from Melander. "Steady up, don't beat the damn water to death." But the paddling efforts of the pair in the middle of the canoe still were stabs into the sloshing turmoil until Karlsson directed:
"Spread your hands wide as you can on the paddle and stroke only when I say. Now—now—now—now—now—"
The contrived tick and tock, Karlsson's nows and the breath space between, advanced them through the blackness until Melander spoke from the bow of the canoe.
"Hold up, bring us broadside a moment, Karlsson. We've at least earned a look."
As the canoe swayed around, the other three saw his meaning. Back through one of the channel canyons amid the islands of Sitka Sound, an astonishing wide box of lights sat in the air. Baranov's Castle, every window bright for this night of Christmas merriment, sent outward through the black and the rain their final glittering glimpse of New Archangel.
By and large, a boat ride is a cold ride. From launching the canoe, the men's legs were wet to just above their knees, and it took the first half hour of paddling to warm themselves.
The night was windless, which they needed. The rain was not heavy, and gift above all, it was not snow. A few weeks earlier December's customary snowstorm had arrived, a white time when ice plated the tops of New Archangel's rain barrels and Melander went around looking pinched. But then thaw, and the Sitka air's usual mood of drizzle ever since.
Their course out. of the harbor looped the canoe toward the ocean, then swung southeast, to bring the craft along the shore of Baranof, Baranof's coastline the canoemen could estimate by the surf sound, and occasionally