The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [41]
This day more, the canoemen pull their way along a lengthy timber-thick island, Dall.
That night: "Sleep deep," Melander advised. "Tomorrow we introduce ourselves to Kaigani."
The letters spoke large near the bottom of Melander's third map, and in sober block rather than the finespun script elsewhere on the paper. The space framing them, six widths of Melander's thumb could have spanned. In actuality the plain of water represented there extends twice the distance of the English Channel between Dover and Calais, and no calm white cliffs stand as guides.
Taken all in all, calculated Melander, they compressed into themselves a marathon day of canoe voyage, did those two thickset words: Proliv Kaigani. Kaigani Strait.
The water stretched to them out of a horizonless gray, a blob of overcast messily sealing together sea and sky. Melander did not at all like it that no line of land could be seen out there. In the canoemen's island-by-island descent of the coast, Kaigani and the channel which intersected it to the east, Hecate Strait, were the first expanses where the day's shore did not stand steadily in sight. Yet the map vouched to Melander that across in that fume of seawater and cloud the northeast tip of the Queen Charlotte Islands arced toward the canoeists. Hold to a heading of south-southeast and they would aim into its embrace. At least Melander needed to believe that south-southeast could be held to. If not, if current swung them too far eastward, they would be swept from Kaigani directly on into Hecate Strait. One water stead of distance and risk, Melander reckoned they could manage in the day. Two, he doubted gravely.
From his resumed place at the bow Melander studied back along the canoe at the others. Braaf with his paddle across the gunwales and his fingers restless atop the wood as if absently plucking music. Wennberg eyeing askance at the wide water. Stock-still, Karlsson; the steering paddle needed his skill today.
What was required of Melander now was a division of faith. Certain of himself, confident of what he could make in his mind, going through life as if he had always a following wind; such had been Melander's history, self-belief. Now he needed to apportion trust into these other three in the canoe with him, into the coil of map which promised firm earth out there over the precipice of water, into the hovering grayness, into the canoe, paddles, compass....
Melander spat over the side to clear his mouth, not recognizing the taste of diluted faith but decidedly not caring much for it. Then he said: "Time for our stroll."
The powerful rumple of the Pacific made itself felt to them at once. Swells were spaced wide, perhaps two lengths of the canoe between crests, but regular as great slow breathings. Each swell levered up the prow of the canoe, Melander instantly created even taller, a foremast of man, then the craft was shrugged downward.
"More beef, Wennberg. Push that paddle deeper, aye?"
Melander's urging began while the tips of the fir trees of Dall Island still feathered against the sky behind them. Wennberg he had not expected to be slack in this situation. Braaf it was who could be anticipated to scant his labor if high heaven itself depended on it. But Braaf was thrusting steadily, and onto Melander's admonition tossed gibe of his own.
"Bashful are you, Wennberg? Beach right down there and meet the wet, why not..."
Wennberg grumped something unbearable, but this paddling picked up markedly.
What Melander's Russian map here denominated as Kaigani Strait has since become Dixon Entrance, a name engrafted for the English captain who delved the region in the ship Queen Charlotte. By whatever christening, the expanse forms one of the largest of dozens of plains of water between the broken lands of the North Pacific coastline. Extensive in its perils as wells this water, "The tidal currents are much confused," navigators are cautioned; in storm the channel can seem to be forty white miles of breakers. All