The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [42]
Not a whit of this was suggested from that calm space between shorelines on Melander's map.
"Got a lump in it today, it has," Melander admitted as a wave shuddered the canoe.
Thirty or forty hillocks of water later, again the heart ski]) in the rhythm of the boat.
"Wennberg!" Melander's tone crackled now. "You're dabbing at it again,"
Wennberg held his paddle just above the lapping-waves, as though trying to recall whether water or air was the element in which it operated. His face hung open in surprise. His mouth made motions but no sound. Then with gulped effort: "I'm. Getting. Sick."
"If you don't paddle you'll get dead, and us with you, Have a puke now and be done with it, Wennberg. We need your arms, aye?"
Wennberg glassily found Melander, seemed to mull the suggestion, then shook Ins wide head.
"Drag it up," Melander insisted. "You've got to."
Wennberg put his head over the side of the canoe and gaped his mouth as if hoping to inhale better health up from the ocean.
After a minute his gasps managed to be words: "Can't. Too. Sick."
"Wennberg, listen to me, aye? Jab a finger down your gullet, tell yourself you've swallowed baneberries, pretend that Braaf here melted a slug into your tea this morning—do whatever the hell, but heave the sickness out of you now. Do it, Wennberg. Dump your gut."
"Keep on, you'll have me tossing up, too," muttered Braaf.
Just then Melander's prescriptions took their intended effect on Wennberg.
"There now, you're empty and scraped," Melander proclaimed in satisfaction. "You'll be a bull again before you know it. Rest a half moment, we can spare you until you get your breath back."
Wennberg focused woozily toward Melander. "Mela rider—one time I'll—reach down that—mouth of yours and—" But before long, he retrieved his paddle and, while still not able to stroke in smoothness with the others, was adding push to theirs.
***
For a time—say, the first few dozen hundred paddlestrokes of this day's journey—a wall of reassurance yet could he seen behind the canoemen, the outline of Dall Island and its greater neighbor, Prince of Wales. Farther though that landline was becoming, the shore of the islands lay as a footing, a ledge to return to.
Then, just after Melander reckoned aloud that they might be a third of the way across, Karlsson glanced back and saw that the landwall was gone. In place of the islands hovered a sheet of storm. Kaigani had enwrapped the canoe and its men, anywhere about them nothing other than water or cloud or mix of the two.
They had no timepiece, but an onlooker could have clocked Melander's decrees to within two minutes' regularity of one another. Each time he called rest, one man continued to paddle to keep the canoe from backsliding in the swells. That sentinel then rested briefly while the other three resumed, then plunged to work again. At the next rest, the solitary paddling duty slid to the next man.
Near to what Melander estimated ought to be the midpoint of the channel, waves began to chop more rapidly at the canoe. A fresh sound, a slapping higher against the side of the craft, could be heard, and spray now and again tossed itself over the bow and Melander.
"A fast ship's always wet forward," he called out, the while wondering how much more the water would thicken.
Braaf, though, noticed an absence. The gulls which hung in curiosity beside them in the island waters and the early distance offshore from Dall were vanished. He discovered too that the air felt different, more tooth in it, and that off to the west a particular splotch of weather resembled neither fog nor rain.
Braaf leaned ahead enough to pass the news softly over Melander's shoulder, as it were their secret: "Snow."
"Jesu Maria," Melander said back.
The squall hit them first with wind. Gust tagged closely onto gust, taking the canoe at an angle