The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [43]
Melander watched along the surface of Kaigani intently. Upon the high seas is the wrong saying of it, a horizon of ocean all around makes shallow the place of an onlooker, sloshes even a Melander in a basin of the taller water.
Then what Melander dreaded sprung to creation. Wind streaks on the water, long ropy crawlers of white. "Neptune's snakes," Melander knew them as from his shipboard years, and knew too that they are the spawn of a thirty-knot gale.
"Melander!" Karlsson called forward. "We need be steadier with the paddles. That slap the Koloshes do, let's try..."
"Be the drum lad," Melander agreed instantly. "Braaf, Wennberg, listen sharp..."
Karlsson began as the next wave struck the canoe, quivered it, lie paddled twice, deep strokes; then rapped his paddle against the side of the canoe, just below the gunwale.
The craft meanwhile mounted the roll of water, another hummock waited to slide under the hull. When it came, again Karlsson's double stroke and rap to signal pause.
The other three took the rhythm and the canoe steadied its pace, two strong climbing strokes up each wave, the tap of waiting, then next wave and same again.
The sky began to fleck, snowflakes like tiny gulls riding down the wind which now strengthened into a constant whirl past the canoemen's ears. Melander looked away from his compass only to monitor the stroking of his crew and to glance at the angle of the swells to the canoe. The compass could not he wrong, daren't be, yet there was constant urge to check it against the evidence of his eyes.
Water was finding its way over the gunwales, lopping in off rollers now mighty enough that when they crested beneath the bow, Melander went so uplifted he had to reach far down to get his paddle to the ocean.
Chop of this sort needed rapid heed. Still struggling against seasickness, Wennberg was erratic at the paddle. But if he lowered his head to bail, he would be sicker yet. So—"Braaf." Water noise made Melander raise his choice to a shout. " Braaf! You'll need to shovel water, and quick!"
Three motions fought in the water now: the broad sloshing advance of the waves themselves; the lizardy wrinkle of their texture; and the gale ripple skipping ahead. At odds with all these and with the wind-spun snow as well, the canoe's progress fell to a kind of embarrassed wallow, as when a good steed is forced to slog through mire.
Working the bailer, a cedar scoop which coupled over his hand like a hollowed-out hoof, Braaf pawed seawater from the canoe's bottom.
Karlsson gritted against spray and snow and tried to hold in mind nothing but the pulse of stroke stroke slap, stroke stroke slap. But he somehow did hear the voice of agony in front of him. "Oh God who watches over fools and babes," Wennberg implored. "What am I doing in this pisspot of a canoe?"
Like a prophet promising geysers of honey just there beyond shovel point, Melander preached steadily to his straining crew now, ..."We're straddling it, Karlsson. No water is wide as forever ... Karlsson's face could have been mounted forward as figurehead for the craft, if imagination permits that a Kolosh canoe ever would breast the sea with a Småland parson's profile at its front. Everything, each fiber, of Karlsson was set to the twin grips of his hands on the steering paddle, the portioning-out of effort. If stone profile and millwork arms could grind a way across Kaigani, Karlsson meant it to he done.... Melander: "Dig the paddle, Wennberg. You're strong as wake ale now." (Melander within: May he not go ill on us again, this lumpy water is no place for a cripple in the crew....) lint Wennberg yet tussled with a hive of woes. The tipping wave surface was had enough, and the unending exertion, and the over-the-side-of-the-world absence of land or even horizon. Worst of all, the nausea which hid so sly within him, reambushing whenever he thought the bile might have receded. The blacksmith felt weaker than he could ever remember, listless, yet this uphill labor of paddling demanded and demanded of him.