The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [56]
"Tea, you pair," Karlsson called.
As every morning Braaf arrived drowsy, a blinking child somehow high as a man.
Wennberg sat with a grunt, at once fed more wood to the breakfast fire as if stoking a forge for the day.
... May as well, get it behind us....
"I'll show you what we face." As the other two slurped the first of their tea, Karlsson opened the map case and pulled out the fourth map.
"We're this place, here"—midway down the map, amid a shattered strew of coast—"and Melander meant to aim us east, over to this channel"—trench of white, inland a way, north-south through the coastal confusion.
"Then we've a sound to cross"—Milbanke, read Melander's penciling here—"then more of channel, then another sound"—Queen Charlotte, this inscription—"and we're to Vancouver's Island."
Wennberg and Braaf were gazing down at the map with fixation, tea forgotten. The Russians' map, Melander's map, the white-and-ink tapestry of their escape there to see ... Braaf said softly, "I don't savvy front from hack of it, but it's tsar's wealth to us, isn't it?"
Wennberg's eyelines were crinkled in concentration. '■Christ sideways on the cross, this's a coast. How we've got this far and only Melander—" That trend of thought treacherous, Wennberg peered to the bottom of the map, "And more of more, ahead of us there yet. The piece here, just a tit of it, this's—what'd you say, Karlsson?"
"Vancouver's Island," said Karlsson, and took a slow-drink of tea.
"Only one way to get there," Wennberg rumbled on, "and that's pry ourselves off our asses. Isn't that so, Captain Nose?"
"That's so," agreed Karlsson, and rerolled the fourth map.
As they pushed east, all three men eyed around at the shoreline continually, on watch for another canoeload of Koloshes.
Apprehension wears fast at stamina. Karlsson called an early halt for midday.
He did so again for the night. Melander had been able to stretch men beyond what they thought were their heavenmost limits. Karlsson already was calculating just how much he was going to have to ration his demands 011 these other two. Both of them were wan by the end of this day, looked hard-used, despite Karlsson's care with pace. But then Karlsson supposed he himself didn't look newly minted.
... But there's a day. They're pulling full this way, Wennberg and Braaf, not worrying their hair off about maps we don't have. We've made miles. Melander, old high-head, we're keeping 011 with it, this voyage of yours. We'll maybe step out at Astoria for you yet....
The next day arrived not yet certain of mood to choose, merely average gray or storm-dark. Behind the campsite the forest walled close as always, and somewhere up in the highest green a limb stammered in the breeze.
Gazing in the direction, Braaf said : "Waste of noise, like a blacksmith."
Wennberg glanced to Braaf, then turned aside and spat.
... Melander's line of country, this ocean, not mine. Savvied water, him. To the others of us it's a kind of night. See it but not into it. And try not catch a tumble from it. God's bones, can it be deep under here as Melander said? Some places as far to bottom as these mountains go high? Take his word for it, thank you. Sitka Sound a millpond to any of this. If this coast was other we'd maybe he hiking out. More my journey, that'd have been. Forest you can thread your way through, sort for yourself as you go. In Småland lead me with a mealsack over my head into any wood and straight out I'd find my way. Toss one foot in front of another, you know you get somewhere. But water, can't keep a fix on water. Only keep after it, stroke and stroke and stroke. Say this paddle work was ax strokes, how many trees'd been brought down by now? How many forests, more like. Could've built our own stockade and town. Called it New Stockholm. No, Melander in charge, New Gotland it'd be....
Karlsson caught up with his drift of mind. Bothered