The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [63]
Their crossing was seven hours of stupefying slosh, under the most winsome weather of the entire journey.
***
"Cape Scott, off there," Karlsson called as they were approaching the south margin of the Sound.
Across Karlsson's lap lay the fourth Tebenkov map, with etchwork that presented him an identifying silhouette of the cape ahead. Several inches of crinkled rock inked in series there, dragon's grin it might have been, precise miniature profile of the westward jut of shore now showing its outline in front of the canoe, and the broken rampart of sea rock that thrust beyond the cape.
"Cape Snot, may's well be," Wennberg retorted thickly. "That map quits off, you showed us. So where d'we bear from here?"
A forcible part of Karlsson wanted to shout out and have done with it:...Wennberg, where from here isn't anything I can know, we've run dry not just of this map but all maps, put your finger to any direction and you'll choose as clever as I can....
The rest of Karlsson struggled and said: "Tell you when I've pulled the next map, it'll take a bit."
Karlsson did up the fourth map. Reached the map case to himself and put the roll of paper in. Braaf and Wennberg were paddling steadily, studying ahead to Vancouver Island. As though plucking a new broadsheet from the scroll in the map case, Karlsson unrolled the fourth map once more.
Same as a minute ago, the silhouette artistry still there like a farewell flourish, across at the lower right the last of the mapped coastline itself, that ragged thumb of land beside which Melander had penciled in "Cape Scott"; and then white margin.
... So now I go blind and say that I see. Braaf, Wennberg, forgive this, but we need for me to aim us as if i know the shot....
Braaf put a glance over his shoulder to Karlsson, attracted by his stillness.
A wave worried the canoe and Braaf went back to his fending manner of paddling.
One more time Karlsson looked up from the map to the cape ahead, checked again his memory of Melander's sketched geography in the New Archangel dirt. Then said, offhanded as he could manage: "To the right, there. West."
FIVE
THAT bump of land at the bottom of Karlsson's final map nudged not only the water of Queen Charlotte Sound. Cape Scott was dividing, once and all, Karlsson-as-escape master from Melander-as-escapemaster.
For there on the next of the coastal maps—had Karlsson possessed that cartographic treasure—Vancouver Island lies angled across most of the sheet like a plump oyster shell, blunt at each end and nicked rough all along its west with inlets and sounds and bays. An expansive and stubborn mound of shore, fashioned right for its role: largest island of the western coast of North America, dominant rampart of its end of what then was christened New Caledonia and now is the British Columbia shoreline. Nearly three hundred miles in its northwest-southeast length and generally fifty or more miles wide, this ocean-blockading island; and there along its uppermost, the vicinity of Cape Scott, Tebenkov's mapmaker has continued that thread of route followed by Melander in most of the journey of descent from New Archangel, and down out of Queen Charlotte Sound that threadline of navigation weaves, past the prow of Vancouver Island. But past it east, not west.
Melander's penciling has shown Karlsson that he amended from the mapped line of navigation whenever he thought needed. To leap Kaigani. Again to shear across Hecate Strait. And Melander's last amendment ever, to jink among the islands that included Arisankhana. But now, here at the northern pivot of Vancouver, say you are Melander, a bullet once whiffed nearer your ear than sailor's luck ought to permit hut your concern just now is a judgment you parented in the pilothouse of the Nicholas—the judgment to sell risk then and buy it back later. Later is here, and it has spent your four maps, and Cape Scott looms. The formline of this vast coast you know traces