The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [74]
Now, outbound, the Jane rode clear of Cape Flattery, let out full sails on both its masts, then bore away in the direction of the most robust of those ports—San Francisco—ward, south.
Three hours from then, off the top of the island Wennberg came tumbling.
"Karlsson! Braaf! Christ-of-mercy, out there—!"
Respectful of the turbulent coast, the Jane was ranging two miles or more out from shore, and by the time Karlsson and Wennberg and Braaf clambered up to Wennberg's sighting point the ship already was drawing even with the island.
In Karlsson's mind the choices ran: Canoe ... no, full sails bent that way, the ship couldn't be caught or even gained on. Even could the Swedes paddle into view of the vessel, logic would account them Koloshes from this village, all the better to be left back there sniffing wake.... Signal fire ... same. Even build one instantly, what sane captain would heave in along this howling canyon of a coast? But the whale people, they were more than guaranteed to he attracted across by any such smoke.... Gunshots ... same again, only quicker doom....
Evidently at different pace and route the same sorting had been racing in Braaf and Wennberg, Wennberg \yas yet squinting dismally toward the ship when Braaf swung to Karlsson.
"Sailcloth," agreed Karlsson, and Braaf was gone for it.
Careful to be always below the seaward brow of the island, walled from any Kolosh glance from the mainland, they flapped sailcloth. Flapped it as if trying to con jure flight, a man at each end of the length of fabric, third man jumping in whenever a pair of arms gave out, the fabric bucking as if in anguish to join that clan of sheets kiting atop the Jane.
Whichever of the three was not pummeling the air performed the steady yearning toward the Jane with the spyglass, rifle of vision aimed in search of a lens ogling back) But found nothing but portrait of a ship on the wing. Wennberg's wishful curses ran steady as incantation, ought ill themselves have wrought some drastic change in the brig's glide. Caused the mainmast to split and crash over. Tumbled the cabin lad overboard. Invoked Neptune to rise and shoo the ship back north. Tugged loose the sails and tangled them so thoroughly the captain would trice her right around. Any miracle, whatever style, would do.
Those sails continued to waft serenely southward. Leaving Wennberg and Braaf and Karlsson to stand and watch the distancing ship like men yearning to dive to a cloud.
The day at last declining toward dusk, Karlsson took the glass and eased to the down coast cud of the island to study the shoreline ahead. Wennberg was staying atop the island to brood, Braaf was hack at watching the Koloshes demolish the whale. Since the passing of the ship, both wore a look as though they had just been promised pestilence.
... Danced right by us. Damn. All the days since New Archangel, and a ship chooses this goddamned one. Damn, damn. Hadn't been for the Koloshes we'd right now be ...
With the glass Karlsson checked back on the villagers and their whale festival. Wood was being piled up the beach from the carcass. Evidently the celebration was going to rollick on into night.
Something flitted, was down among the shore rocks before Karlsson could distinguish it. Birds of this shoreline evidently had caught motion from the surf. Sanderlings, oyster catchers, turnstones, dowitchers, snipe, along here always some or other of them bobbing, skittering, dashing off; the proud-striding measured ravens of New Archangel were nowhere in it with these darters. Contrary another way, too, this southering coast was beginning to show itself. Its clouds were not the ebb and flow skidding about above Sitka Sound, but fat islands that impended on the horizon half a day at a time. Here it seemed, then, that you could navigate according to the clouds' positions, and that the routes of birds had nothing to teach but life's confusion