We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [218]
Tordenskjold sat on the thwart next to him, surveying us with his beady, inscrutable eyes. From time to time the bird would take off, soar into the blue sky, and dive into the water without warning. Returning to the boat, he'd settle on the thwart again and fling back his head, his sharp beak tilted skyward. We'd see his throat flex beneath the feathers as, oblivious to our presence, he swallowed the fish he'd caught.
"Well done, Tordenskjold," Anton would say. He always addressed the gull as if it were a dog.
"Does the treasure have to do with the English?" Olav asked. He was a big, burly boy whose hair hung low over his brow.
"In a way," Anton said. "That's all I'm going to tell you."
Knud Erik and Vilhjelm exchanged a look.
We started diving in the Mørkedybet. It was a cloudless day in the first week of June. There were no waves, so you could see far down into the water, though not as far as the seabed, which lay hidden beneath an undulating canopy of green and dark blue. One after another we plunged off the side, but the deeper we dived, the harder it became to see anything: the bottom was an impenetrable shadow. It was creepy to feel the seaweed caressing our stomachs; it was as if the water had grown long, soft fingers and was tentatively reaching for you. A swaying colony of jellyfish kept us company, and at one point a flounder suddenly flipped out from its camouflage in the sand. But there was no sign of any treasure. We rowed from one place to another and kept diving, while our limbs got colder and colder. Anton held out longer than any of us, but every time he broke through the mirror of the water, his lips trembled.
Tordenskjold took off and floated high in the blue sky, as if keeping an eye on us.
It was a hopeless enterprise, and soon it was hard to believe we'd ever imagined finding the head of James Cook at the bottom of the sea. We began to lose our enthusiasm along with our breath and our body heat. The sun was shining, but the sea was still tinged with the chill of winter.
The only one who wasn't shivering with cold was Helmer. He sat warm and dry on the stern thwart, picking at the places where his sunburned skin had started to peel and staring skeptically at the water. "Well, the boat's mine," he said. In his opinion, that was contribution enough.
"Chicken!" we yelled at him.
This offended his manly pride, and he swung himself out on the forestay. But when he realized how cold the water was, he forgot's all about saving his honor. He grabbed hold of the stay and tried to scramble back into the empty boat, which promptly keeled over.
No one panicked and no one tried to climb onto the capsized vessel. It was too heavy to turn over, so we started pushing and dragging it toward Birkholm, where we'd be able to right it and bale it out in the shallow waters.
Knud Erik and Vilhjelm stayed behind to fish out everyone's clothes—shirts, sweaters, and trousers that floated on the water like a blanket of algae. They hung some things up to dry on the perches that marked the channel; other items they brought ashore. Only Anton kept diving, determined to find Cook's head. It wasn't until the rest of us were lying naked on the sand on Birkholm, trying to warm up, that we saw him heading in toward the beach. He was swimming on his back and clasping something in one arm, as if he was rescuing a drowning man.
"He's found the treasure! He's found the treasure!" Helmer yelled.
Knud Erik and Vilhjelm looked at each other. Could he really have found the head of James Cook?
Anton staggered up onto the beach. His face was pale blue, and his teeth wouldn't stop chattering, so that for a few minutes he was incapable of saying anything. He squatted, breathing deep and gurgling as if he'd swallowed a lot of water, hugging the treasure