River Odyssey Read Online Free Page A

question. It just kind of jumped out.
    “What was he like?”
    My grandfather dropped his head to think. I waited for his answer, wishing I hadn’t asked.
    “He’s not like you.”
    Fair enough. I wasn’t expecting him to be like me anyway. And if my grandfather had bad things to say about my father, I didn’t want to hear them either. I didn’t even
want
to go looking for him; I was just following Sheba’s advice, and it probably wasn’t a good idea in the first place. Maybe stopping by to see my grandfather wasn’t a good idea either. I just wanted to get to Montreal, get it over with, get back and prepare for the Pacific. What a waste of time.
    After we said goodbye I sailed an hour west of Dark Cove, submerged to a hundred feet, shut everything off, turned the lights low and climbed into bed. Seaweed had flown to shore to mingle with the local birds. He was a sociable bird. Hollie made himself cozy on his blanket and I heard him chew his rubber ball, lick his paws, bite his tail, wrestle with his rope, lick his paws again and sigh. Only then did I fall asleep.
    Ten hours later I woke and stretched. Hollie stretched too. I put the kettle on for tea, rose to the surface, opened the hatch and waited for Seaweed. It was misty in the twilight and the sub was invisible from shore, even for a seagull. But Seaweed would remember exactly where we had gone down. He had an amazing ability to find us, no matter what. Most often when we surfaced he was already on the hull before I opened the hatch. And sometimes, like tonight, he returned with friends—a couple of tough-looking seagulls. Were they expecting to stay? I sure hoped not. Nope. When I started the engine, the gulls flew off into the mist.
    “Hi, Seaweed. Want some breakfast?”
    As twilight faded into darkness we sailed out of Notre Dame Bay and headed north to sail around the Northern Peninsula into the Strait of Belle Isle. The sub plowed through the waves like a small whale. I sat at the controls, drank my tea and read Sheba’s book. I was surprised to discover that Jacques Cartier had sailed this way. His first voyage, in 1534, had taken him across the Atlantic in only twenty days. That was incredible. He had only a sailing ship. He had only the wind. How could he do it in twenty days? It had taken us a week and a half to cross the Atlantic a year ago, and we had a powerful diesel engine, although we had stopped in the Azores along the way. Cartier would have been at the mercy of the winds. The winds at sea were like monsters that were always changing their minds. They might blow you straight for a day or so, spin you around and around like a bug in a tea cup, then blow you back to where you came from. His third voyage took three months. That seemed more realistic but must have been awful. And why would he bother to sail all the way around Newfoundland and down the Strait of Belle Isle anyway? That didn’t make sense. Oh … he never knew there was open water between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. It hadn’t been discovered yet. I read that on the next page. Cartier was looking for a shortcut to China, and he thought he was close. Boy was
he
wrong.
    He must have been pretty tough though. People in those days believed in sea monsters. They drew them on their maps. Some believed you could sail right over the edge of the world and fall into nothingness! How scary was that?
    It was a very short night. The sun was up and on our backs long before we entered the Strait of Belle Isle. I tried to keep an equal distance between the Northern Peninsula and the coast of Labrador as we turned to port and headed southwest. I didn’t want anyone to spot us with their telescopes. There were lots of people it seemed to me, with nothing better to do than stare at sea all day with a telescope. And if they spotted something, especially a submarine, they just couldn’t get on the phone fast enough. No need to tell everyone where we were sailing, I figured. Perhaps if we stayed