Chapter Three

My sail looked pretty lame with a big white patch down the middle, but it worked. While my mom watched, I tacked back and forth around Deep Cove with my floater jacket on. It wasn’t exactly exciting, but it was good to be on the water.

People from Deep Cove kept showing up at our house to give us food—their way of welcoming us to their community. My mom could never quite get used to them walking in without knocking so she put up a little sign that said, “Please knock before entering.” But everyone ignored it.

Harold took me out fishing in his boat. “Maybe we’ll catch some fish, maybe not.” We never did get our lines wet, but he showed me some monster icebergs and he showed me how to avoid the smaller “bergers” and “berger bits.”

“Another boat of refugees came in down at Harrington yesterday. They nearly drowned coming ashore.”

“Where are they from?” I asked as we came in close to a craggy jumble of rock that he called Boink Island.

“Asia somewhere.”

“Why are they coming here?”

“I guess because it’s a good place to sneak ashore and not get caught. But it’s not a safe coast unless you know it.”

“Ever get in trouble out here?”

“Lots of times. Especially when I was running rum. Had to do it in the fog sometimes.”

“You were a smuggler?”

“Was. A long time ago. Made lots of money. Got in lots of trouble. It was the time of my life.”

It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later, in the middle of June, that I got to go out in my Laser again. Harold had taught me everything he could from the deck of his boat. We had surveyed every inch of coastline for miles.

“Wanna come along for the cruise?” I asked him.

“Big man, little boat. I don’t think I’d fit. Besides, I’d only get in the way and slow down a hotshot like you.”

It wasn’t a mega-wind, but a good stiff breeze was blowing off the land when I steered a course out beyond the cove. My mom was home painting rooms and feeling pretty good. I told her I’d be careful.

I stood up on the gunwales and let the boat fly with the wind. I toured a couple of bergs and kept my eyes peeled for every cube of ice that bobbed. The world was blue, blue, blue. Sky, sea and everything in between. I wanted my life to stay like this forever. I felt free and alive.

Off in the distance, I spotted a couple of whales spouting. That really blew me away. They were too far away for me to give chase, but I decided to keep watching for more and try to get in close for a good look. Twenty minutes later, I spied something maybe a mile further out and to my left. I came about in the wind and headed straight for it.

Soon it became clear that it wasn’t a whale at all. It was a boat, a pretty small boat—no cabin, no sail. As I came closer, it seemed that there was no one aboard. It was just an empty lifeboat that must have been cut adrift from some ship. Curiosity got the better of me. I decided to go up real close for a look.

There was a tarp over the top of the boat. I tied a rope onto her and let my sail luff in the wind. With all Harold’s talk about rum smuggling, I think I half expected that I’d lift the tarp and see a boatload of drugs or smuggled gold or booze or something.

I undid a knotted rope holding down one corner and thought I’d just take a peek. Suddenly, a knife came jabbing up right through the tarp and nearly sliced off my left nostril. I screamed and fell back into my Laser. As the tarp flapped open I saw a dark-skinned man with a crazed look in his eye jump out. The knife in his hand was aimed at my throat.

We were rocking around like we were ready to dump. All I could think was that I was in over my head again. The guy had one hand tight on my throat and I was pinned down. The other hand held the knife. He was snarling at me but I couldn’t make out anything. Then I looked in his eyes and noticed that he was as scared as I was. He was breathing hard and he was trying to say something. “You tell, I kill,” was what I finally made out.

“I won’t tell, I won’t tell,” I said, not knowing what he was talking about.

The guy eased up a little, but he looked like a firecracker about to go off. Just then the boom of my sail came whipping around in the wind. I yelled, “Duck,” and I pulled him down. He got the wrong idea and lunged at me with the knife, slicing into my arm.

I let out a wail at the pain and fell back onto the tiller. I think I scared him because he suddenly dropped the knife. He scrambled for it in the bottom of the boat. He was about to lunge at me again when I heard another voice.

A girl had come out from under the tarp in the other boat. She was yelling something at the man. I don’t know what. I was ready to jump overboard to get out of the way of the knife. I kept thinking about how cold that water was.

The man and the girl started arguing. I kept one hand on my arm and kept my eyes on the maniac with the knife. Another head popped up from the lifeboat. It was a woman.

The girl looked at me now and spoke in clear English, “Can we trust you?”

I took one look at the man with the knife and a long hard look at the coastline a couple of miles away. “You can trust me. Honest.”

She spoke to the man and he seemed to be satisfied. He backed off and kept his hand on the boom so it couldn’t smack him in the head. The sail was making an awful noise in the wind with the slack lines. I was afraid it might rip again.

“What’s going on?” I asked the girl. She looked like one of the Pakistani kids from my old school. “Who are you?”

“I’m Tamara,” she said. “This is my mother and father.” The mother nodded. The father looked like he was waiting for a bomb to drop out of the sky.

“I’m Greg.”

“And you are bleeding. I am sorry. My father saw your uniform.”

“What uniform?” Then I looked down at the colors on the floater jacket. Somebody really out of touch might have considered it a uniform. “I’m not a cop or anything,” I said.

“What are you?”

I didn’t know what to say. I looked around at the empty ocean, the distant icebergs and the receding coastline. My arm was burning. “I’m someone who wants to help,” I said.

“How?” she asked.

“Let’s get ashore before we end up in Greenland.”

I tied a rope onto the lifeboat. Tamara persuaded her father to change places with her. I didn’t trust that knife near all my vital organs. It would be a slow, difficult trip towing that much weight. We would need to tack a bunch of times to get near Deep Cove. But what else was there to do?

It wasn’t until we were under sail going a really mean half a mile an hour that I realized I was sharing my Laser with one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever met.