Chapter Four

“We used all of our money to come here on a big ship,” Tamara said. “When we came into Canadian waters, the man said we were only a few miles from shore. We got in the lifeboat and they lowered us into the water. But there were no oars.”

“How long have you been out here?”

“Two days.”

“Were you scared?”

“No,” she said, looking far off toward the horizon.

“You’re lying.”

“Maybe,” she said, and smiled.

“You’re refugees, aren’t you?”

Suddenly she looked nervous. “Will you turn us in?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will you turn us in and have us put in jail?”

“No,” I said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“My father says we must avoid getting caught. He has been told there are very few people living on your coast. He says we can just go ashore and live there. In peace.”

I wanted to try to explain a lot of things just then. I wanted to paint a picture for her of the rugged coast of Newfoundland and tell her that you couldn’t just live in total isolation, even here.

“In our country there is much fighting and killing. My father was in prison. He would have been executed. He escaped. We found a ship. First to Amsterdam. Now to here. If we can avoid the authorities, we will live again as a family.”

“The immigration people will help,” I said. “I’ve heard about stuff like this in the news.”

Slowly but surely we were nearing the coastline. But even once we got near shore, it would be another slow four miles along the coast before we would get to Deep Cove. There was nothing but high cliffs and narrow gullies along here. Nowhere to go ashore. And if the wind changed direction we might as well be ten miles back out to sea.

Tamara was looking back at her mother and father. Her mother looked pretty nervous, but her father looked like a volcano about to erupt. I rubbed my arm where I had been cut with the knife. It had stopped bleeding. It stung from getting wet with salt spray, but I knew it wasn’t very deep. I’d be okay.

Tamara gave me a soft sad look. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My father thought you were going to arrest us.”

“Oh yeah, my uniform.” I had been so caught up in trying to keep us on course that I hadn’t noticed that Tamara was shivering. With one hand still on the rope and a foot on the tiller, I undid my floater jacket and handed it to her.

She shook her head no.

“Take it. If you fall in, it will float you. Can you swim?”

“A little.”

“Yeah, but can you swim in water that just came down from the North Pole?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just put on the jacket. Please.”

The magic word. She put it on. I showed her how to snap it up. My hand brushed against her long black hair and I found myself looking into her eyes. I guess I forgot I was trying to steer a sailboat just then because I was holding the sail too stiff and we tipped up very high on my side. I had to grab onto Tamara to keep her from sliding out of the boat and giving the floater jacket a real tryout.

When I regained control I apologized. I looked back at her old man and gave him the thumbs-up. I don’t think he understood.

That’s when I saw the Coast Guard ship headed our way. “Look,” I told Tamara. “We’re in luck. If I can signal them somehow, you guys will be safe and sound in no time. They can see my sail, I’m sure, but they’re too far out to see much else. They have no reason to think we need help.”

I was thinking that maybe I could flap the sail in some erratic manner and then they’d notice and come check us out.

Tamara was looking back at her father. He saw the boat too and was shaking his head sideways. The knife was back in his hand. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Do not signal them. They will send us back.”

“No, they won’t. I promise. It’s not like that.”

“You don’t know. They have guns, right?”

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe. But look, it’s just the Coast Guard. They’re out here to help.”

“No!” her old man shouted at me from behind. He said something to his daughter in a rapid rattle of language.

“We must hide,” she told me. “My mother and father are very afraid. We need your help. We must trust you.”

“Where are we going to hide out here?” I asked her. This all seemed crazy. I looked at the steep cliffs along the shore. We were already in much closer than I liked to be. With the wrong gust of wind we’d be chewed up by granite. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“There,” Tamara said, pointing to a narrow gully that cut from the sea into the sheer rock face. It was about twelve feet wide.

“You can’t just pull into a little inlet like that with a sailboat. There are a lot of factors to consider here.” I suddenly sounded like somebody else. I realized that I sounded like my father. He was always the one who would tell me to look at a problem logically. Logic told me that I couldn’t slip my Laser between those two big rocks like it was a quarter dropping into a video game.

“I can’t get in there,” I repeated. I saw the Coast Guard cutter was headed our way now. It was getting closer. I wanted to tell Tamara that they’d never come in this close to shore anyway, so don’t worry.

But she was already pulling on the rope that tied us to the lifeboat. She was about to get back in with her parents. Her old man would cut the rope and they’d take their chances without me.

“Tamara,” I shouted to her, pulling her back. I realized that, this time, the logical thing to do might not be the right thing to do. “Stay put. Tell your father we’re going in. They’ll never find us in there.”

Tamara gave me a puzzled look but ducked beneath the sail and sat back down. “You said you can’t get in there.”

I checked the wind. Light onshore. I tried to get a good look at what was beyond the narrow channel, but I couldn’t see a thing from this angle.

Tamara’s father now was shouting something at me. He was pointing his finger towards the narrow passage.

“Okay, okay,” I said. I shoved hard on the tiller and lined us up perfectly. The wind was directly behind me now and it would be a fast downwind run straight in. The rope towing the lifeboat pulled taut. The weight of the other boat acted as an anchor brake at first, but then, as the sail filled out, we started to pick up speed. I lay down low to see under the sail.

Then walls of dark rock swallowed us up. The aluminum boom banged hard against a rock and sent off an eerie sound like a Sunday morning church bell. I jammed the tiller hard left to avoid a submerged rock and then back to get us on course. On course to where? I kept wondering.

And as suddenly as we had entered the gully, we were beyond it and back in the sunshine. We were in a small protected harbor. Up ahead was a tiny beach of stones. High, barren hills surrounded us on all sides, and a long thin waterfall splashed down right into the seawater.

I aimed straight for the beach of black pebbles, raised the centerboard and drove us right up onto dry land. I hopped out and pulled the lifeboat in behind me.

Tamara and her parents looked around in wonder.

“Welcome to Newfoundland,” I said.