The Sea Runners Read Online Free PDF Page B

about navigation, Melander wanted to be—a small three-legged iron ketle, a spyglass, another box of tea, and a water cask.

    Early in October, New Archangel's month of curtaining rain, the plotters convened about the matter of a canoe.
    The Koloshes had them in plenty, the slim vessels lying side by side in front of the longhouses as if drawn up to the starting line of a great regatta, canoes for hunting and canoes to carry trade and canoes for fishing and canoes for families and canoes for war, a navy of all canoes.
    Karlsson had eyed out a choice—a twenty-foot shell with a high bold bow, the sheer of its hull rising and sharpening into this cutwater as a scimitar curves in search of its point. High and pointy the stern, too, as though both the ends of this canoe were on sentry against the sea. Gunwales rounded and deftly lipped. Four strong thwarts. And encupping it all, that most beautiful stunt of wood, a great cedar taken down with reverence and wile—
I shall cut you down, tree. You will not twist and warp, tree. You will not have
knotholes, tree. Black bear skins have been laid in the place where you will fall, tree. Fall down on them, tree
—and then hollowed and shaped and stretched by heated water into a sleek pouch of vessel, its wooden skin not much more than the thickness of a thumb: exaltation of design and thrift of line, the jugglery of art Somehow perfected by this coast's canoewrights. Karlsson's tongue was not the one to say it, but if the standing cedar tree had decided to transform into the swiftest of sea creatures, this craft of alert grace would have been the result.
    Too, Karlsson's candidate lay amid the beached squadron of a dozen nearest the stockade gate, convenient enough, and Karlsson attested that lie had watched to ensure that its possessor was scrupulous. On New Archangel's rare warm days the native sloshed water over the cedar interior to prevent its drying out and cracking; in normal damp weather, heaped woven mats over the craft for shelter.
    A canoe of fit and style and fettle, endorsed Karlsson.
    Melander and Braaf took turns at casual glances down the shoreline to Karlsson's nominee.
    True, the canoe had so sprightly a look that it seemed only to be awaiting the right word of magic before flying off upward. By any man's standards, a most beckoning tool, keen blade for clearance of a route of water. But Melander believed he too knew something of canoes from having paddled a number of times with Kolosh crews to the herring grounds off the western
shorefront of Sitka Sound; indeed, it can be realized now that those journeys were first filaments in the spinning of his decision that seven-yeardom could be fied by water. The fishing canoes were half again the length of this keen-beaked version singled out by Karlsson, and this question of size balked Melander.
    Asked his opinion, Braaf mumbled that any canoe was smaller than he desired.
    Karlsson maintained that his nominee had all the capacity they needed. What did Melander have in mind, to stuff the craft like a sausage?
    Melander could not resist asking Karlsson if he was arguing that his wondrous canoe was bigger on the inside than on the out.
    No, goddamn Melander's tongue, Karlsson retorted, it simply was a matter of water worthiness, this canoe would amply carry their cache of supplies and be livelier to steer than a larger canoe and less Weight to propel and...
    Grinning, Melander was persuaded. Rarely did Karlsson trouble to assert himself about anything, so if he waxed passionate for this particular canoe, that was stout enough testimony.
    Braaf requested to know what all the jibber-jabber at the front and back of the canoe was.
    Bow and stern, Melander rapidly advised him before Karlsson got touched off again, and the canoe's painted designs, oval outlines with black oval centers to them, like egg-shaped eyes, likely were Kolosh symbols to ward off evil.
    Evil whats, demanded Braaf.
    Evil minnows that would leap from the sea