Read Online Seas of South Africa by Philip Roy - Free Book Online

sand beside me, and their eyes opened wider.
    There was an older man who was probably the father, a woman, a younger woman, and three boys. I smiled and waved, and they smiled and waved back. “Hello!” I said. The father said something back. They couldn’t take their eyes off the money. It felt awkward. I didn’t know what else to do so I reached down and picked up one of the American twenties and a handful of bills from one of the African piles. “Would you like some?” I said. I reached it towards him.
    They stared at me as if I were crazy. The father stepped closer and looked at the bills. Suddenly he jumped back as if something had bitten him. I think he saw the spots of dried blood on the money. He started speaking loudly and turnedaround and opened his arms wide, trying to gather his family together. They all looked frightened to death. Then, they turned around and ran away. I watched them run across the sand and disappear beneath the palm trees. They never even looked back. Why were they so afraid? It was only money. Surely they didn’t think I was a pirate?

Chapter Nine

    I CLEANED A THOUSAND dollars before returning to the sub. Cleaning money was a lot of work, and was really boring. Judging from the size of the piles, I was guessing I had about twenty thousand dollars in American bills. Two of the other piles were South African rand. Two were from Nigeria. Handling it made me feel sick, it stank so badly. I put the thousand dollars in my money tin and the rest of the money back into the burlap sack and shoved it under the potatoes.
    The treasure didn’t stink. It had lain under the sea for hundreds of years, so even though it was encrusted, it was clean, and smelled clean. There were seventeen gold coins, Spanishor Portuguese, I didn’t know which. There were three large gold rings, two gold necklaces with pearls, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds on them, and two large gold bracelets with similar jewels. It was a small treasure, but I bet it was worth a lot of money. All of it fit into three of my tea tins. I wrapped it in plastic bags and put the rest of the tea on top to hide it. But then the tins weighed a ton. If anyone picked them up, they would know right away there was more than tea inside them. So, I spread the treasure out. I wrapped each individual piece in a small plastic bag, and buried it under the tea, coffee, sugar, oats, beans, spices, jam, and peanut butter. Then I tried to forget about it.
    The money was different. It stank so badly it was ruining the potatoes, although maybe the potatoes were going bad anyway. I had to keep that compartment shut. I planned to use some of the money to buy fresh fruit and vegetables as soon as I had the chance. But I had to find a way to clean the rest of it first, before the whole sub started to stink. Even when I tried to sleep I could smell it, the scent of stinky cheese. It made you want to clear your throat all the time. I had to cover my nose to fall asleep.
    A hundred miles further south, I stopped again. Where the Ligonha River emptied into the sea, according to my map, there wasn’t a town or city, just a river basin, and I doubted the pirates would bother to stop there, unless of course they knew I was there. To be extra careful, I sailed the last twenty miles submerged, just in case they had somehow gotten theirhands on radar more sophisticated than mine, which was pretty unlikely. And when I surfaced—two hundred feet from shore—I brought the portal only eight inches above water, leaving the hull submerged, so that we’d be nearly invisible by radar and by sight. You would have to scan the shore with a high-powered telescope to see the portal, and even then you might not know it was a submarine. And who would ever be looking that closely?
    This time I decided to bring Little Laura along. I put a piece of orange inside her cage, and when she went in for it, I shut the door. I inflated the kayak, took