Free River Odyssey by Philip Roy

happened to underwater cave divers sometimes. Diving was a dangerous hobby.
    It didn’t take long to find the
Empress
with sonar. She was enormous! We were like a little bug in the water above her. Marie sat close to the window, leaning on her elbows and staring down. Hollie stared too but was just pretending. He never took an interest in the observation window because he couldn’t smell anything through it. It was just part of the decoration of his living space.
    We descended slowly but I warned Marie that the wreck might appear very suddenly and scare her.
    “
Oh, mon Dieu!
This is probably the most exciting thing I’ve ever done!”
    I was glad. You got used to seeing wrecks when you lived in a submarine. All the same, I was a little excited too.
    “I’ll turn on the floodlights when we’re closer. We won’t see much without those. And we’ll never be able to see the whole ship, just parts of it as we pass over it.”
    Down, down, down we drifted, quite slowly because even with sonar it was difficult to tell if there were pieces of the ship sticking up, and I didn’t want to hit anything.
    “Sixty feet.”
    “I don’t see anything.”
    “You won’t see anything yet.”
    “It’s pretty dark.”
    “I’ll hit the lights at seventy-five feet.”
    “This is kind of spooky.”
    “Be warned. It might scare you.”
    “It can’t be that scary. It’s just old twisted metal under water, right?”
    “Yes, but… it can look pretty scary. Seventy feet… seventy-five … here are the lights.”
    “Wow. They’re really bright. But I still don’t see anything.”
    “You will. Eighty feet.”
    “Nothing.”
    “Eighty-five feet.”
    “Nothing.”
    I smiled. It was fun having Marie on board.
    “Ninety feet.”
    “Noth—ahhhhhh!”
    Marie screamed and jumped away from the window. Hollie ran over to me and hid between my feet. I picked him up, stopped the sub and came to the window. Marie’s eyes were wide with fear but she was quickly calming down.
    “
Oh… mon … Dieu!
That scared the heck out of me! It’s just so … spooky! Look at it!”
    I scratched Hollie’s ears and looked down through the window.
    “Yup. There she is.”
    Marie took a deep breath.
    “Sorry for screaming. It just caught me off guard. It looks like it is reaching up at us, trying to grab us.”
    The sub’s bright lights created a world of shadows, and the river current created movement, so there were lots of things to look at besides old twisted metal. Long, stringy weeds stuck out of holes everywhere and waved like tentacles. The current pulled patches of debris in and out of dents and holes and they really did look sometimes like they were reaching up at us. But Marie calmed down.
    “Wow! It’s like looking at another planet. I mean, I’ve seen such things on TV, of course, but somehow, when it’s right outside your window, it’s different.”
    The wreck was pretty beaten up, as wrecks always are. There were gashes in her side and huge holes that we could even have sailed through. But I would never take such a risk. My experience with the old wooden wreck at Anticosti Island was still fresh in my mind. My leg was still sore.
    We glided over the entire wreck, much of which was covered by silt. No doubt the river would eventually hide all traces of her, just as sand from the Sahara Desert blew into the Mediterranean Sea and covered ancient temples and cities the sea had swallowed. I learned that on our second voyage. Given enough time, the powers of nature can hide anything.
    We turned, dropped a little closer and glided over the wreck again. It was so interesting. Two hours passed like nothing. I was feeling a little concerned for Seaweed because I knew he couldn’t spot us. And then, Marie saw something.
    “Alfred?”
    “Yes?”
    “What’s
that?”
    I came over and looked down. “I don’t know.”
    “But what do you think it is?”
    “I don’t know, but I suppose it looks like a person bent in half.”
    “It