BSwimming is a very popular pastime in the town where I grew up. Many people have cottages on the islands “outside the bay”, one of which is called Swan Island. Swan Island was once inhabited by Beothuk Indians, who were all killed by disease or murdered by white men. There is a confirmed Indian cemetery on one side of the island.
When I was seven years aged, my family and I were staying with my uncle and his family in his cruiser, the Cabin, which was docked at Swan Island Harbor. At about 3 or 4 in the morning, we all woke up to the sound of footsteps walking across the deck, a few inches above our heads. The footsteps came from the bow of the boat, across the flybridge, down the ladder, and across the lower deck to the stern. Thinking it was someone overdue at night, my uncle put on his shoes, walked through the wheelhouse, and went out to the lower deck, where the footsteps were last heard.
The fog outside was so stout that it took him a few seconds to get his bearings. First he noticed that there was no one on the lower deck. Then he noticed that we were nowhere near the dock in Swan Island Harbour, but were drifting out to sea. He had no idea where we were, which way we were going, or why we were drifting. He moored the boat in deep water and watched until the next morning, when he discovered that we had drifted for miles toward the island graveyard. The mooring line that had previously secured us to the dock had been cut by what must have been a very uninteresting knife. There were no other boats in the vicinity.
We all went on deck to see the morning dew dissolving into pale traces of footprints — bare feet — in an almost straight line from bow to stern.
