Ghost Canoe (9 page)

Captain Bim forced himself to look away from Neah Bay. His eyes were misty, and slow to clear. When at last he spoke again, he looked straight at Nathan and clapped him on the shoulder. “Let this be said, before I go. You, Nathan MacAllister, are a persistent, nay, a
stalwart
young man. Had I listened to the better angels of my nature, we would have been great friends. I wish you the very best in life, as you surely deserve it.”

Nathan had never seen a grown man other than his
father apologize over something of consequence. Instantly, he was overcome with his own regrets. “Good luck in Port Townsend, Captain Bim. I wish I'd been a better friend for you. Next time…”

“Ah yes. As some sage once said, Where there's life, there's hope.”

In six of their great canoes, the Makahs were hunting gray whales out beyond the curve of the earth.

Nathan was among them, paddling just forward of the stern in one of the eight-man canoes. His father had known the danger Nathan could only guess at, but he had also known how badly Nathan wanted to go. “I was your age when I went to sea,” his father had allowed, and then Zachary MacAllister had given his consent.

It had begun when his father learned that the Makahs, in the old days, had used Tatoosh Island as their best whale-sighting post. After the lighthouse had been built on the island, they hadn't been allowed to use it anymore. So Captain MacAllister had invited them back to Tatoosh, and indeed, they'd sighted whales from the incomparable vantage point of the catwalk atop the lighthouse.

As he paddled, Nathan kept scanning the horizon for the spouts of the whales they were chasing. But he was momentarily looking over his shoulder at the mountainous profiles of Vancouver Island and snowcapped Mount Olympus rising above Washington Territory, when, simultaneously, wild yells went up from the six canoes.

Every crewman began to paddle in double-time. No more than a half mile away, the dark rounded shape of a whale's head broke the surface, and the whale spouted high into the air. In the bow, Lighthouse George had his keen eyes fastened on the whale. His harpoons were at the ready, their thick shafts resting between the ears of the carved wolf head at the prow of the canoe. The bottom of the canoe was filled with whaling gear, including the bulky inflated sealskin floats. Nathan paddled with all his might, and he felt the forward surge of the canoe as it sliced up and through the great gray rollers.

Nathan heard several more whale blows that he couldn't see. It's more than one whale, he realized. Then he saw a whale's flukes rise above the water. A rising tail meant the whale was diving.

The whales had sounded. With none in sight, the canoes raced to the north, at an angle intended to intercept the whales when they next appeared. It was an undeclared race, and a silent one, each canoe wishing to be the first to harpoon a whale.

When the canoes had gone as far as they intended to go, the Makahs quit paddling for a few minutes. The crewmen on all the canoes looked and listened intently for the blow of a whale. Lighthouse George selected a harpoon, with its sharpened mussel-shell
point and antler-tip barbs. He checked the rope where it was attached to the harpoon head, checked the sealskin floats fixed to the rope, checked the coil in the basket at his feet.

Now the canoes, each according to its leader's directions, paddled silently this way or that in hopes of being the closest to a whale when it broke the surface.

As it happened, a whale not only came to the surface, it breached, completely upright, not thirty yards from Lighthouse George's canoe, which was the closest. Half the whale's length rose above the water, and Nathan saw a fin flapping in the air like a stubby wing. Water streamed down the whale's barnacled sides in the moment before the immense gray fell back into the sea with a resounding crash.

All paddles, including Nathan's, were instantly back in the water, paddling full strength. With a powerful back-sweeping motion of the rudder paddle, the man behind him aimed the bow of the canoe directly at the whale. The rest of the canoes chased to catch up as fast as they could.

The whale, Nathan realized as they drew close, would have to spout and draw breath before it could sound. Their canoe was drawing closer and closer to the side of the whale. They were so close Nathan could see the gray's eye and the countless tiny barnacles attached to its skin.

It was at this moment, as Lighthouse George was poised to plant the harpoon, that Nathan heard a ripping, cutting sound, along with a
whoosh
of escaping air, coming from somewhere in the center of their canoe. Nathan looked and saw six inches of knife blade, like a thing alive, sticking out of the largest of the seal
skin floats. The knife blade was ripping the bag apart from the inside. Abruptly, the terrified crewmen stopped paddling. From within the float, a hand, an arm, and then a shoulder appeared, followed by the shaven, pocked, tattooed, and weirdly grinning head of Dolla Bill.

Before the astounded crewmen could even react, the magician was out of the float, scrambling forward and reaching for one of the spare harpoons propped up in the bow of the canoe. Suddenly the canoe was drenched by the spume of the whale. Dolla Bill stood up alongside Lighthouse George. He fully meant to sink his own harpoon, but the moment had been lost and the whale was drawing away. The gray's back rounded high in the air and it sounded with a great slap, the tail's broad flukes striking barely forward of the canoe.

As the beaten waves washed over the canoe and sent it bobbing violently in the whale's wake, the crewmen fell on Dolla Bill, tore the harpoon from his hand, and dragged him to the bottom of the canoe. Dolla Bill put up no resistance. He looked surprised and hurt, like a child, as if he'd expected them to applaud his stunt. A knife was drawn. Dolla Bill would have been killed in the next instant if Lighthouse George had not raised his voice.

The rest of the canoes went racing after the whale.

On the bottom of the canoe, Dolla Bill suddenly began laughing, as if he had played the greatest joke imaginable. He was about to have his hands tied when, again, Lighthouse George forbade it. Dolla Bill calmed himself and sat cross-legged in the bottom of the canoe, still as a statue. The crewmen, Nathan in
cluded, took up their paddles and resumed the chase.

Nathan wondered if any of the canoes could catch up to the whale now. Lighthouse George exhorted his paddlers to pull, and pull harder. Nathan's lungs screamed for air. He thought his back would break. All the while, his mind raced. How could Dolla Bill have hidden inside the float? Had he sewn himself in? How had he managed to breathe? Why had he done it? Didn't he know that only a chief or the son of a chief could harpoon a whale? Dolla Bill was crazy!

By luck or by skill, one of the canoes was close to the whale when it next broke the surface. With a burst of speed the canoe closed as the whale blew a second time. Nathan saw the harpooner stand in the bow as the animal rounded its long streaming back out of the water. The gray was preparing to sound, but it was a moment too late. The brawny harpooner thrust the heavy harpoon into the whale's back behind its shoulder. Almost at once, the shaft snapped free, leaving the weapon's head embedded in the whale.

The crew of the canoe that harpooned the whale instantly began back-paddling from the whale as fast as they could. Nathan saw the long line whipping out of the bow of the canoe, and he saw several floats attached to the line fly out of the canoe as well. The man in the stern tossed a rope to the man in the bow of a second canoe that had caught up to them. In a moment, the second canoe was attached to the first, and a third was attached to the second.

Lighthouse George's canoe was closing fast on the third canoe—he yelled for his men to try harder to reach it. It was all happening so fast.

Maddened by the harpoon head and hindered by
the floats it was dragging, the whale raised its bulk out of the water and sounded.

The lead canoe, despite its effort to back away, was nearly swamped by the wave raised by the whale.

Nathan saw the harpoon rope go taut, and the three attached canoes shoot forward suddenly like arrows. Barely in time, Lighthouse George's quick hands caught a thrown rope from the third canoe, and he secured it in an instant. Nathan felt his canoe go shooting, leaping, fast, fast, powered now by forty tons of whale.

The sounding whale, in its effort to reach the bottom, made a commotion that stirred the sea as if a volcano were erupting underwater. With its sheer strength, the whale had pulled the floats underwater, and it seemed the lead canoe might be pulled under as well. The shape of the whaling canoe's high prow, its own size and bulk, and the skill of its paddlers barely combined to keep it afloat.

The canoes slowed, and Nathan wondered if the rope to the whale had broken. The answer came as the animal suddenly burst from the sea. The lines connecting the four canoes went tight as a bowstring, and the canoes once more shot forward at high speed in the wake of the whale. The fifth and sixth canoes, moments away from attaching to the rest, were quickly left behind.

There was no paddling to be done now. Clinging to thwarts and gunwales, George's crew kept their weight low in the canoe. Nathan had never imagined moving at such high speed. He was soaked to the skin by the spray flying off the canoe. The cold wind whipped his face and his hair as the canoes sped away
from land toward the sun, low in the sky over the open ocean. Dolla Bill caught Nathan's eye and grinned, as if they were having a lark. Nathan ignored him.

Nathan realized that there was no chance that they would be able to get back to land before the sun set. It was the end of June—the days were long, and the twilight lingered, but even so, the light wasn't going to last nearly long enough.

If the Makahs were worried, they weren't showing it. They were singing.

It was miles and miles until the whale finally slowed. All three canoes behind the first one disengaged themselves from the train. They wanted to be free to attack the whale, Nathan realized.

Lighthouse George signaled his men to bring him alongside the whale. The whale was on Nathan's side of the canoe, fully as long as the canoe or longer, and nearly so close he could reach out and touch it. Standing in the bow, George thrust the tip of his harpoon deep into the whale's back. The thick braided rope, made of whale sinew and the inner bark of cedar, went flying off its coil, and so did three floats.

As fast as they were able, Nathan and the rest of the paddlers were trying to back the canoe away from the whale. Suddenly the whale's flukes seemed to fill the sky above them. Get away from the tail! Nathan thought as he back-paddled with all the strength he had in him. But the immense flukes swept the canoe in their downward motion, and the canoe was broken in two, like a toy, and tossed high in the air.

He found himself swimming for his life in the freezing Pacific. The front half of the canoe, along with the
floats, was being dragged away behind the whale. Men were everywhere in the water. He realized he was going to be able to manage until one of the other canoes could pick him up; he was a strong swimmer. But where was Lighthouse George? Dolla Bill and the other men were swimming toward the nearest canoe, but George wasn't among them.
Where was George?

Nathan looked behind him. A man was floating facedown in the water, knocked unconscious or dead. He swam to the man, before he might sink, and turned him over, kicking to buoy the man's face above the water. It was his friend.

Nathan called to the other canoes as he struggled with all his strength to keep George's face above the water. Don't be dead, my friend, he prayed, please don't be dead.

The two canoes that had disengaged from the whale had rescued the other swimmers and were paddling back toward Nathan. Lighthouse George was lifted unconscious into a canoe. Nathan was the last to be pulled in. He crawled to Lighthouse George on the bottom of the canoe, where several of George's men were wrapping him in a bearskin cape. Nathan determined that his friend was breathing. George's forehead was badly swollen where it might have been struck by the whale's flukes or by the canoe. Tears were streaming from Dolla Bill's eyes. “Poor George,” he kept crying. “Poor George.”

As soon as the paddles floating on the surface were retrieved, the two canoes resumed the chase. By the time they caught up and tied on, all three of the canoes ahead of them had harpoons in the whale. The whale had slowed considerably. It was dragging
twelve floats now and five canoes, and the wreckage of a sixth one.

The whale had strength yet. It sounded, but was soon back at the surface. It blew again, and tried to sound, and then towed them farther still to the west. Two more harpoons were added, and many more floats. The whale continued to beat the sea to froth with its struggles until its tail was all entangled with lines and floats. The Makahs waited patiently, knowing the whale was doomed now and would eventually exhaust itself.

Nathan wished it would end. The sun was setting, he couldn't see the land any longer, and the whale was turning the ocean red from a number of deep gashes.
Kwaddis
, the great gray whale, had very little strength left.

At last the hunters thrust long, thin-shafted killing lances into the whale, trying for the spot that would kill it. The whale cried and moaned with a humanlike voice, as a human mother might moan, Nathan thought, in agony over a dead child. Then a Makah stepped from a canoe to the whale's back and, with a deep-planted lance, found the place, which sent blood spouting high in the air from the whale's blowhole. With a last convulsion, the whale rolled on its side, dead.

The man who had dealt the death blow was now swimming alongside the canoe. He was handed a bone awl and a coil of light line made of braided cedar. With dusk gathering, he dove under the water, and stayed down for a long time, perhaps a minute, before he surfaced, recovered his strength, and dove again. Nathan finally saw what he was doing—sewing
the whale's mouth shut so the whale wouldn't fill with water and sink.

The five canoes began to tow the whale back to Neah Bay. Before long it was pitch dark, and Nathan had no idea where land was. But the Makahs knew, from the currents and from the stars.

Fearing for George's life, Nathan paddled into the night. Paddling helped him keep from freezing. The crescent moon rose. He did his part to tow the immense dead weight of the whale toward the dim hulking shape of land. It became the longest night of his life. The sun was rising as the canoes neared the cliffs of Tatoosh and entered the Strait.

Lighthouse George was conscious now. Somebody helped him sit up. But something was wrong with him. George didn't recognize Nathan. Nathan didn't think he recognized anybody, and he couldn't move his left leg. He didn't seem to have any pain in the leg; it seemed he couldn't feel it at all.