Still Water (20 page)

She and Gordon could only watch helplessly as the Seawind overhauled them. When the Rose Marie altered course she allowed herself a moment of hope when it seemed that Bo planned to intervene, but almost immediately she veered away again.

“What’s he doing?” Gordon said dismayed.

Ella’s heart sank. She could see Jake clearly standing in the wheel-house and she pictured his smirk of triumph, the smouldering hate that would be present in the depths of his eyes. As she watched one of the crew leaned over the side to hook the first buoy. She imagined her traps being dragged along the seabed, breaking open and buckling as they bounced off rocks. The lines would become hopelessly fouled, and eventually severed, and there was nothing she could do about it. Her knuckles turned white where she gripped the wheel and she bit down so hard on her lower lip that she tasted the thick saltiness of blood.

“Ella.”

Gordon seized her arm and pointed towards something off their starboard side. She saw the flash of sunlight on silver, the splash of bodies as they re-entered the water and she knew why Bo Winterman had changed direction. With his sabotage complete, Jake too altered course, no doubt having seen the approaching school of bluefin. They were moving rapidly on a course that would take them directly between the two boats and Ella saw with bitter realization that the school would pass wide of the Santorini and that she didn’t have the speed to catch them. But as the tuna drew nearer it became clear that they were spread over a fairly wide area, and that the occasional fish was hunting way out on the southern flank. There was a slim chance one might come close enough to take a bait if they could get some lines over the side fast enough.

She saw that Gordon was thinking the same thing as she was and she cut the throttle back and they went to work. The Santorini, like many other small boats, was equipped for different types of fishing. Though she was primarily a lobster boat, at different times of the year Ella turned her hand to line fishing. If a big fish was hooked the line was transferred to the hauler to bring it alongside, and this was what she had in mind now.

Gordon broke out hooks and lines and they baited up. A hundred yards off their bow a fish leapt clear of the sea, in pursuit of a striper. Ella gasped, calculating that it must have been twelve feet long, maybe a thousand pounds of prime bluefin. Already she was figuring what a fish like that might be worth. Enough to settle her financial worries for a year. They worked frantically, getting lines out as fast as they could.

And then something else caught her attention, the rise of a fin above the swell. “Look there,” she said to Gordon.

A pod of orcas were approaching from the north, and it was apparent that they too planned to intercept the bluefin, and that both they and the two boats ahead would converge in one area to compete for the same prey. Ella felt a veil of foreboding settle over her.

Jake watched the orcas as the pod cruised between the two boats. They seemed to stay closer to the Rose Marie. He cradled his rifle, holding it loosely across his chest, looking for the big bastard with the double notch in his dorsal fin.

“There you go, you sonofabitch,” he said quietly when he spotted the bull, and he raised his rifle, but the orca dipped in the trough of the swell and vanished. The others followed suit and it became clear they were staying beneath the surface, only rising to breathe. Jake watched the area where he thought the bull would reappear, but when it did it was fifty yards north of where he’d expected. He squeezed off a hurried shot, but he was too slow and the bull dipped beneath the waves again.

“Dammit.” He wondered why the orcas remained between the boats, but as he watched the approaching tuna he saw the reason. “That bastard is using us,” he said to himself as he understood that they were using the boats to conceal their presence from the bluefin. He went into the wheel-house to raise Bo Winterman on his radio.

“What is it Jake?” Bo’s voice crackled over the set.

“Those damn killers are using us for cover. Soon as those bluefin figure out what’s waiting for ‘em they’re going to be a hundred miles from here in about a minute flat. Are you gonna just stand there and let them take our fish? Use your damn rifle.”

“There’s no need to do that Jake.”

“What the hell is the matter with you Winterman? You know how much one of those giants is worth? I already lost one to those thieving black bastards a couple of days ago. I’m not about to let that happen again.”

“You’re wrong, Jake. Take a look for yourself. Behind the bluefin.”

Jake looked and then he saw them too. Trailing the school by a couple of hundred yards or so were three orcas, spread out in a line. They were holding their position, their fins visible as they rose and fell through the waves, the flash of white patches contrasting with their smooth black bodies.

“You just keep an eye on those three Jake. You might learn something,” Bo said.

Just then Jake heard a shouted warning from the bow and he dropped the radio mike with a curse.

They’re turning,” Penman yelled.

Less than a hundred yards away the bluefin school suddenly veered southwest as the front runners became aware of the orcas that were waiting for them hidden between the two boats. Jake snatched up the mike.

“Maybe next time you’ll listen to me Winterman, you dumb fuck,” he shouted. He spun the wheel to bring the Seawind about as he opened up the throttle. He glimpsed flashes of silver just beneath the surface of the water as thousands of four-pound stripers streamed past the bow as they fled from the tuna. As the Seawintfs engines roared and her screws churned up a great mass of froth in her wake, Jake found his course and punched in the autopilot. Hurriedly he pulled open the locker behind him and took out a box of cherry bombs and ran out onto the deck and passed them out to the crew.

On the Rose Marie Bo Winterman could only watch with frustrated rage as he saw disaster looming. He shouted himself hoarse into the radio mike, but in the end he gave up and angrily threw it down.

“That idiot is going to mess things up,” he said as the first of the explosions sounded.

Bo had fished these waters for fifty years, and he’d seen the way orcas worked before. He knew that the three in position behind the bluefin were there for a reason, and even now he could see they’d reacted to the tuna’s altered course as they swam around to the south flank to head them off, banging their flukes on the surface so the tuna knew they were there. If Jake had let things be they would have driven the panicked fish back between the boats towards the rest of the pod and the bluefin would have been trapped. There would have been enough for man and orca alike to take their share. Bo himself had witnessed orcas in the past herding fish towards a purse seiner’s net that had been set ahead of the school. The seiner’s skipper and the orcas had cooperated, the orcas allowed into the open net to take their share of the spoils before the purse was drawn closed. But now Bo could only watch with anger as the cherry bombs drove the orcas back, and in the process allowed the bluefin to scatter.

You bloody fool,” Bo said, half in anger, half in despair.

As the three orcas in position to the rear of the school had closed in, their blood-curdling screams and machine gun-like bursts of clicks had alerted the tuna to their presence, letting them know that from hunter they had suddenly become the hunted. Momentarily the school had found themselves being herded together by orcas on both sides as the orcas between the boats had begun vocalizing too.

Suddenly a shock wave of sound from directly in front of the bull battered his sensitive hearing. It was of such intensity that it pierced his ears with a bright lance of pain. To his flank a young male screamed in agony. Another explosion followed, and then another. Disoriented and dazed the orcas turned back and milled in confused circles as they tried to escape the noise. The bull understood what was happening and swam directly away from the source of the explosions, and when he was clear he repeatedly called the rest of the pod until one by one they locked on to his voice and using it like a beacon swam almost blindly towards him, their ears still ringing painfully. As they reassembled far away from the boats the bull spied across the surface of the sea. From the deck of the Seawind men continued to lob objects into the water, and each was followed by the now dull thud of an explosion. The tuna, suddenly finding that they were no longer hemmed in had begun to stream away in the opposite direction. The opportunity was lost.

When the entire pod had reformed, the bull turned and led them north-west, heading for a shelf where experience told him they might find schools of bluefish.

When the pod had fled Jake’s elation was short lived. Though the cherry bombs had turned back the orcas they had also turned the bluefin who were now streaming southward at speed where there was nothing to stop their flight. A single fish at the rear of the school streaked through the sea, just below the surface in front of the bow, and Penman who was standing at the ready with his harpoon signalled directions to Jake in the wheel-house. As Jake swung hard to port he registered that the Rose Marie was heading on a converging course, apparently chasing the same fish

The radio crackled into life and Bo Winterman shouted a warning.

“Give way Jake!”

He snatched up the mike. “The hell with you.”

He kept his eye fixed on Penman, who waved his arm again frantically, directing him further to port.

“This is my fish, Winterman,” Jake said into the mike, then he flung it down and swung the wheel again.

On the Rose Marie Bo cursed but held his course. He had already targeted the bluefin when the Seawind had altered direction and by rights the fish belonged to him.

At the last moment he acknowledged that Jake would not give way. Though Taylor was at the bow getting ready to throw his harpoon, so was Penman on the Seawind. Bo hesitated for a moment longer, reluctant to give up, but then calling Jake every name he could think of he frantically spun the wheel, but he already knew it was too late. The two boats came together, both skippers trying desperately to break off at the last second, their bows turning aside with agonizing slowness, the sea churned into a massive white froth in the narrowing channel between them, and then with a sickening elongated grind they collided, sending men on both of them sprawling to the decks. The sound of splintering wood and steel followed in a long wrenching sound that was torture to hear. Bo staggered and hit his head on the metal case of the fish finder, opening a gash along the side of his forehead, and he fell to his knees, momentarily stunned.

When he rose shakily to his feet again, he felt the wound on his head and his fingers came away sticky with blood. The Seawind wallowed on his starboard side. Both harpooners had lost their balance, and their weapons, and the bluefin had escaped unharmed.

Ella shook her head sadly when she heard the first of the explosions. She wished there was something that she could do. Like Bo, she too had understood that had Jake appreciated what the orcas were doing, there would have been fish enough for all of them. But Jake had no interest in cooperating or sharing the spoils of the ocean. He would have killed the orcas if he could, and she resented him bitterly for it.

Just then her attention was diverted when one of the lines beside her began to spin frantically off its spool. She stared at it as if mesmerized for a full second or two before she realized what had happened, and suddenly galvanized into action she released the free end of the line and hurriedly ran it through the pulley wheel to the hydraulic hauler. Sixty feet away a nine foot long bluefin leapt full clear of the sea, rising into the air like a missile, before it twisted and arched its body to dive again as it tried to shake off the hook that held it.

As the fish sped away Ella increased the tension on the line so that the drag would slow it up, then she handed over the control to Gordon and dashed for the wheel. As she brought the Santorini around she was vaguely aware that the Seawind and the Rose Marie were on a collision course, but after that her entire focus was given over to the fight to hang on to the bluefin.

She steered after the fish at low speed, so that it was half towing them. Her aim was to tire it before they tried to bring it in, but not too quickly or the struggles of the fish would generate such muscular energy that the flesh would spoil. She knew that the better the condition it was in when landed, the greater the price the bluefin would fetch on the dock. The fish went deep, and Gordon hauled in some line. A few minutes later the tuna rose and burst from the surface, leaping into the air again before it streaked eastward in a flash of speed and power. Gordon released the tension as Ella opened the throttle and gave chase. In this fashion they fought the fish, and pursued it for miles. Ella slowed the engine, and Gordon hauled in more line. They worked in tandem; Ella chasing and controlling their speed, Gordon judging when to let the tuna run and when to bring it in a few more yards. Each time they thought it was beaten the great fish found new reserves of strength and streaked away again. They fought it as the sun sank lower and the day drew out, the sea changing colour from cobalt blue to silver and copper.

Eventually the bluefin’s dives became less frequent, and its struggles grew weaker as it tired. It took them three and a half hours to bring it alongside where together they gaffed it and

Gordon leaned over and drove a spike through its skull, piercing its brain and killing it instantly. They looped rope around each end of the fish and used the hauler to bring it aboard, and then Gordon quickly set about gutting it and ripping out the spine. He made incisions to bleed the flesh, and together they packed the body cavity with ice. When they were finished, they stood to admire their catch.

Ella grinned, barely aware of her fatigue, the ache in her arms. Her troubles were momentarily banished from her thoughts and in her exhilaration she hugged Gordon tight, wrapping both arms around him as they lurched like drunkards about the deck. When they parted they were both laughing like fools.