Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (4 page)

They were coming after him in a boat, not to be feared because it had no motor. He stung and hurt and he was furious. Far out from the island, he rose and spewed air and water, sighted the boat and dived again. When he saw the boat’s slender form above him, he circled, then aimed himself at its side just below the surface, so the boat was crushed by his impact and also tipped over. The three or four yelling men in the water he bumped senseless, and left them.

Inspired by this, he headed again for the shore, where he knew his mate was dying or dead. Two more boats had put out, and he struck the nearer, rising under it, unseating the men and sending them into the water. The second boat hurled spears, one of which stuck in his side. He dived for safety, turned and sighted the boat which twisted above him, and rammed it. Then he moved on toward the shore, his belly near the sand. The shouts of the men grew sharper. Lifting his head, the whale saw with one eye the little brown men prancing around the half-beached form of his mate. The whale had an impulse to ram the lot of them, to swim right on to the beach, and just as suddenly the impulse was gone, he flicked his tail and swam away.

Encountering a large male shark, the whale lunged for him, just to see the shark scurry away, a flash of frightened white.

The odious little brown men! He was aware that the little beasts did not usually try to fight a creature the size of himself, or of his mate either. The little men attacked sea-cows a quarter his size. Sharks terrified them. The whale swam sullenly on, not caring about direction but unconsciously seeking cool streams for his wounds.

He was south of the equator and heading still south. He swam steadily till his anger abated a little and, when he came up for air, the sun was low on the horizon. Before dark, he met a vast school of small fish and swam into it with his mouth open.

In the next days and weeks he swam lazily, not having, at this time of year, any cause to head in any certain direction. The equatorial area of the Pacific was a huge world. And it was odd to be alone after five years of being with a mate, of knowing that she was somewhere near, able to be found soon, even if she was not in sight for a while. They had always refound each other, always agreeably gone in the same direction, usually one of his choosing.

He avoided the islands, though the little fish near their beaches were tasty, and so were the patches of green plants. Once in a careless moment he leapt a little and fell back, exhaling a tall jet of white steam, and his left eye saw a boat. The boat was distant, but it had the dark, thick shape of the ships that hunted whales, the kind of ship that had a motor. He had dived at once, without much air in him, and headed at a right angle away from the ship’s course. Now it would be a matter of zigzagging, of trying to elude while still managing to get enough air to swim fast. Many a time he had evaded such vessels. Why not again? It was not a question, however, but a necessity.

The chase went on for half an hour, then one hour. The whale let the twisting, rocking ship come quite close, or rather close to his wake that he left after surfacing for air, then he sounded to swim under and astern of the little ship and to keep going.

For several minutes, the ship lost its quarry. Its motors at full speed made the ship keel hard as it turned, seeking, guessing.

He swam as long as he could before his exertions made him come up, and again he had to blow out before he took in air. The ship was now far away, but the whale knew he would have been seen. He inhaled for as long as he dared, then swam under the surface with a feint to the left, changing underwater to the same course he had been on before. Broad daylight, alas!

Two more hours passed. When again the ship was very near, the whale had not the strength for any great speed, and he was in need of air.

A harpoon gun cracked. The lance missed him, and its timed bomb exploded underwater at a distance of at least the whale’s full length away from him. In crazy anger, he seized the metal cable of the harpoon in his mouth and tugged, as if he could upset the ship in this manner or even tow it. The thin cable was ridged, and cut his mouth a little.

The cable also cut the whale’s huge but delicate tongue, and the man at the winch saw the blood on the water. They lowered a boat and idled their motor still more. The strong winch on deck began to pull the cable in.

The whale felt the tug of the cable in his mouth, heard the slap of a boat’s bottom and knew what it meant: a boat with lances for the final strikes behind the fin, into the eye, down the spiracle, then ropes to fasten the corpse to the ship. Fools in their wooden boat!

With a slow gesture of his tail, the whale positioned himself to face where the slapping sound had come from. Now he could see the boat bottom. He rammed the little craft from below, rising with his back against it. At the same time, a lance hit him in front of his tail, across the end of his spine, stinging at once. The whale swam downward.

From the whaler ropes were flung to at least three men in the swirling water. The wooden craft had broken in half, ropes and lances had fallen into the sea. The screams did not stop: one man had somehow got his arm torn open on a jagged board and was bleeding badly, another floated face down and motionless, and a man from the ship went over the side with a rope to try to save him. The winch had dragged up an exploded but whaleless harpoon. And some others on the ship were surprised to see one half of the wooden boat floating away rapidly into the distance. The last lance hurled had lodged in the whale, and the end of the lance’s rope was fastened to a metal ring in the boat’s gunwale.

They could, of course, have followed the now visible whale track. But the course of the whale was not their assigned course for one thing, and more than half the crew were occupied with the nearly drowned men and with recovering what they could of the lances and tackle of the other half of the boat before they abandoned it. But that crazy whale was a big one, they all agreed. Full of hell!

The whale by now realized that he had an appendage. The first time he had come up for air, he had not seen the hunk of wood behind him. The second time, he did. He had been aware of a resistance when he dived to a certain depth, though he was capable of pulling the half-boat underwater and of keeping it there, if he chose. The rope was flexible, not like the ridged cable, and was perhaps thrice his length. The boat fragment was irksome. It was wise to swim deep enough to keep the boat beneath the surface. Yet when he came up to breathe—and it took a long while and many inhalations to lay in a goodly store of air—the half-boat was going to float up behind him.

This fact caused some strange stories on the islands that the whale cruised past. Children and young boys told of a wrecked ship or boat which they had seen floating for a while, and which had suddenly disappeared. The story spread from island to island, repeated by the men and boys who encountered one another on their fishing boats, and was chuckled at yet not entirely disbelieved, because too many reliable men swore they had seen it.

“It is magic,” said one man, speaking in a respectful tone, because his people respected magic.

But was it good or bad? Might it mean good fortune or a catastrophe, like a great wind with a wave that would wash over their islands, flatten their houses, and send everyone into the sea? There were a few white men on some of the islands, and they professed to know about typhoons, earthquakes, eclipses of moon and sun. Maybe they did. But the appearing and vanishing boat was different. The white men would laugh at the story. But they didn’t always know what was important and what was not. How could they? They were but men, after all.

Often when grazing on floating greenery or schools of tiny fish, the whale would lounge on the sea’s surface, enjoying the warmth of the sun along his back. Usually there was no island within his vision, but the islands were no hazard, if he kept a distance. However, on one such lazy day when he nosed above the surface, he saw a catamaran with a sail making for him, or so it seemed. The suddenness and the silence of this approach stirred him with fear and defensiveness, and he dived a little and turned, so as to face the boat. The catamaran was the size of boat he could crack and seriously damage, if he so chose.

The whale perceived that the men were interested in the half-boat that floated to one side of him now. There were two men in the boat, and one had a rope in hand. The other man saw him, gave a shout, and quickly lifted a spear. The whale moved his horizontal tail and charged, gliding under the catamaran’s projection, striking the side of the boat with his nose, staving it in. The standing man with the spear fell into the water, and the whale, having circled with a great churn of water behind him, bit the man’s feet off. The other man was easier prey. The whale simply rammed his body, knocking the wind out of him and more.

The catamaran’s mast with its sail wilted at a slant toward the sea. The whale might have lingered for another strike or two but, when he lifted his head for a quick breath, he heard the bark and shriek of men’s voices, distant but clear. Another boat? The whale did not tarry, but dived at once, and swam away from the sounds.

The men were finished, one dead from crushed ribs and lungs, the other from loss of blood. A second catamaran had set out from the nearby island with the intention of rescuing the two men. They had not seen the whale, but they had seen the first catamaran break in half near the floating piece of boat, and then they had seen the boat piece disappear below the surface of the sea. So they approached the still-floating but broken catamaran with caution, and one of the men wanted to turn back while they still could.

“It is magic!” he said. “You see? The boat is in two pieces and they are going to float and sink other boats now—and kill
us
!”

One man caught sight of a floating corpse. “There is my
brother
!”

They had not expected corpses. They had expected to find the two men perhaps injured, but clinging to the wreckage of the catamaran. When a boy cried out that he saw the second corpse in a sea of blood, it was instantly and unanimously decided that they would turn back.

“Don’t look at the boat!” yelled one man. “Turn your eyes away!”

They turned their eyes away, the catamaran turned, paddles were plied until arms ached and the men gasped for breath. A man not rowing recited chants to ward off evil spirits. Back on the island, they told their story in frightened bursts, their knees shaking with a collective awe. The rest of that day and evening, the others on the island were afraid to touch any of the four men.

So that story spread, and was enlarged. The famous magically appearing and disappearing piece of boat had merely touched a catamaran and it had cracked in half! And the two men on board had been instantly killed as if struck by an evil spirit.

The half-boat was sighted off other islands and avoided. The possibility that the half-boat might be being towed by a shark or whale was actually uttered, but if so, it was the spirit of a whale or shark, impossible to kill, yet able to kill anything with ease, and to destroy any craft merely by its evil will.

The whale swam on in the temperate waters, irked less and less by the dull pain just above his tail, caused by the harpoon which passed into his coat of blubber and out, like a pin. The floating boat was the nuisance. The whale glided past rough underwater coral, thinking to wear the rope through or bump the boat from the rope, but so far he hadn’t succeeded. He endured a sullen melancholy, all alone. He encountered three whales like himself, one a young female, the others males, and he might have joined them for company for a while, but one of the males shied at the boat that dragged behind him under the water. The whale was shunned.

So the whale sang alone in the deeps: “Hoo-wa-a-aaah-ou” in a rather high-pitched tone, talking to himself. He used to communicate with his mate like that, telling her where he was, warning her of an enemy, or with another tone telling her that food was in sight where he was swimming.

One morning when he was floating hardly below the surface, bobbing up now and then to get an easy store of air, he heard the plash of a paddle.

The whale’s left eye saw a tiny boat with a single figure in it, making not for him but for the wooden wreck which the whale knew floated to one side and behind him now. The little craft was no challenge, but the whale scanned the horizon for other boats, for an island, and saw a pale line of land quite a distance away. He swam a bit deeper.

The boy in the boat saw the whale, shuddered and half stood up, gripping his paddle in both hands. He had come out on a dare, and minutes ago he had said to himself,
I don’t care if I live or die.
This had given him a crazy courage. He had imagined being struck dead by magic, by something he would not be able to see or understand. Now he had seen, and that was a whale bigger than any he had ever heard about. He saw the shiny grey monster circling his boat just under the surface. His boat rocked wildly. The boy fell backwards, and without thinking shipped his long paddle for safety. The rope that held the half-boat to the whale glided past the prow of the boy’s boat and touched it, making his boat turn. With his right hand the boy fended off the half-boat that might have damaged his canoe. The monster was still circling. The boy saw the long shining lance that passed through the whale’s skin. It had a splendid point. It was made of metal, and was longer by far than the boy was tall. The boy coveted that spear. Could he capture it?

The madness that he had felt on his island returned: he did not care if he lived or died! As the rope slid by on the left side of his boat, the boy seized it just under the water. He felt the terrifying pull of the whale, and he took a tighter grip on the rope with both hands and set his teeth. What if the whale took him on a great voyage to the edge of the earth and down? What if the whale turned and swallowed him? The boy’s boat moved, and he pitched forward, then got to his knees. His boat moved ever faster, first to one side then the other. Then suddenly the resistance was gone, and the boy fell backward, bare feet in the air for a moment. The rope hung limp in his hands, and he panted, scared, relieved and puzzled. He looked around but saw no whale, only a whirlpool in the sea nearby, where the whale had dived. He pulled the limp rope in hand over hand, and there was his prize—the beautiful lance!