At the Midway (16 page)

The mother's upper teeth were more prominent, twice as long as the lower.  To support them, a strong set of upper jaw muscles were anchored around a pair of thick, concrete
-
strong parietal bones, which encompassed the upper part of the head.  There were no protrusions above the thin narial openings, close under the eye orbits, which mimicked the shape of the head by tapering sharply from the crown to the front of the mouth.  Her head, in effect, looked like a dark, breathing rocket cone with eyes.

Backed by her stupendous one hundred and twenty-foot long body (plus a stubby sixteen-foot tail), there was only one creature alive in the ocean more massive--a bull Tu-nel.  Even the sulphur-bottom whale was a mere one hundred feet and one hundred and sixty tons compared to her combined one hundred and seventy-five feet and one hundred and sixty-five tons.  Far away, in the South Atlantic, the battleship
Florida
showed a length of four hundred and fifty-one feet and a displacement of sixteen thousand tons.  But in flesh, bone and blood, she was the most effective battering ram ever devised.  Not only that--bearing in at twenty-eight knots, when she hit a living target at right angles she proved nothing less than a monstrous trephine.

A screech of air was forced out of one of the Orcs when it was hit broadside and the ocean resounded with the snapping of ribs.  By the time the Tu-nel opened her mouth, her head was inside the Orc's body.  She forced her jaws open against the weight of internal organs, then snapped down directly on its heart.

Whale blood gushed up her nostrils and she shot for the surface.  Whipping her head, she flung the Orc fifty yards and there was a red explosion as she blew whale blood from her nostrils. Then she raised the ancient cry--"tooo... nel... "--and the young ones responded.

The confusion that quickly surrounded the dead Orc was of epic proportions.  The remaining killer whales in the pack knew it was dangerous to approach, but they were maddened by the smell of blood.  With cannibal intensity, they bore in on the corpse of their companion.  A couple managed to reach it before the adult Tu-nel and started to tear into its exposed guts.  The dead Orc had been struck at such high speed that its body opened like a loaf, the two halves barely connected by a thin hinge of muscle and glistening black-white skin.  An easy meal for the rest of the pack, if they could get close enough.

But the adult Tu-nel arrived.  She snapped threateningly at the feeding whales and they backed off.  Locking the remains between her jaws, she lifted the body to the surface so she could breathe and eat simultaneously.  The Orc pack began to circle her.  As the smell of blood spread, they made repeated attempts to get at the corpse and, when these failed, they made threatening moves towards the mother herself.  One of them managed to bite her neck, but her tough skin was impervious to the killer's teeth.  She shook off the importunate Orc and continued to feed.

The pack scattered when the two young ones arrived, but when they realized the newcomers were not as imposing as the adult, they quickly returned.  Cautiously, they made a few experimental forays against them.  The mother made no attempt to defend the young male.  In fact, she snapped at him a few times as he reached in to nip at the dead Orc.

Then one of them made the mistake of attacking the young female.  The mother bolted forward and bit off one of its flukes.  As blood jetted from its side, the pack turned on it and began eating it alive, leaving the three Tu-nel to resume feeding peacefully on the first corpse.

Which they soon finished off.  But they were far from satiated, for they'd traveled far.  For many months the threesome had wandered the North Pacific.  After passing through the Aleutian chain, they had entered the Oyashio, following its cold current to the coast of Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's principle islands.  From there, they journeyed the long arc of the Kurashio Stream and Northwest Drift Current, until the North American groundswell tickled their diamond flippers and informed them of land.  They had found little to eat during their trans-oceanic peregrination.

Still half starved, the mother attacked again.  Even as the killer whales fed upon each other, they were fed upon by the Tu-nel.  Within an hour the pack was decimated.  When they finally realized they were being worsted, the survivors made good their escape.

The Tu-nel had been lucky to find the Orc pack.  This close to the Canadian coastline, the racket of Man was deafening.  Dimly, the mother knew they would have to turn west again in order to find relief from the noisy coasters and auxiliary craft that crammed the waterways between Juneau and San Francisco.

They basked on the surface for awhile.  When a ship approached, they dipped under water, annoyed.  After it was gone, they basked some more.  They listened to the Southward Current beneath them as it began its long swoop to the North Equatorial.  Then the mother sounded to her offspring and began to swim towards the evening sun.

The young male followed.

January 1908  Alaska Current, California Current

Slowly, they journeyed south past St. Lawrence Island, Seventy-Two Pass, the Fox Islands.  In the mystical belief that a symbol could influence reality, the owners had had the shipwrights paint a series of depth indicators on the
Lydia
Bailey's
hull much like the Plimsoll lines on freighters.  Now, as the damaged whaler made its way through the Strait, the marks that showed the weight of their load barely touched water.  Had she been a freighter, she would have 'turned turtle' for lack of ballast.

Morale was as low as the ship rode high--the perfect atmosphere for vengeance.

There were a number of Portuguese sailors on board whom Chandry had hired off a Balearic bumboat.  They had a fondness for duff, a strange-tasting dumpling of dubious Iberian heritage.  William Pegg tried it once and spent the rest of the day gagging.  He much preferred the balls of ground porpoise and salt pork which were the staple among the rest of the crew.  At least you didn't have to drown the balls in a special sauce to make them palatable, the way the Portuguese did their duff.

The third mate was one of the Portuguese.  Offended by the boy's extreme reaction to his favorite food, he ordered William into the galley.  There he was forced to stand watch over the evil brew that comprised duff sauce.  Made out of sour molasses and colored yellow by the saleratus the third mate insisted on adding, the mixture summoned visions of a sulphurous Hell as he heated it in a huge saucepan.

The Portuguese were not allowed to eat their duff amidships.  "Damn dagos must've been raised in shit to like that stuff," Captain Chandry had fumed.  He'd banished the Portuguese mess to the poop deck where the wind would carry off the stench.  This was where Pegg had to deliver the sauce once it was heated.

One day, while carrying the sizzling pan aft, he heard a too-familiar voice.  Angling towards the cargo well, he spotted the purser below, sitting on a crate and swapping lies with the
Lydia
Bailey's
boatswain.

It took Pegg about three seconds to decide what to do next.  The purser let out a screech of pain and wrath as the boiling sauce spilled through the open hatch onto his head.

Naturally, no one believed Pegg had tripped over a coil of hemp, for he was a strapping lad known for his nimbleness.  The deckhand expected a thrashing from the captain and steeled himself to meet the pain in manly silence, but much to the purser's chagrin and Pegg's astonishment, Captain Chandry did not lay a finger on him.  Instead, as a rich coaster of aguardiente rolled off his breath, the captain blithely informed him that he was making him the boatsteerer of the lead whaleboat.

A strange and benevolent reaction.

While William had shipped aboard the
Lydia
Bailey
as a common deckhand, a clause in the articles he signed also made him a 'preventer boatsteerer'.  A boatsteerer's job was to stand on the bow of a whaleboat and strike a whale with the first harpoon.  The 'preventer' was simply his replacement in case he was sick or injured.  Pegg's only experience had been to strike a few small whales off Martha's Vineyard, but his muscular girth had impressed the ship's owners and they added the codicil the moment before William signed. Thus, the promotion was legal.

The boatsteerer of the lead boat was getting on in years and, three days before Pegg dumped sauce on the purser's head, the aging harpoonist was laid low by the lumbago.  By replacing him with William, Chandry was allowing the boy to reap all the benefits that accrued from being a boatsteerer.  He worked with the other boatsteerers in the waist of the
Lydia
Bailey
, while the ordinary seamen remained respectfully forward of the tryworks.

There could be little doubt what was on the captain's mind.  For all the honors, a boatsteerer's job was dangerous in the extreme.  Still, William found it hard to believe his offense had been so heinous that Chandry wanted him to pay for it with his life.  Over the next three weeks, he began to accept his promotion as a mysterious gift from the sea, if not from Chandry.

During those same weeks, however, there was not a single whale sighting.  Chandry had resigned himself to returning to San Francisco for repairs, but he still counted on a bit of luck stumbling across their path.  A hundred or so barrels more might at least hold the owners at bay. So he struck a zigzag course to the south, gradually moving away from the mainland.  There were whales out here.  He knew there were whales out here. 
Everyone
knew there were whales out here.

So... where were they?

Luck remained a stranger.  The further south they went, the less chance they had of hitting upon whales coming the opposite direction, heading towards the Arctic feeding grounds.

The barren sea also mocked William's promotion.  The boy's presence among the boatsteerers piqued Chandry and it finally grew too much to bear.  Any notion Pegg might have had about being honored was knocked out of his head the day they smoked the rats.

Rats were a nuisance on whaling ships because of their appetite for whale bone and baleen.  With such a meager haul, the need to smoke them out was not urgent.  But nearly a month after the sauce-pouring incident, Chandry informed the crew he was going to fumigate the
Lydia
Bailey
.  The men accepted this in the vein it was given.  It was the captain's prerogative to keep the crew busy.  There could be as much whim as method in how this was done.  But when he made his announcement, Chandry gave William a glance that sent a worm of queasiness through the boy's stomach.

That night, the boilers were filled with charcoal, as were the stoves in the captain's cabin and the forecastle.  William was given the task of closing the cracks in the crews' quarters.  Ironically, he used duff sauce, extremely sticky once it cooled, to paste the paper and rags in place.  The following morning an iron pot of water was set next to one of the hatches.

"They always run for the water," Lead Foot told William as he took up a club and stood near the pot.

The fires were lit, the final seals checked, and the crew mustered on deck.  Their names were called out and, once it was ascertained that everyone was out in the open, Captain Chandry allowed the stoves and boilers to be lit.

"I don't think there's smoke in the fo'c'sle," the purser announced an hour later.  Dropping to his hands and knees, he gently lifted one of the seals and whiffed extravagantly.  "No, by Godfrey, I don't smell a thing.  We'd better send someone in to look or this is all for nothing."

"Pretty dangerous," the captain fretted with a yawn.

"Don't want the crew idling all day, then have to do the same tomorrow," the purser asserted.

"Damn dangerous."  Chandry took a sip from his mug.

"I'll go in myself, then," the purser all but thumped his narrow chest.  "We can't afford to waste time."

"I can't risk losing you.  Uh....  You!  Boatsteersman Pegg!  I think Mr. Hodges is wrong about all this, but why don't you go in and take a look?"

There was murmuring from the other boatsteerers.  This was shabby treatment of one of their own.  The captain was finally exposing his vengeful streak and it was a wee bit too wide for their liking.  He silenced them with a glare.  Had the old souse attacked them, the tough boatsteerers could have dealt with him handily enough.  They were, however, afraid that he would find a way to drag them down with him when they reached port and the owners, with an army of deputies, began waving their writs and warrants.

William interpreted their murmurs to mean they would not allow Chandry to go too far.  A confident look from Lead Foot reinforced this feeling.  Of course, he had to go through with the deadly farce.  The other crewmen would protect his life, but not his rank--something he was sure to lose if he refused a direct command.

They broke the seal and opened the hatch.  Smoke billowed out.  Before William could give the captain a knowing glance, he was shoved gruffly into the passageway.

The hatch was shut behind him.

He began to cough.  A rat jumped out of the smoke and wrapped itself around his ankle.  He shouted and kicked it away.  He was about to turn and pound on the hatch when it dawned on him he was being presented a golden opportunity.