Dolphin Song

by Lauren St. John

  The important thing was, she didn’t have to worry about sidestepping destiny anymore, particularly since she had resolved that for the entire ten days of the voyage, nothing and nobody was going to get her into the water. She still felt bad about the fight with her grandmother, and she was still concerned about her future at Sawubona—life without Jemmy wasn’t worth thinking about—but with no way of communicating with anyone (Miss Volkner had banned cell phones on the ship because she wanted the class to “lose themselves in nature”), there was nothing she could do about it until she returned to Cape Town.

  To help them recover from the trauma of Shark Alley, Miss Volkner and Mr. Manning, the conservationist accompanying them on their voyage, had taken the class for a seafood dinner at a waterfront restaurant in Simon’s Town. Afterward, they’d walked through the pretty, historic streets to the docks and there she was—the Sea Kestrel—all lit up like some magical cruise ship. Boarding under the moth-swirling harbor lights, with the seaweedy air teasing her nostrils, Martine had begun to appreciate how fortunate she was. She’d caught Ben’s eye and it was obvious that he felt the same way.

  There were twenty clean but basic cabins on the ship, with two bunks apiece. Martine was sharing a cabin with Sherilyn Meyer, a close friend of Lucy’s. Sherilyn was nice enough, but a bit helpless. She had a phobia about all creatures with more than two legs. Before getting into her bunk that first night, she’d made Martine crawl around the floor checking for spiders. Martine hadn’t really minded because Sherilyn’s other concern—that she might get seasick—meant that Martine got to have the top bunk. But she was thankful when the South African girl was at last satisfied the cabin was a bug-free zone. Martine was then finally able to climb between the sheets and fall into an exhausted sleep.

  It had been a very, very long day.

  When the red ball of sun freed itself from the smoky blue ocean, Martine slipped carefully off her bunk, showered as quietly as she could manage, and went in search of food. It was still early and, apart from a couple of crew smoking outside the engine room, there was nobody about. She passed a galley hatch, from which copious quantities of steam and the smell of frying bacon issued.

  “Ah, a hungry sailor!” said a voice. Its owner sounded as if he gargled regularly with beach sand. “Step this way for an Indian Ocean breakfast!”

  Martine squinted between the stainless steel shelves and dangling copper pots and saw a lively African face. A hand came out and gripped hers. “Alberto,” said the gravelly voice. “How do you do, Miss Martine?”

  “Uhh, good morning, Alberto,” responded Martine. “I’m very well, thank you. Have we met before?”

  Alberto indicated that she should enter the galley through the main door. Martine walked into a cooking area where a small man with a white cap of hair and remarkable, wrinkle-free skin was juggling sizzling pans of bacon, spiced potatoes, and eggs with octopus-like dexterity. Without pausing to consult her, he lifted Martine with his small, strong hands and sat her on one of the stainless steel benches. A mug of milky coffee came her way, followed by a bacon and fried banana roll. It was not a combination of flavors that Martine had ever considered, but the smoky bacon combined with the caramel taste of bananas fried in butter was addictive. No sooner had she eaten one than she wanted another.

  “Are you Mozambican?” she asked the chef in between mouthfuls. “What tribe are you from?”

  “I am Tsonga,” Alberto replied at last. “The Tsonga are island people, living mainly in the Bazaruto Archipelago off the coast of Mozambique. And you are the girl in the story, no? The one who can ride a white giraffe.”

  Martine could never get over how far news traveled on the “bush telegraph.” African tribes and big, extended families had spent generations communicating with one another across vast swathes of savannah, desert, or mountain ranges, and their conversations seemed to travel almost on the wind. Then again, several newspapers had carried photographs of her and Jemmy, so it was possible Alberto had simply read about her and might never have heard of the Zulu myth.

  She took another bite of her bacon and banana roll, savored it, and then said evasively: “What do African islands look like, Alberto? Do they have thick bush on them and thorn trees, or are they white with palm trees?” She was thinking of the island calendar in Grace’s living room that showed the Caribbean home of her father and his ancestors.

  “All I know is that when I return from a long voyage and I see my home island, Benguerra, my eyes feel peaceful,” Alberto replied.

  Martine understood what he meant. She experienced the same sensation whenever she passed through the gates of Sawubona. But the Bazaruto Archipelago was nothing like the golden waving grassland, thickets of acacia, and herds of zebra and elephant in the place that made her own eyes feel peaceful. Alberto conjured up images of palm-fringed islands scattered, like snowy teardrops, across a turquoise lagoon. In centuries past, he said, when it was the bountiful Southern tip of the trading routes of Arabia, the Queen of Sheba had made the islands her personal playground.

  Modern life on Benguerra seemed to consist of prawn feasts and trees laden with cashew nuts, marulas, and monkey oranges. Alberto talked proudly of how the Tsonga had remained more or less untouched by the decades of invaders, civil war, and strife that had affected the rest of Mozambique.

  “During the war, we would sit under the palms on our islands and watch the flashes of rocket fire on the mainland light up the night skies, and our hearts would break for our brothers and sisters. Even now, we hear stories of hunger, disease, and murder in the cities, but we know nothing of such things on Benguerra. If today you leave your camera on the beach, tomorrow somebody will find it and bring it to you.”

  To Martine, it sounded like paradise, although like all paradises, it had its little drawbacks. In the summer months, the heat and malaria-carrying mosquitoes were torture, and Benguerra had enormous numbers of snakes. But not every island had the happy history of Benguerra. Santa Carolina had once been a notorious penal colony, and Death Island, which was not an island but a shell bar, had seen many prisoners drowned after being abandoned by guards.

  “But those things are in the past,” the chef said hastily. “Truly we are blessed to live in such a wonderful place. But you know, even special places can change. With the islands becoming so popular, many outsiders are coming in, and some of our young people are moving out. They get tired of the old ways and want to move to the towns, where they think they will find more money and more fun.”

  “I wish we were going to the Bazaruto Islands,” Martine said. “We’re only going as far as Inhambane, in the south of Mozambique, where we’re supposed to help count the population of dugongs, and then we’re returning to Cape Town.”

  Alberto gave a throaty laugh, revealing a little red gemstone set in one of his front teeth. It flashed like fire in the galley lights. “That is true,” he said. “We are not going to the Bazaruto Islands. But I hope one day you will get to see them.”

  8

  The one thing the class had been told over and over was that the Sardine Run was unpredictable. It was a natural phenomenon, and natural phenomena were not in the habit of organizing their timetables to suit school trips, or reporters with deadlines, or tourists on expensive Sardine Run package tours. The sardines responded to subtle changes in water temperature, and if the temperature didn’t spur them to make a move, sometimes they didn’t “run” at all. Every day Mr. Manning radioed the Sharks Board in KwaZulu-Natal to check if there were any sightings, and every day he came away disappointed.

  His disappointment was nothing compared to that of the children’s. They’d heard so much about the Sardine Run that their expectations were sky high. The majority of them had not bothered to read Miss Volkner’s notes on the voyage and had imagined themselves on a cruise ship like the famous QE2, with sun-loungers and Jacuzzis, and plenty of time to nap beside the pool in their swimsuits. Even those who had glanced through the notes had thought of the tri
p as a vacation from schoolwork.

  The reality was a little different. The Sea Kestrel had more in common with a fishing trawler than a luxury liner. There were no sun-loungers, drinks with umbrellas in them, seafood buffets, or other cruise ship treats. There were bare boards and bare essentials only. As for getting a vacation, the children found that the opposite was the case. Caracal was an eco-school, which meant that there was a strong emphasis on the environment in lessons, and Miss Volkner and Mr. Manning were determined that not a moment of the ten-day voyage would be wasted.

  From morning till night, the class was kept busy with conservation projects. They identified migrating sea birds, or collected jars of seawater and examined their contents under microscopes for traces of things like phyloplankton.

  “Phyloplankton is phosphorescent,” explained Mr. Manning. “That means it glows in the dark. It looks like cotton candy under the moonlight. Dolphins and whales swim through it, and it coats their bodies like a film. If you see them playing in the waves at night, it looks as if they’re outlined in silver.”

  Martine was so entranced by this that she spent the next few evenings running back and forth on the deck to check if there were any shimmering dolphins leaping alongside the ship, but none appeared.

  She cornered Mr. Manning one afternoon to ask him why dolphins and whales beached themselves.

  “To be honest, Martine,” he said, removing his spectacles and wiping sea spray from the lenses, “it’s a bit of a mystery. Sometimes it has an obvious cause, such as dolphins being wounded by fishing gear, or bite wounds from sharks, or being ill. But when large numbers of dolphins and whales are involved it’s not that simple. Alberto was telling me that in the Bazaruto Islands, dolphins have beached themselves on the thirteenth day of each of the past three months. Isn’t that peculiar? Some Tsonga believe that it’s because the dolphins have become drunk on rainwater, and around the world other cultures have their own ideas. But many scientists are now coming around to the theory that one of the main causes is sonar.”

  “Sonar? You mean the thing ships use to communicate with each other?”

  “Exactly. SOund Navigation and Ranging is its full name. It was invented in 1906 by a man named Lewis Nixon as a way of detecting icebergs, and then modified by a French physicist and a Russian engineer for use in detecting submarines during the First World War. These days, of course, active sonar is used extensively by the navy for military purposes, and many other people and organizations for all sorts of other things. For instance, fishermen use it to find shoals of fish.”

  The Sea Kestrel began steaming through the waves in response to a supposed Sardine Run sighting, and Martine and Mr. Manning moved back from the railings to avoid the flying spray. “I don’t understand,” said Martine. “Why would that cause dolphins and whales to want to escape the sea?”

  “Ah well, you see, whales and dolphins use a kind of sonar to locate prey and find their way around the oceans. It’s known as echolocation. Scientists fear that the low-frequency active sonar used by the navy disorientates and confuses them. The LFA sonar sweeps the ocean like a sort of floodlight, and the sound it gives off can carry up to a hundred miles and be as loud as a fighter jet at takeoff. In some cases, it can cause whales to surface too quickly, leading to a fatal condition similar to the bends in human beings. They get gas bubbles in their organs. Their brains bleed. Dolphins’ lungs explode.

  “Sometimes the sonar is so deafening that it bursts their eardrums. A few years ago, LFA testing in the Bahamas was found to be responsible for the stranding of sixteen whales, seven of which were found dead. There have been numerous similar incidents across the planet, often when there have been naval exercises in the area. The total number of cases runs into thousands. Three hundred dolphins in Zanzibar, a hundred thirty pilot whales in Tasmania, sixty-eight dolphins in Florida . . .”

  He polished his glasses again. “This is not a very cheerful subject, is it? Why are you so interested in it, anyway? Have you seen any beached dolphins?”

  Martine gave him an angelic smile. She was not about to tell the conservationist about her experience with the dolphin in Cape Town. “I just love dolphins.”

  “Then I’ll tell you some nice things about them,” Mr. Manning said. “Have you heard that dolphins know each other’s names? Isn’t that wonderful! Each one of them has its own signature whistle.”

  Martine was intrigued, but before she could ask another question, a cry went up: “The Sardine Run! We’ve found the Sardine Run!”

  Every person not engaged in the sailing of the ship converged on the starboard edge, but there were no sardines to be seen. Instead it was as if the Sea Kestrel was entering a bizarre weather system. Oddly shaped clouds were scudding across the sky and tufts of spray were kicking up randomly.

  “This is the Sardine Run?” said Luke, distinctly unimpressed. “This is what we’ve come all this way for? We can’t even see the sardines.”

  “Be patient,” counseled Mr. Manning. “Wait till we get up close.”

  “Mind if I take a nap?” Luke said under his breath, and Lucy sniggered.

  Martine stayed staring hopefully ahead, watching for dolphins. The ship forged through the waves. At length, the curious clouds resolved themselves into birds—hundreds and hundreds of Cape gannets and cormorants—all dive-bombing the sea. Then she spotted the sardines. Seen from above, they looked like an immense silver oil-slick. So dense was the shoal and so closely did the flashing fish swim together that it was as if they were being directed by an invisible conductor. A whale sliced slowly through the middle of the silver symphony, chomping sardines as it went.

  The dolphins came next, several hundred of them. They converged on the shoal at blinding speed and worked like sheepdogs to corral a mass of sardines into a tight ball, on which they proceeded to gorge themselves. “That’s what’s known as a ‘baitball,’ ” explained Mr. Manning, who was practically levitating with excitement.

  The children were awestruck. Even Luke and Lucy were silent with wonder. Martine realized that her mouth was hanging open.

  The Sea Kestrel anchored within sight of the beach, although the sand could not be seen for the crowds pouring down to the water. As the sardine shoal entered the shallows, the human tide tore into the sea, shouting and squealing, to fight over the feast with the birds. There were children with plastic buckets, men with nets, pots, pans, and even wheelbarrows, and women scooping sardines into the skirts of their dresses and handbags. It was pure frenzy.

  Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it was over. The sardine shoal dropped out of sight and the whirling birds moved on. Only the dolphins remained, no longer hungry but still milling around the ship as if they were waiting for something.

  “Martine,” said Mr. Manning, “could you do me a favor and fetch my binoculars from the prow? I left them on the bench close to where we were talking.”

  Martine was too overwhelmed to reply, but she noddedand wandered unsteadily toward the front of the ship, trailing her fingers along the rails. She was halfway there when she noticed that some thirty dolphins had separated from the pod, and were moving along the side of the Sea Kestrel in the same direction she was. When she reached the prow, they congregated below her. The ship was at anchor, so Martine put the binoculars to her eyes and leaned over the rail to study them. She wondered what they were up to.

  The dolphins were fuzzy through the lenses of the binoculars, but she adjusted the focus and their gray faces and pink mouths popped into view. Every one of their faces was turned upward, and they were all clicking and whistling at once. Martine took the glasses from her eyes to see who or what they were chattering to, but no one was there. They appeared to be talking to her!

  “What do you want?” Martine called down to them, bending over the railings. “What are you asking me?”

  Aware that she was keeping Mr. Manning waiting, she began to stroll slowly back to the other end of the ship, keeping her eyes on the dolphins. To her
amazement, they followed her again. She was so absorbed that she didn’t see Mr. Manning until she slammed into him. Several of her classmates were gathered around him, staring at her with envious disbelief.

  “Extraordinary!” Mr. Manning said. “This is my eighth Sardine Run and I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s almost as if you were a sort of dolphin Pied Piper. I mean, why would they follow you like that?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Martine saw the dolphins slip beneath the sea’s rocking blue surface.

  “I think it was coincidence,” she told him. “There were some fish jumping around the prow and the dolphins just happened to go there at the same time as I went to get the binoculars. Then they returned at the same time too.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Manning doubtfully. “Yes, I suppose that must be it.”

  9

  Late afternoon on their fifth day at sea, the wind began to make a keening noise like a pack of wolves. By dinnertime, every heave of the ship sent crockery and knives and forks smashing and clashing, and orange fish soup stains were splattered across the tablecloths. It was hard to walk, let alone keep the food that had gone down from coming up again, and not everybody made it through the meal. Sherilyn was the first to go, triggering an exodus as she ran green-faced for the exit, after the rolling ship and the discovery of a squid eye at the bottom of her bowl proved too much for her.

  Soon there were only a handful of children at the tables. Above their heads, lightbulbs tinkled in their holders and misshapen monster shadows chased one another around the walls. Martine, who felt fine, didn’t fancy being trapped in a cabin with a seasick Sherilyn, nor did she want to hang around the recreation room, where Claudius could be heard regaling anyone who would listen with stories about the time his family, who owned an ocean-going yacht that had once belonged to a Greek billionaire, had sailed through a hurricane in the Cayman Islands: “The waves were sixty feet high! My father said, ‘Son, your hand’s steadier than mine, so you take the wheel while I plot a course to keep us ahead of the storm’s eye . . .’ ”