Harpoon at a Venture

by Gavin Maxwell

  We lashed the three carcases alongside and steamed all night for Soay. The light went gradually; at first the hills were sharp and black against an apple-green sky, then they blurred slowly as it darkened to a dull remote blue pricked by the hesitant light of the western constellations, and for a bare two hours it was night. It became hard and brilliant with intensely burning stars, and in the north the Aurora began to flicker, as bright as winter. The great carcases lashed alongside plunged and rolled with the ship’s movement, churning the water into a hissing foam above them that began to break into silver phosphorescence; all the dark brilliance that the night and the sea can bring. By two in the morning the eastern sky ahead had begun to pale, grey and translucent at first, becoming infused with a cold bitter red that silhouetted the mountains of the mainland and climbed the long steeps of the dawn with tenuous vermilion plumes. By the time we came into Soay harbour the sun was up over the hills, blinding and tremendous, but without warmth.

  The factory was as yet deserted; we tied the dead sharks to the pier and sailed at once for Barra and the Gannet. That flaming dawn carried out its threat, and it began to blow again from the east, a strong biting wind as cold as winter, with squalls of icy rain.

  We put into Lochboisdale to refuel; and there, in reluctant response to an urgent appeal, we took on board a woman passenger for Castlebay. She had missed the island steamer, and had to be in Barra before night. Jockie Wiseman (photograph 22), the Sea Leopard’s engineer, would not come up on deck while she was aboard; he remained in the engine-room, muttering maledictions to himself, forecasting imminent reprisals for this flying in the face of the sea’s gods, and having endless cups of tea carried down to him. Many fishermen are as full of superstition as a dictionary is of words, and there is a long list of animals and objects that may not be mentioned aboard a fishing vessel, much less actually seen. Thus salmon were to Jockie “cold iron,” the words themselves spoken hurriedly and with bated breath, pigs were “those grunting things,” and rabbits—the most dangerous of all—“the furry longeared things.” Once I shot some rabbits on Soay when we were short of food, and came on board carrying a bunch of half a dozen swinging by the legs: there was nearly a mutiny. Some fishermen go even further, and will neither have eggs on board nor anyone who has eaten them and not yet completely cleared them from his system, but here Jockie had allowed practical issues to over-ride his fear.

  But the belief that a woman on board a fishing-boat will bring bad luck is persistent, and many islanders will not put to sea if they even meet a woman when going down to their boats in the morning. Coincidence and natural causes seem to conspire to perpetuate these superstitions, and the many occasions when no disaster has followed their defiance are forgotten under the impact of their occasional and apparent confirmation. Early one morning a Soay man was walking across from the east bay, where his croft was, to his boat in the west harbour, when he met an old woman who had an evil reputation in some quarters. She was at some distance from the houses, coming over from the west side along the stony track where it passes above the lily loch. He passed her without speaking; then, feeling that he might goad her into some admission, he turned and called to her:

  “Why are you up so early to meet me this morning?”

  She answered, scornfully, I imagine, “Be it according to your faith,” and went on her way to her croft. He, too, walked on, pondering her words, “Be it according to your faith,” and certainly his faith at that moment was in her power of misfortune rather than in any Almighty protection. When he reached the harbour his boat was not to be seen. He ran to the rocks opposite to where it had been moored, and there under the water he could see it—sunk to the bottom of the sea. He had had a lot of heavy stone ballast in the scuppers, and he had moored the boat in such a way that when the tide went back she was lifted by a rock below her keel and capsized by the weight of the stones—but he was not likely to remember his inefficiencies when he had so desirable a scapegoat as the witch-woman to bear them into legend.

  To Jockie our passenger was a plain defiance of the powers of evil; she was a woman, and she was on board the Sea Leopard. What was more, she was probably full of eggs to the throat, and, for all one knew, her rather shapeless clothing might conceal a positive butcher’s shop of rabbits and pork. So he stayed below and muttered, and we stayed on the bridge and watched for sharks.

  We were about half-way between Lochboisdale and Castlebay when I saw a fin a mile ahead of us. Even at that distance it looked huge, and through the glasses I could see that despite its great thickness it had the “flop-eared” droop at the top which is characteristic of big sharks. As we drew up to him and I could at last see the whole bulk under water, I knew that he was the biggest shark I had ever seen; he was, in fact, the largest that I myself ever saw during the years we hunted them.

  We had been trying to account for our inability to hit from the Sea Leopard a target some thirty feet by five at a range of fifteen or twenty feet, and had done our best to eliminate all the possible contributory causes. We had the harpoon-head set in the gun so that the closed barbs were vertical rather than horizontal, which we thought might have caused water deflection on their flat surface, and we had tied the barbs against the shaft with string, so that they could not open until they were inside the fish and a strong pull exerted on them. This was our first shot with these modifications of technique. The gun itself was infinitely easier to handle than “Sugan.” I had had the butt-end made to my own design—a pair of motor-cycle handle-bars on which the trigger release was a Bowden clutch-grip. One could swing and align the heavy gun with ease and speed.

  The fish was steady in the water and swimming very slowly straight away from us. He looked vast, and unusually pale in colour. The fin was very much higher and thicker than any I had seen, and had a more pronounced droop at the top.

  I was able to fire into him at almost point-blank range, the gun at maximum depression, and the gigantic expanse of his flank practically stationary below me. I had loaded with a slightly increased charge of powder, and I could feel the decks below me shudder with the recoil as the harpoon went squarely home. The shark reacted very quickly, tipping to dive almost in the same instant as the harpoon struck, and the tail rising level with the Sea Leopard’s decks in a tremendous flourish. The tail was on a par with the rest of him; it seemed half as big again as any that I had seen. An average tail is about seven feet across; this looked to me like ten at least, and I bounded back from the gun as the flat of the tail slammed wetly onto the boat’s side a foot below the gunwale. Then the shark was down under the water and the rope streaking out from the fair-lead at tremendous speed.

  I stared incredulously, watching a thin trickle of smoke rising from the rope where it passed over the metal—the first time I had ever seen a rope running out fast enough to be practically catching fire. I was aware of Dan behind me, trying hopelessly to slow the rope enough to catch a half-turn on the winch, but the speed was too great for him to do anything. It was a matter of seconds before the heavy thump of the rope snapping off short at the iron ring to which it was tied—a three-inch yacht manilla rope with a breaking strain of about seven tons, the heaviest we had ever used. It had been just too short for the depth of water we were in—another ten fathoms and the shark would have reached the bottom without coming to its end.

  I looked back, to see the face of the woman, gazing calmly down from the bridge without interest or excitement, the expression of one replete with eggs and rabbits.

  But that disappointment was a definite step towards the development of our final technique. The idea that it suggested was, in fact, based upon a misconception, but its application had very far-reaching consequences. It seemed to us that if the rope, instead of being attached to the deck, had been fastened to a large buoy, such as a fifty-gallon paraffin drum, it would sooner or later have returned to the surface when the shark left the sea’s bottom, and there would be a harpooned shark attached to it. The idea had further obvio
us advantages. When the catchers found a large shoal of sharks that were at the surface for perhaps not more than an hour or two, they would not have to waste the time involved in winching up and securing each shark as he was harpooned. They would only have to throw the rope and barrel overboard and reload and shoot another shark, taking the fullest advantage of the short time during which they were showing. When there were no more fins in sight the barrels could be hauled up singly and at leisure. (Photographs 28 to 33.)

  This last was the real value of the idea, for we discovered almost at once that the steel barrels would collapse if they were dragged far below the surface, stove in by the pressure and weight of water. But as a means of remaining mobile and aggressive towards other sharks immediately after one or more had been harpooned, it was the most important development in technique so far, though it was not for another year that we were able from the Sea Leopard’s bridge to count a dozen barrels within a mile’s radius, each with a large shark attached to it.

  We reached Castlebay soon after midday, put our passenger ashore, and refitted the Gannet’s gun. We made up four ropes with a harpoon at one end and a forty-gallon metal paraffin drum at the other, gave one to Tex for experiment from the Gannet, and kept the other two aboard the Sea Leopard. We had meant to head north again for Uishenish. There was a strong wind blowing in from the Atlantic, and the Minch itself was rough, so we kept close inshore under the lee of the islands. We had got no further than Barra Sound when we saw fins outside us.

  The Gannet was the first to get a shot. It looked a fair shot at point-blank range, though the boat was plunging a good deal in the choppy water. Tex had an extra man aboard to heave the barrel overboard at the right moment, when the shark had taken out the greater part of the rope coiled down in the hold.

  Tex had for some time shared my own suspicion that the gunmaker had been over-cautious in “proofing” the guns for so small a charge of powder. To him discretion had never been the better part of valour, and while I had been stepping up the charges in my gun by half-drams at a time, he had been feeding “Sugan” some really purgative doses. We were perfectly right in thinking that the guns would stand more than double the charge for which they were then proofed, but unfortunately the gun-mountings would not. Tex got a perfect alignment as the Gannet’s bows dipped into a trough, and he yanked the trigger-cord. The tempered steel of the mounting snapped off short just below the crutch, and the big pistol-like butt of the gun catapulted back into his chest with a sickening thump. He remained on board, very surprisingly, and by a further miracle he had no bone broken, but he was winded and badly bruised, and the Gannet was once more out of action as a catching vessel.

  But the shark had been fairly struck, and, despite the confusion, the barrel had been thrown overboard at the right moment, and there for the first time was a barrel moving slowly and half-submerged along the surface with a flag on top of it, and a harpooned shark two hundred feet below.

  We brought Tex aboard the Sea Leopard and left Neil Cameron and a deck hand aboard the Gannet to haul up the barrel while we killed more sharks. I had two successful shots in quick succession, and each time the barrel and flag went over without a hitch. There was an interval of a few minutes after the second shot, and we had time to evolve a further improvement in technique which remained practically unchanged for several years. From the harpoon the eighteen-foot steel trace hung down free over the ship’s side; the first few fathoms of the rope to which it was attached were coiled down just below the gun, and behind that the remainder was tied in coils along the outside of the ship’s railing. These coils were fastened to the railing with string which would snap and pay out the rope as soon as the shark took the strain. In calm weather the barrel could be tied outboard in the same way, but when there was much movement on the water a man would stand ready to throw it overboard as soon as the string on the last coil of rope had snapped. (Photograph 23.)

  My third shot was successful too, and within a radius of half a mile or so were four barrels on the water, sometimes riding high and light, sometimes dipping till only a few inches of them were visible. The flags had snapped off from three of them; they were an idea that we did not afterwards think it worth while to develop.

  It was our own special brand of luck that we had chosen for this experiment one of the few spots in the whole Minch where the sea’s depth was greater in places than the length of our rope-coils. One barrel dipped until it was only just visible; a wave broke over it, and it disappeared altogether. A minute later it was showing a few inches again. We put the Sea Leopard full speed ahead, and she came charging up on it with a bone between her teeth, but even as I grabbed with a boat-hook at the rope loop it went right under again, and I could see the white strip of sailcloth that was tied to it going further and further down into the dim sea until it disappeared. A second later a big belch of aerated water broke the surface, and we knew that the steel drum had collapsed. Another barrel went the same way before we could reach it. We were not only losing nearly a hundred pounds’ worth of shark each time, but each was carrying away with him fifteen pounds’ worth of gear that it was not easy to replace.

  We hauled the two remaining barrels simultaneously, the Gannet taking one and the Sea Leopard the other, and there was a large and securely harpooned shark on each. We left these fish tied to the pier at Lochboisdale, for the following day was a Saturday, and we knew that the factory would still be hacking through the three carcases we had brought in on Wednesday.

  We fished all the next week between Barra and Uishenish, and even though the Gannet mounted no gun, and we had to spend a day and a half in the middle of the week carrying barrels and salt to Soay, we killed another eleven sharks from the Sea Leopard. We became more and more expert in the use of the barrels, and without them we should not have had more than a third of that number.

  Almost every night that week we towed our catch home to Soay during the dark hours and were back on the fishing-grounds soon after dawn. The wind remained fresh to strong from the south-west, and as we lurched and rolled across the Minch the carcases would thump and bang against the ship’s sides till it seemed as though they must crash through into my cabin itself. Both boats were by now beginning to show signs of surface wear, and near the bows neither had much paint left on her within the area that a shark’s tail could lash.

  It was at some time during that second week in July that I realised that the Fulmar Petrels had come to know the Sea Leopard from other boats, and that they had begun to follow hopefully even when we had no shark in tow. On the first day of the week we had sailed for home early in the evening, while it was still light. Small pieces of liver began to break loose from the sharks and drift astern in our wash. The gulls began to collect, flocking in from all points of the compass where no gulls had been visible before. With them came fulmars, a few at first, then more and more, until there were over a hundred. The gulls were mainly Herring Gulls and Lesser Blackbacks, with a few Kittiwakes and a pair or two of Great Blackbacks, massive and vulturine. A few gannets joined the throng, by now several hundred strong. The fulmars, tamer than the gulls, bickered and quarrelled with grotesque and unavian gestures in the water a few feet from the boat, dropped astern as some morsel engaged their attention, and returned with the full breath-taking glory of their flight to join others who had taken their places. Beside them in the air the gulls looked clumsy and inept, old-fashioned landaulettes beside modern racing cars, their flight lacking grace and style in comparison. To me the flight of the fulmar is the most beautiful of all birds’, and has a strange and precise individuality. Even the takeoff from the water is unlike that of the gulls. If there is enough breeze to make it possible, the fulmar takes off as does an aeroplane, with a short taxi-ing run on stiff outstretched wings that do not flap. He spreads his wings, runs a few steps on the surface of the water, gives a final kick-off, and lets the wind launch him into the air, usually on a climbing turn. I watched this as the birds that had fallen a few yards astern hu
rried to catch up with the source of supply, and the same technique again as they dipped to pick up some unexpected fragment on the way. Here the legs are lowered and begin a slightly ludicrous running movement before the bird reaches the surface of the water; the wings remain stiffly outstretched, and the legs continue to run while the food is picked up. The act of alighting is accompanied by a fine, almost orgasmic, trembling vibration of the wings; then the long scimitars fold and the aerobat is revealed as a dumpy, upright, and very well-groomed little white bird, swimming with quick precise strokes of widely splayed legs. The full characteristic flight is a series of extremely fast alternating diving and climbing turns, banking vertically with the long thin wings tensely stretched. At the bottom of the diving turn the tip of the lower wing skims the water with mathematical precision, always appearing to be within an inch of the surface but never breaking it. When these turns follow one another in quick succession at a speed of something like sixty miles an hour the effect is breath-taking, in some way reminiscent of the long swoops and barely-held pauses of a lofty trapeze dance.

  In their effort to be instantly ready for any fresh piece of liver leaving the sharks’ carcases, the foremost fulmars were flying well inboard the ship, often within arm’s length of where I stood against the dinghy on the poop-deck. I amused myself by trying to catch one in the air as they hung poised and nearly stationary on the wind. Sometimes the wing-tip would almost brush my face, but always as the hand shot out a quick tilt of the wing carried it beyond reach, and the bird would make a steep climbing turn to bring him back to his former position within a yard of my head.