White Shark

by Benchley-Peter

  "I guess they've had enough," Tall Man said as he watched the sea lions struggle onto the swimstep. They were barking, shoving one another, desperate to get aboard.

  "No," Amanda said, alarmed. "Something's frightened them. Something's out there."

  "Like what?" Tall Man looked overboard. He could barely see the cage, for as it had sunk it had drifted into the shade of the boat. Holding the rope, he walked from one side of the boat to the other, then returned to the stern. "Nothing," he said. "I can't see anything out there."

  "It's there, though," Amanda said. "Something... somewhere."

  "Then whatever it is has gotta be deep. Either that, or... shit!"

  "What?

  "Under the boat." He pulled on the rope.

  * * * * *

  The cage shuddered as the rope tugged it. Chase reached to turn the air valves.

  A shadow passed overhead, so huge that it cast the entire cage in darkness. Chase started, and looked up. A flash of sunlight blinded him for a moment, disorienting him; by the time his eyes had adjusted, he was unsure of the direction the shadow had been traveling. He turned.

  Ten feet away, emerging from the shade of the boat, swimming at the cage with a mighty gracefulness that Chase had once admired but now found horrid, was the great white shark. It did not slow or hesitate. Its eyes rolled backward in their sockets; its mouth opened; its gums rotated forward; serrated white triangles stood erect. It bit down on the cage.

  Reflexively, Chase ducked and flung himself on top of Max. The boy turned his head, his eyes widened in shock.

  There was the sound of teeth scraping on metal, then a crunching of metal collapsing, then a sudden his of air and an explosion of bubbles.

  The cage yawed crazily, swinging under the boat and slamming against the keel, and Chase knew instantly what had happened. The shark had destroyed one of the flotation tanks.

  * * * * *

  "Goddamn you!" Tall Man shouted. The sinews in his arms and shoulders stood out like wires as he strained at the rope. He had seen the shark only a second before it had struck, charging out from beneath the boat like a gray torpedo.

  Amanda reached over, grabbed the rope and helped him pull. "I thought sharks never—"

  "Yeah," Tall Man said. "But guess what: this one did."

  "Why?"

  "Christ knows."

  They could hear the cage thumping against the keel, could feel the impact through their feet.

  "Can you put the rope on the winch?" Amanda asked.

  "I don't dare. The bastard weighs better’n a ton; the weight could tear the rope away from the cage."

  "What do we do? We have to—"

  "If he comes out from under the boat, I'll shoot the son of a bitch," Tall Man said. "Till then, let's just pray he goes away."

  * * * * *

  Chase and Max huddled in the far corner of the cage, holding each other, holding the bars, as the cage swung wildly beneath the boat.

  The shark had locked its jaws, and it twisted and thrashed its massive body as if trying to beat the cage to pieces.

  Chase saw bubbles flowing from Max's regulator in a continuous stream. The boy was hyperventilating. He made Max look at him, pointed to his own regulator, then to Max's, and gestured for Max to slow his breathing. Terrified, Max nodded.

  Suddenly the shark released the cage, and the cage swung downward, hanging askew. Chase saw the sharks' wide white belly slipping slowly before his eyes as the animal let itself fall. There were five parallel slash marks in the flesh forward of the genital slit.

  * * * * *

  "Pull!" Tall Man said. He and Amanda brought the rope in hand-over-hand. Looking overboard, they could see the top of the cage as it cleared the bottom of the boat. The shark was a gray form, hovering nearly motionless beneath the cage. Tall Man dropped down onto the swimstep and held the rope out over the stern. "Another five feet and we've got—"

  "No!" Amanda screamed, pointing.

  There was a flash of a scythelike tail, a rush of water, and the conical head of the shark broke the surface. The mouth barely opened; it struck the swimstep, skidded, and fastened on the rope. With a single shake of its head, the shark tore the rope from Tall Man's hand and sheared it from the cage. Tall Man fell backward into the stern.

  The shark swam away; the cage began to fall.

  * * * * *

  Chase lurched to his feet, grabbed the air valve on the intact flotation tank and twisted it all the way on. There was a hiss of air, and the cage's descent slowed. But it was still falling.

  Chase inflated his buoyancy vest and Max's, hoping that removing their weight and adding buoyancy would stop the cage, make it neutral, until Tall Man could lower a rope to them.

  The cage continued to fall. Chase looked at the depth gauge on the tank: the needle passed thirty feet, then thirty-five, forty...

  He looked quickly in every direction. The shark had vanished.

  Fifty feet...

  Chase knew he had no choice, they could not ride the cage to the bottom. They would both run out of air, probably before they reached the bottom, certainly before Tall Man could reach them.

  He pulled Max to his feet and pushed open the hatch. He put his hands on Max's shoulders and looked into the boy's eyes, willing him to recall the lessons he had learned, praying that the boy had listened. He took his mouthpiece out and shouted the word, "Remember!"

  Max understood.

  Sixty feet...

  Chase propelled Max up through the hatch and followed immediately. He took the boy's hand, and faced him so he could monitor Max's breathing.

  They were rising too fast, faster than their own bubbles; the air in their vests was expanding, seeking the surface, dragging them upward. They had to slow down; if they kept rising at this pace, they were risking a ruptured lung or an embolism or the bends.

  Chase vented the vests, and they slowed. Now their bubbles were preceding them. Good.

  Chase looked at his depth gauge: forty feet... thirty-five... He didn't look down, he kept his eyes on Max's face. He didn’t see the shark rising beneath them.

  Twenty feet... fifteen...

  Suddenly there was a splash above them, and a roil of water, and Tall Man swam down at them, carrying a speargun.

  Now Chase did look down, and he saw, rising like a missile through the gloom, the yawning mouth and prolapsed jaw of the great white shark.

  Tall Man pulled the trigger. There was a puff of bubbles from the carbon-dioxide propellant, and the spear shot from the gun. It struck the shark in the roof of the mouth, and stuck. The shark hesitated, shaking its head to rid itself of the annoyance. It bit down, bending the spear, crushing it.

  Chase broke through the surface, pulled Max after him and shoved him onto the swimstep. Amanda grabbed Max and hauled him into the boat as Chase swung his legs up, rolled onto the swimstep and reached down for Tall Man's hand.

  But Tall Man stayed just beneath the surface, watching. At last, he kicked upward and, in a single motion, flung himself onto the swimstep.

  Chase shrugged himself out of his harness, dropped his tank on the deck and crawled forward to Max, who lay on his side as Amanda helped him out of his tank. "Are you okay?" Chase asked.

  Max's eyes were closed. He nodded, managed a faint smile and said, "Jeez..."

  "You did great... you followed the rules... you didn't panic. You did great!" Chase felt guilty and stupid and relieved and proud; he wanted to express all those feelings, but he didn't know how, so he simply took one of Max's hands in his, rubbed it and said, "What a hell of an initiation to open-water diving." He saw Tall Man walking forward, toward the cabin, and said, "Hey, Tall... thanks. I wasn't looking, I didn't see it coming."

  "I know," Tall Man said. "I thought I better give the bastard something else to chew on other than you. That was our shark, y’know. She's still got the tag in her."

  "I've never seen behavior like that, never heard of it. She was berserk! It's weird, like the blue sharks,
only opposite: the white was nuts with aggression instead of fear." Chase paused. "But whatever's causing this behavior, it's the same creature: there were five slashed were five slashes on that white shark's belly."

  * * * * *

  They raised the anchor, turned to the west, heading for home. Chase stood at the wheel on the flying bridge; Max lay on a towel behind him, warming himself in the high afternoon sun. Amanda was feeding the sea lions. When she had settled them in the stern, she climbed the ladder to the bridge.

  The low silhouette of OspreyIsland was just coming into view when Tall Man appeared at the foot of the ladder and said to Amanda, "Your pilot's on the radio; he's got whales."

  "How far away?"

  "Not far, couple miles to the east."

  Amanda hesitated. She looked at her watch, at the sea lions, then at Chase.

  Chase said to Max, "How do you feel?"

  "Fine," Max replied. "I'm fine. Let's go; I've never seen whales."

  Chase turned to Amanda. "It's up to you," he said. "Do you think the sea lions will work?"

  'Sure, till they're tired, then they'll stop."

  "They're not spooked?"

  "No, I don't think so. If they see the white shark, they'll get out of the water, just like before. Besides, sharks usually stay away from pods of big, healthy whales."

  "Uh-huh," Chase said. He swung the wheel to the left and headed east. "I wasn't thinking only about the white shark."

  24

  "I can't hear them," Max said.

  Two hundred yards ahead, a pod of humpback whales was moving leisurely northward.

  "You might if you were underwater," said Chase. "You could hear them for miles."

  "But if they sing..."

  "It's not really singing, we call it that because we don't know how else to describe it. They don't actually have voices. They make sounds with a mechanism inside their heads. And they don't do it all the time."

  They stood on the flying bridge. The boat was idling in neutral, bobbing slowly in the ocean swells.

  The great gray bodies rolled through the sea, displacing mountains of water with their huge bulbous heads, displaying vast flat tail flukes fifteen or twenty feet wide, spouting geysers of misty breath into the warm air. There were adults and young, males and females, but it was impossible to count them, for every so often one or two would slap the surface three times with their tails and then disappear in a deep dive, to reappear long minutes later in some unpredictable position among their fellows.

  "What does their song say?" Max asked.

  "For a long time, nobody knew; all they knew was that the whales were communicating, maybe talking about where they were going or where there might be food or if they sensed any danger. All whales communicate; I've heard that blue whales can keep in touch with each other over a thousand miles of open ocean. Humpbacks, though, are the only whales that sing in such a complex series of sounds and tones. Now scientists are pretty sure that the song of humpbacks is sexual, that the males sing to attract the females." Chase smiled. "I like to think they're wrong, that the song is still a mystery."

  "Why?"

  "Mysteries are wonderful things. It would be boring to have all the answers. It's like the Loch Ness monster, I hope they never find him, either. We need dragons to keep our imaginations alive."

  "Max!" Amanda called from the stern. "Come on down and get Harpo ready."

  Max walked aft on the flying bridge and climbed down the ladder into the cockpit.

  Three of the sea lions had been fitted with harnesses, and secured to each harness was a video camera whose lens pointed forward. The fourth animal shifted nervously from side to side as if confused.

  Amanda handed Max the fourth harness and showed him how to fit it around the sea lion's shoulders, along its belly, behind its flippers and over its back.

  As Max slipped the leather straps over the silky skin, the sea lion nuzzled him with its icy nose and tickled him with its whiskers.

  Amanda attached the camera and called up to Chase. "All set."

  Chase looked out at the ocean. Everything seemed normal, peaceful. And yet..."

  "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked. "We have three months."

  "Yeah, but we won't get whales every day. Let's go."

  "Okay, it's your call. How close do you want me to get? I don't need to break federal laws about harassing whales."

  "Not too close. The important thing is for us to get in front of the whales so the sea lions don't get pooped trying to catch up with them."

  Chase put the boat in gear and accelerated, keeping well away from the whales so as not to alarm them with his engine noise. On a day this calm, there would be no problem keeping the whales in sight; their tail flukes and spouts would be visible for a mile or more, so he traveled what he judged to be five hundred yards in front of them before throttling back and letting the boat idle.

  In the stern, the four sea lions were poised behind one another like school children lined up for lunch. Amanda spoke to each one and made a series of gestures before switching on the video camera and sweeping her arm toward the opening in the transom. Max stood behind her, mimicking her gestures.

  One by one, the sea lions waddled to the stern and flung themselves into the ocean.

  When they had all surfaced behind the boat, Amanda raised both arms and pointed at the approaching whales, and swept her arms downward.

  The sea lions barked, turned and vanished beneath the surface.

  "How long can they stay down?" asked Max.

  "About ten minutes on each dive," Amanda said. "Not as long as the whales, but they can dive over and over again, and they can go to six or seven hundred feet."

  "Deeper than a person."

  "Much. And they don't have to decompress, they don't get bends, don't get embolisms."

  From the flying bridge, Chase said, "You want the boat to follow them?"

  "No, we'll stay here. I don't want the whales to think the boat's chasing them. You can shut the engine down if you want. The ladies know where we are."

  "But how can you be sure the sea lions will come back?" Max asked.

  "Because they always have," Amanda said, and she smiled.

  Chase came down from the flying bridge, turned off the engine and took a glass from a cabinet in the galley. "Come on," he said to Max. "Let's see if we can get lucky."

  "Where to?"

  "These aren't breeding grounds, and humpbacks usually sing only on their breeding grounds. But maybe, just maybe, we can hear a little concert."

  He led Max below, into the forward cabin. He lifted a corner of the carpet and rolled it back a few feet., then dropped to his knees and put an ear to the cold fiberglass deck, motioning Max to do the same.

  "What do you hear?" Chase asked.

  "Water," Max said, "sort of slopping around, and... wait!" His eyes widened. "Yeah, I do! But it's really weak."

  "Here," Chase said, and he lifted Max's head and placed the bottom of a glass under his ear, the open bell against the deck. "Better?"

  Max grinned, and Chase knew what he was hearing: the ghostly hoots and avian chirrups, the whistles and tweets, the lovely, lilting conversation between leviathans.

  "Cool!" Max said, beaming.

  "It sure is," said Chase, and he thought: being a father is too.

  The whales passed a few hundred yards to the east of the boat and continued on their way. Gradually their sounds faded until, at last, even with the glass, Max could hear only faint echoes. He and Chase went topside and opened the cooler Mrs. Bixler had packed for them.

  * * * * *

  The first of the sea lions returned after half an hour.

  They were sitting in the stern, eating, when they heard a bark and looked over the stern and saw the animal ride a little swell onto the swimstep.

  "Hello, Groucho," Amanda said.

  Chase shook his head. "I don't know how you can tell."

  "Live with them night and day for three years, you'
d be able to tell, too."

  The sea lion raised itself up onto its long rear flipper and heaved itself through the door in the transom.

  As Amanda removed the camera and harness, the sea lion barked excitedly and swung its head from side to side.

  "What's she saying?" asked Max.

  "She's telling me what she saw," Amanda said. "You know, like, ‘Hey, Mom, get a load of this!’"

  Chase said, "And what do you think she saw?"

  Amanda held up the camera. "We'll look at the tapes on the way in," she said. "As soon as the others come back, we can try to catch up with the whales again." Then she said to Max, "Why don't you give Groucho some fish while I dry this off and reload it?"

  Max lifted a hatch in the afterdeck, brought out a bucket of mullet and dangled a fish before the sea lion. It didn't snap at the fish, didn't lunge for it, just extended its neck, accepted the fish and seemed to inhale it.

  The second sea lion, Chico, returned ten minutes later, the third, Harpo, a few minutes after that. Max fed them both, and when they had eaten, they waddled across the deck and lay down in a heap with Groucho, and the three of them slept in the sun.

  * * * * *

  Amanda checked her watch; Chase knew this was the tenth time in the past five minutes. Then she shaded her eyes and looked out over the flat water, straining to see any movement on the surface.

  "You said they can keep diving all day," he said.

  "They can, but they don't, especially after a workout like they had with the sharks." She looked at her watch again. "None of them has ever stayed out for two hours. Besides, they want to: they get tired, hungry." She frowned. "Particularly Zeppo. She's the lazy one. She's late. Very late."

  "Maybe she just decided to take off."