I was safe and the world was a small, warm place.
I tied Eli’s long flannel shirt in a knot at my waist and looped the chock pin to his collar. Asa’s pants were too tight on my calves so I used a jackknife to cut a V in each bottom cuff. I hurriedly laced my boots, afraid the boats would leave without me.
Running down the porch steps, I pulled Eli’s cap on backward so it wouldn’t fly off. Shadows of men and boys darted in and out of the cloud-cloaked moonlight. In the confusion I felt Papa’s hand on my shoulder, pointing me straight ahead.
“We’re in the center boat,” he said.
I put my shoulder to the hull with the rest. My heart thumped like a drum going into battle. Figgie nodded at me as he pushed the far boat with Warrain and the villagers. We moved arrow-like toward a target. Someone yelled it was bad luck to bring a hen along, but no other voice joined his. I could feel the heaviness of the cedar planks scraping along the sand. As we became buoyant, everyone slipped into their positions.
Except me. I tumbled, banging my knees on the hull and my head on the thwart in front of me where the oarsmen sat. Ned, our boatsteerer, said Pop Alex’s hat was a might big for wearing on my first hunt. I wanted to say that it was Eli’s cap, but I kept that to myself as I shoved the rope hatchet into my belt. Papa was too busy barking orders and steering the rudder to pay us any mind.
“Give way all!” Papa yelled at his oarsmen to gain speed. “Lay into it!”
I filled my bucket with water and grabbed the loose oar next to me. Lon shouted from the starboard boat that the whale had gone “Up flukes.” It would stay under twenty minutes or so before it surfaced again. The boats spread out a quarter mile apart with one not willing to yield palm to another. We rowed in determined competition; each oar rose and fell, slicing effortlessly through the dark satin water. The oars shone bone white like the claws of some giant creature.
An onyx top sail surfaced between our boat and Abe’s. When the killer lay on its side as if to look up at us, the white patch over the eye showed it to be Matong. His mouth gaped open as Papa swung a lasso rope to him. Each of the other three boats did the same, tossing ropes to the other killers. I had seen much with these beasts, but never had I seen anything like that. Matong pulled our whaleboat to our prey faster than we could row. Four other killers chased ahead after the whale.
As we sliced across the silver cove, the crew pointed at sharks following us. The whole bay seemed alive to our quest with a stake in its outcome. Matong’s teeth gleamed with each rise and dive. The killers dropped their ropes and we glided. We were now beyond the bay, with light from the Doddspoint Lighthouse the only source to pin us to shore. We waited in silence until a whaler from Figgie’s boat stood on the bow, crying,
“Akama!”
An immense blackness erupted from the sea, rising twelve feet above us. Two killers thrust out of the surf across the whale’s head, trying to smother its blowhole. As it ascended again, Warrain’s harpoon found its mark with a whistling thud in the whale’s flank. Ned’s harpoon landed near the dorsal fin, like a flagpole planted on a hillcrest. I was so entranced by these efforts that I forgot my place.
“Tub oarsman, look alive at your station!” shouted Papa, over the din of the hunt.
I emptied a piggin full of water onto the smoking line as it tore out of the tub at ferocious speed. The line made a hissing sound as it yanked the whaleboat around, to the hoots and hollers of the crew. I reached overboard to fill the bucket again and nearly fell out of the boat as the lads all lowered their heads and held on to the gunwales. Papa grabbed his lance and made his way to the bow as the boat bounced and danced on the tops of waves. He switched places with Ned, who took over steering the boat.
Ned was almost next to me when the bowsprit chock pin holding the sizzling line snapped. If the rope ripped upward, it would tear Ned’s arm from its socket.
I grabbed my oar and swung it down on the line as I might an axe. The crew all looked up. Their jaws slacked open as I used all my strength to hold the oar down on the sizzling rope. Ned staggered but was unharmed as the rope burned a groove in the oar’s throat.
“You saved my neck this day!” shouted Ned, slapping my back as if I were one of the lads.
“Three cheers for the tub oarsman,” came a shout from the bow.
“Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!” they all shouted, thumping their oars on the hull as the whale sped us along the line still snapping across the gunwale of the boat.
Papa nodded at me with a wink and tapped his lance on top of the gunwales.
“Steady, lads. Hove up!” Papa shouted, raising the lance over his head. “Stern all! Stern all!”
Every oar hit the water, backing us off the mark where the whale would surface.
At that moment, a blaze of light broke through the clouds. The bow of the boat rose as if being lifted by a cresting wave. We kept rising higher and higher, until all the loose items inside the boat were raining down on Ned and me.
Papa fell without thrusting his lance. The bottom of the hull splintered, tossing us in all directions as fragments of wood and metal tumbled around us. The whale’s vast dark fluke stirred the cauldron of the sea like Poseidon’s trident, smashing what was left of our boat into indistinguishable pieces.
Stunned, I sank below the surface, unable to move. I saw Lon, Warrain, and Figgie jump into the bay and swim toward us. Unperturbed by our efforts, the whale continued on its ancient journey. I heard my name but couldn’t respond. Debris, rope, and tools dating back to Pop’s time drifted downward. It was as if the past were trying to ensnare me. The brightness of the light allowed me to see the others thrashing onto the boats as I sank lower and lower. The dream I had was coming true. The coldness of the deeper water shocked me to my senses, and I swam toward the white bottom of a boat.
My lungs burned for air.
As I angled for the surface, I realized the “boat” was a white pointer, whipped into a frenzy by whale blood. It spotted me flailing with its flesh-stained teeth stretched across wide extended jaws. Paralyzed with fear, I couldn’t move. My heart pounded heavily in my chest.
As the shark lunged at me, a shadow darted between us. I felt a hard edge catch under my arms and pull me toward the surface. As water rushed over my eyes, I saw ghostly white patches rising with me.
Was it my brothers’ angered spirits come for revenge?
Suddenly, I surfaced and slid onto a killer’s head. The creature floated motionless, its massive top fin stabbing into the inky sky. I felt the hatchet in my belt as I lay there. I’d been waiting for this moment all these years. By some twisted luck, I ended up on this beast. Despite Papa’s letter, the moment to complete my vengeance had arrived. I could avenge Eli and Asa with just a few whacks to its blowhole.
I slowly drew the hatchet out by its neck.
Hesitation tormented me. What little I had learned about the mammal under me suggested my rescue had been no accident. Was this some sort of trick? Was the beast resting before finishing me off or was I chasing a dark dream? There was no way to find an answer before I had to swing that axe. I thought of Figgie’s Law of the Bay and how simple yet resolute it was.
The hatchet slipped from my grip and slid across the whale’s glistening head. The killer shifted its weight beneath me, as though trying to keep the axe within my grasp. The waves lapped at us as the hatchet lay halfway between its blowhole and top fin, challenging me to action. As I reached for the handle again, the events of the past few weeks washed over me. The alabaster figures of my brothers from a dream, Papa’s letter, my sandbar rescue, and Derain’s hypnotizing eye all numbed my reaching muscles.
Eli’s words echoed through my mind again as he taught me to swim and I felt upheld by them. With one solid thrust, I shoved the axe into the dark water. My body shuddered as the hatchet sank, dragging all my sadness and vengefulness to the bottom of the bay.
Exhausted, I rolled on my back. The warm steam from the killer’s breathing covered me like a blanket. I felt its heart throbbing below me, a giant pulsing engine. My heart slowed until both of ours matched drumbeat for drumbeat.
In the distance I heard the boats pull in upended crew while the men shouted that Lon had just killed the white pointer with his lance. Calling for me, Papa sounded as mournful as I’d ever heard him. I was too weak to answer. Slowly the killer turned so I could see the boats. I stood wobbly on its back, holding the top fin like a wind sail.
Still catching my breath, the Blackfish propelled itself cautiously in the direction of the boats and circled from a distance, as if trying to attract attention.
“Papa, Papa!” I shouted. “I’m over here!”
Warrain was the first to spot me. He stood, raising his arms over his head, and broke into a song in his natural tongue. Figgie and the rest of the villagers joined him.
“Savannah, great saints, are you hurt?” yelled Papa, grabbing an oar to move toward me.
“I’m fine, Papa! Don’t worry!” I yelled back, waving.
The village crew pointed at the sky while singing. I looked up to behold a frightening yet spectacular sight—a large glowing disk with a white tail. A mysterious comet had appeared out of nowhere.
As the killer approached the boats, I moved my hands along its top fin and felt the deep gullied scar the whalers and villagers had marveled about seeing during Derain’s rescue after being beached.
Under a glowing comet, my vantage point from this behemoth gave me a different view of the bay. I could clearly see the figures of Figgie, Lon, Papa, and Abe, and more importantly, I was beginning to understand where I stood in relation to them. Looking at the ocean and the stars, the bay didn’t seem quite so confining any longer.
For I knew deep in my bones that this killer whale was Jungay, the spirit king of the orcas. Suddenly, my possibilities seemed endless.
Yet still unanswered was the fate of my brothers.
Part II
Jungay’s Journey
17.
I remained motionless, afraid that if I moved or let go of Jungay’s top fin, he might roll over or flip me twenty feet in the air. Inside I wanted to shout to the world, “I’m standing on a spirit whale!” But the brute enormousness of his presence and the advantage he held over me tempered my joy of discovery.
“Savannah, stay put, we’re on our way!” Papa shouted off my starboard side.
“Wait, no. I don’t know. What should I do?” I yelled, wanting to stay and jump at the same time.
“Over here, it’s dangerous!” shouted Lon, waving me in the direction of his boat. “Come to me, I’ll protect you—”
“Listen!” Figgie shouted. “Hear what she has to say.”
The bay was as soundless as it had ever been. Even the stillness of the water seemed to await my reply. Whenever I grew fearful, old Charlie Brennan used to tell me, “Explain the situation to yourself as if you were telling a friend. The fearing parts seem less scary that way and you can move on.”
I wobbled on Jungay’s slippery back, thinking that just minutes before I’d wanted to kill him. Without having moved, it was already a long journey for me.
Before I could reply to the crew, Jungay dipped his head and descended into the water until my boot tops were submerged. I hugged his top fin as we moved swiftly toward the remaining boats. He rocked slightly and let out a burst of air mist. The water droplets reflected the comet-lighted sky with Roman candle glitter. My feet slipped, my knees buckled, and I fell with every jerk and turn he made.
As we passed the bow of Lon’s boat, the behemoth lifted his head out of the water, revealing gaping rows of jagged ripsaw teeth. With one quick shrug, Jungay gently tossed me into the water right near the gunwales where Papa stood.
The lads started cheering and shouting, “All present and accounted for!”
Those first oar pulls back to Loch Bultarra drew a void into me. I felt inexplicably desolate and hollow, with each stroke toward home stretching the umbilical cord of some new life near to snapping.
That night I didn’t sleep much. My bunk seemed to float on water, more raft than bed. I lay awake, the events of the day looping through my mind—Figgie and Lon butting heads, my oar on the burning rope saving Ned Hanlon, and that hatchet sinking into the depths.
It all flipped by in kinetoscope fashion.
Now that we had returned again without a whale in tow, I worried Papa would end my whaling days once and for all. I worried even more that I might never get a chance to see Jungay again. Every thought I had lying there, no matter how distant from Loch Bultarra, ended in the same place—me standing on Jungay holding his black sail.
As awkward as I had felt on his back, and as frightened as I was, I needed to find him.
I had to ride with Jungay again.
The next day I heard Papa banging around, getting ready to leave for his army reunion. By the time I hobbled down the stairs on cramped legs, he was bent over his ledger at the chopping table.
“Some red oats?” I asked, offering him a biscuit.
“We can’t afford it,” he muttered to himself. “I’ll have to go back to Sam and the syndicate, or make do with the boats we have.”
“They won’t like it none,” I said, glancing at the ledger. I picked up his boots and started dubbining them for a shine. Papa rose wearily to his feet.
“Just bad timing with me lighting out for a few days, nothing Abe can’t handle,” he said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll get by, we always do.”
“You’re not gonna stop me from whaling now, are you?” I asked, buffing his boots.
Papa turned to leave, the ledger tucked under one arm.
“You’re crew now so there’s no need to ask,” he said. “Seeing you sink below was my worst nightmare, but we survived and the killers done their part looking out for you.”
With his swag packed, Papa seemed yipped up the same way I had been before the hunt. It’s been twenty-five years between handshakes with the lads of the NSW Contingent Infantry. He said his shirt and uniform still fit and his Martini-Henry still fired.
“My unit never made it to the Sudan, but I met your mum in Sydney getting ready to set off on a mission,” he said, smiling widely. “Now there’s a fair exchange...” Papa’s voice trailed off as he opened the front door. “Don’t pay no mind to the bull’s wool out there,” he added, waving his hand.
I went outside to see what he was talking about. It was hard to ignore. The comet glared down in broad daylight, the angry brother of the sun. It hung in the sky, a glowing wafer demanding our recognition. A crowd had gathered by the bunks where a horse-drawn wagon, which looked like an Amscol ice cream truck with Comet Hunter painted on its side, was parked. A man wearing an old top hat and red suspenders sold pills to prevent poisoning by gases from the comet tail. Most of the crowd was content to look up. Others cautiously observed through bottles or colored glass, afraid the light from distant shores might blind them. By the time Figgie arrived for his reading lesson, the villagers had weighed in, too. They said the comet looked like a bundle of spears or a headdress. Uncle lamented its sudden appearance. It foretold of a great battle with evil, he said, one that even the sun couldn’t subdue.
“It’s a vaporous omen that will drain all life from the bay with its long tail,” said Figgie, holding one of my old Dumpy books on the front porch. “But I am not afraid, because Jungay has returned to protect us.”
“So, you really think it was Jungay I rode on?” I asked.
“Without a doubt,” he said. “The question is, what do you think?”
I wanted to explain to Figgie what had happened with Jungay, but how could I explain something I didn’t understand? I had wanted to destroy a being that I now considered part of me. To be wrong all those years
, and to spend that time hoping for the wrong thing to happen, made for quite a quizzical feeling. Yet Jungay accepted me for who I was, knew what I wanted to do, even if it had taken me some time to figure it out.
“I felt like I ought to have stayed with him, but why’d he pick me, mate? You know those whales better than anyone.”
“Precisely,” Figgie said, jumping on my wondering spot. “His scar is our symbol for a journey. You have to decide whether to begin one.”
As part of Figgie’s lesson, we read chapter twelve from The Getting of Wisdom. I could tell he was bored hearing about a girl’s elocution lessons. He needed a more direct line to his education and chose to spend the afternoon with a fishing net off Doddspoint.
Papa bounded onto the rickety boards of the quay. He and Abe were taking the shad back over to Paradise where Papa was shipping up to Sydney. Abe wouldn’t be back until tomorrow, with all the syndicate business he had to take care of. I asked him to drop off some drawings for Mr. Brown and to pick up my list of art supplies. A subdued Lon hitched a ride with them on his way to Adelaide for another cricket tourney he was playing in. I was supposed to have dinner with Frieda and spend the night with her. I accompanied them down to the float dock wearing Frieda’s fancy bonnet she’d lent me from the Dodd’s Plug match.
“Help Mrs. Hobson best you can,” said Papa, tossing his biddle on deck. “Do me a favor.”
“Anything, Papa,” I said, clasping my hands behind my back.
“Stay away from the killers while I’m gone.”
“Papa,” I said, placing a finger to my cheek. “They’re orcas.”
“Savannah…” he said, waiting for an answer, “I don’t need to be worrying.”
“Aye, I promise,” I said, crossing my hands over my heart.
Abe had already trimmed the mainsails, making Papa run and jump into the shad as it left the dock. Lon looked down at the deck without saying a word.
The Whaler's Daughter Page 12
