Barney and the Secret of the Whales

by Jackie French

  The second mate signalled again. The whole crew except Captain Melvill and the mates on the platform heaved at the windlass, drawing the chain tight between the ship and the whale.

  I cried out as the ship shuddered and rolled towards the giant corpse. It was bigger than we were, and heavier! Would it sink us? But even as I thought this, I realised that these men had caught whales just as big a hundred, maybe even a thousand times before.

  Further and further we toppled. I could see the sea churning almost at my feet. I held fast to the chain to stop sliding into the waves below.

  Whump! The ship rolled back faster than she had gone over.

  ‘Hurrah!’ The cheer came from all around. The whaling hook now held an enormous strip of blubber about six feet wide and twenty feet long, peeled from the whale’s body like Mr Johnson peeled a tangerine.

  We hauled again. Up it came, slithering over the gunwale, across the deck. Two men grabbed it. One of them wielded a huge sword-like knife. He slashed at the blubber so it fell in giant slices, then pushed its bloody vastness down the hatch, below deck.

  ‘Where are they taking it?’ I yelled to Call-Me-Bob.

  ‘Down to the blubber room to cut the big blankets into smaller bits. You’ll see.’ We heaved the chain again till yet another enormous strip oozed aboard. Then another and another.

  We hauled up more vast blankets of blubber, and still more. Call-Me-Bob nudged me then, and pointed at the sea.

  I had seen them too. Shark fins!

  I ran to the gunwale. The sea about the vast red corpse was churned by sharks and waves.

  As I watched, a great shark leaped, grabbed some of the whale flesh and fell back down.

  The men on the giant whale corpse took no notice. I supposed they were as safe as we were from the sharks, though they had no solid side to stop them falling off if they slipped. I saw though that they had cut footholds in the whale flesh and were using their blubber knives too, to anchor themselves.

  The blubber hook was lowered again so the two mates below could fix it to another portion of the skin. The blubber on deck was as thick as Mr Johnson’s biggest Bible, a bit like a vast cut of white beef, except for the black skin.

  I touched it cautiously. It still felt warm, despite the freezing wind, and firmer than beef.

  Call-Me-Bob came over to me and prodded it with his foot. He grinned. ‘Grand, ain’t it?’

  I nodded cautiously. I thought it was sad, not grand, but I was sure I was the only one on the ship to think so.

  ‘Them’s called blanket pieces. There’s a hundred barrels of oil in that whale.’

  We headed back to the chain to haul again . . . and again . . . and again . . .

  The whale was so big I supposed it would take days to strip its skin. But it was only hours, maybe, before Captain Melvill shouted the order to roll back the chain.

  I let myself collapse onto the deck, exhausted, then scrambled up again as I began to slide across the deck.

  Plop! A bloody quilt landed at my feet. I stepped back.

  Plop! Plop!

  More, and more. I gazed at the hatch as a giant fork appeared briefly, hoisting yet another of the slices of blubber back onto the deck. They were much smaller now: easily lifted by one man. Even as I watched, another crewman picked them up, piling them next to what looked a bit like a wooden washing line.

  A sailor with one eye, a squashed flat nose and a double-sided blade almost as long as me slung each piece over the line, then expertly slashed it into thinner slices, separating the blubber from the skin.

  Call-Me-Bob made his way over to me. He nodded at the new blobs of flesh on the deck. ‘Them’s called horse pieces. Dandy Jim there is cutting ’em into leaves. Makes ’em easier to boil down. Dandy Jim’s the best cutter on the seas,’ he added proudly, then grinned at me. Half his teeth were missing. ‘Two-Grog Sam’s the best harpoonist too. Bet you half a crown we get more whales than any other ship this season.’

  ‘I ain’t got half a crown.’ Even as I said it, I remembered Mrs Johnson telling me not to say ‘ain’t’. Half the words used on this ship were ones Mrs Johnson would never allow in her house.

  ‘You will have, at voyage end.’

  I needed a friend. I thrust away the vision of the beauty and life that we were chopping up, and made myself grin back. ‘I ain’t taking the bet anyway. I reckon we are the best ship. And the best crew too.’

  ‘Hear that!’ yelled Call-Me-Bob. ‘The tadpole here says we’re the best ship on the seas, and the best crew too.’

  Dandy Jim gave me a crooked smile. ‘See if you’ve got breath to say that in a few days’ time. But you’re right.’ He bent to his work again.

  I looked over the gunwale once more. There was the whale, perfectly skinless, white as a bucket of ice back in England.

  Four men worked down on the whale and platform now, cutting, prodding, heaving. They were slicing into the whale itself now. As I gazed, they attached the blubber hook under the whale’s skull.

  ‘Ow!’ Another blow to the ear, from the sailor they called Yellow-Nose Joe.

  ‘You, Tadpole, back to work!’

  I ran back to the chain. More hauling, the mast creaking, the whole ship shuddering. Every man was there, heaving the skull up, apart from Captain Melvill. Even Peg-Leg Tom came up from the galley to haul on the chain with the rest of us, digging his peg leg into the deck. Once more we tilted over as the chain brought up its load.

  I gasped. The whale’s massive head rose above the level of the deck! It hung there, half in the water, buoyed up by it, and half in the air. It was a third as high as the main mast perhaps, almost thirty feet. But it was hard to see it as the great beast I had seen before. This was simply dead bone and meat . . .

  I stared as the two mates climbed onto the vast head, holding their saws. I moved up to Call-Me-Bob. ‘What are they doing?’

  He laughed. ‘This is the best bit of all. You watch.’

  The sailors cut and pulled and sawed, throwing bits of skull down. I watched as a bucket was taken up to them on a block and tackle, then gasped again, as it was lowered into the skull itself. It came up brimming not with blood but with liquid that gleamed and dripped in the wind-driven sun.

  ‘Spermaceti,’ said Call-Me-Bob with satisfaction. ‘Pure wax, that is. It’s like water when the whale is fresh killed and goes solid as it cools. There’ll be five hundred gallons in that there skull.’ He righted himself as a vast wave tossed the deck one way and then another. ‘Though with the waves the way they are, we’ll lose a lot afore we get it in the barrels.’ His eyes shone. ‘There’s our fortunes in that skull, Tadpole. Come on!’

  I was glad Call-Me-Bob showed me what to do, as I’d have got another cuffing otherwise. We formed a line along the deck again, and the two men above on the skinless head guided the buckets down on their chains. One man would unhook a bucket, then we passed it across the deck to the barrels lashed to the mast, which other hands filled, nailed shut, then rolled down into the main hatch to float among the blubber.

  Scoop and scoop and pass and pass . . .

  I was covered with the stuff soon enough. It felt like butter but smelled like nothing at all at first, and then slowly like the flowers at Covent Garden, way back in England, that I’d seen a few times before Ma was sent to prison. I’d never forgotten all them flowers, and vegetables too.

  Bucket after bucket, pass and pass and pass . . .

  The ship lurched. The deck timbers shrieked. The weight of the vast skull, and the giant corpse still tethered to the ship, made us bob like a stick in a flood. The air smelled of salt and flowers and whale and sweat, and wisps of Peg-Leg Tom’s bad breath from next to me, till the wind whipped it away again.

  Pass and pass . . . bucket after bucket of spermaceti, barrel after barrel. I didn’t think my arms could move any more, but they did. I grabbed a bucket and passed it on. My muscles ached, then screamed at me, then felt like nothing at all. The ship swayed about us, and the wind
grabbed and pushed us too. Another giant wave lashed down on us as I turned to pass yet another bucket to Peg-Leg Tom.

  He wasn’t there. I glanced up to see his body slipping and sliding across the oil-slicked deck. His hands clawed at the deck, but he went too fast, greased by the blubber and wax.

  The ship rolled sideways as yet another wave grabbed us. For a moment I could see nothing but green water. I lost my footing and crashed against a barrel, unable to breathe, then grabbed the barrel as the ship began to right itself. I blinked into the light again as the water flooded over the deck, washing Peg-Leg Tom up and over the gunwale.

  He grabbed at the rail. I saw his eight remaining fingers tighten, the knuckles white. I scrambled to my feet to haul him in, and felt rather than saw Call-Me-Bob and Dandy Jim and the others slip and slide towards him as well. But the gunwale must have been greased by the spermaceti too. His hand slipped.

  Peg-Leg Tom was gone.

  CHAPTER 11

  Man Overboard!

  The world moved faster than I could think. The falling man, his scream above the crash of the water. I ran to the gunwale, my arms out like wings to help with my balance. Men stood either side of me, staring down. There were only bubbles where Peg-Leg Tom had sunk below the surface where the whale’s head had been, then not even bubbles as the waves washed them away.

  I waited for Peg-Leg Tom to come up, to swim over to what remained of the carcass. And for a moment there he was, his head and then his hands, clawing at the air. Then he was gone again.

  My body acted before I knew it. Before I could think, Peg-Leg Tom can’t swim. Probably none of these men who’d sailed the world’s seven seas could swim, because they’d had no Birrung to show them how. Before I could work out if the bit of swimming I knew was enough to let me rescue Peg-Leg Tom and get us both back safely. Before my arms and legs could freeze at the thought of being bitten off by sharks.

  I simply moved.

  I heaved myself up onto the gunwale, and then jumped down.

  The water was hard, like I’d jumped into bricks. Then it was cold. It had hands, fingers that dragged me down, buffeted me. Down, down I went, with red water and bubbles all around, the currents twisting and pulling me. The water of the harbour was calm and warm, but these waves hated me, would kill me.

  No, I thought as I surfaced, then gulped air, sweet air. The waves didn’t care. They simply were.

  I struck out with my legs, like Birrung had done, scooping the water with my hands. But the water I’d swum in before had been flat and well behaved. This water tossed me and crashed down on me. All I could do was gulp air whenever my head was free of it.

  The water was ever redder. I didn’t know if it was the whale’s blood or mine or Peg-Leg Tom’s. How much did it hurt if a shark ate your leg? Maybe the pain was too big to feel, like after Ma had died when it was three days before I was even able to cry. Maybe I had only one leg now, or none . . .

  I just had time to realise I wasn’t sinking, wasn’t drowning, was even getting close to where Peg-Leg Tom was, when his wooden leg hit me in the face. The leg floated, but Peg-Leg Tom’s body dangled below it in the water.

  I reached down, grabbed something and pulled. Pulled hard and struck back towards the ship and found that what I’d grabbed was shirt and Peg-Leg Tom too.

  Something brushed my side. Something big and black. I just had time to see two knife rows of teeth before I struck out again, hauling at Peg-Leg Tom’s shirt with one hand and trying to swim with the other. I don’t think Peg-Leg Tom’s head was out of the water and mostly neither was mine, but I kept on going.

  Something bumped my leg. I didn’t dare look back. Another stroke, and another . . . Hands pulled and shoved us up, up, up, onto the whale carcass, leaving the waves behind . . .

  And sharks. I looked down at my legs. My two legs. I counted them again. Then I looked at Peg-Leg Tom.

  He still had both legs too: one flesh, one wood. But he lay as limp as a dead rooster, his mouth open, his eyes shut.

  Was he dead? But as I looked, he gave a heave and water spurted out, along with potato stew. His fingers clawed at the whale flesh below us.

  I was still gasping like a fish. I stared down at the red water. A shark lunged at the slab of whale meat only a few yards or so below my feet. I jumped back, but the shark was too intent on tearing at whale flesh to notice me.

  Which was how we’d survived, I realised. Why bother killing a boy and a man when you can feast on whale meat sitting here, bleeding off red juice, all you can eat, and more?

  Already someone had strung ropes about Peg-Leg Tom. He tried to wave them away, lunging towards the rope ladder, but they hauled him up anyway.

  I grabbed the ladder before anyone could tie a rope around me. I was wet and cold. The water had been warmer than I’d expected, but the wind was cold enough to freeze your eyeballs into ice. I’d climbed nearly to the rail when I wondered if I should have waited for orders before clambering up. Or diving off the ship. Would I get a cuff about the ear, or even a flogging, for not waiting for orders? Or would I be a hero?

  I flung myself over the gunwale. I meant to land feet first, but was weaker than I thought. I landed hard, on my side. I lay there gasping for a second, then found hands helping me up. It was Call-Me-Bob. He shoved his shoulder under my arm. We staggered across the deck towards the hatch.

  Peg-Leg Tom sat in a small puddle on the deck, his wooden leg sticking out, his eyes daring anyone to help him. He glared at me. ‘No need for that,’ he muttered. I realised he meant my rescue. He held up his tattooed arm. ‘See that? Means I can’t drown, don’t it? And a wooden leg floats. I’d have got out all on me ownsome. No need for you to get yourself a wetting.’

  He pushed himself to his feet — or foot and peg — and stumped off, down to the galley. I realised he must sleep there: I’d never seen him at our cluster of hammocks. I supposed he had his spare clothes there as well.

  Call-Me-Bob helped me below. I changed into dry clothes and another oilskin, then clambered back up on deck, by myself this time.

  Call-Me-Bob was waiting for me. He thrust something black and fishy into my hands. ‘Eat this.’

  It was a piece of whale steak. I took a mouthful, feeling half sick, half starving, most of me still down there in the red and heaving water, or grieving over the very whale I was stuffing into my mouth. It tasted of smoke and meat and death and food — and food was what I needed then, so it tasted mostly of that.

  I can taste it now, just thinking about it.

  ‘Captain says you can have a sleep,’ said Call-Me-Bob.

  Seemed that was the only thanks I’d get for being a hero. The crew had bigger concerns than one wet boy right now. So I went back below, wrapped myself in a blanket and slept.

  CHAPTER 12

  Boiling Down

  It was dark when I woke, but strange red shadows flickered on the walls. The ship still shuddered in the waves and wind. I could hear men stamp and yell above me. There was a new smell now, like when the bush burned far off or Sally scorched the meat, but worse.

  I clambered up on deck and stared. Two great fires had been lit on the massive brick platform on the deck. Flames rose half as high as the main mast and heat pulsed through the wind. For the first time in days I felt warm. Above the fires two great cauldrons dangled from a thick iron rod.

  Two sailors — impossible to tell who in the blaze of red and blackness — hooked squares of whale skin onto the fire, while others pushed blubber into the pots. Two more used wooden hooks to tip hot oil into barrels tethered ready on the deck. As soon as one cauldron was empty, more blubber was piled into it, while other hands hooked crumpled black things out of the barrels, like burned sheets of paper but big as a cabbage, and threw them into the fire.

  The fire snatched them up, burning higher yet, the flame tops turning blue, and I remembered what Captain Melvill had told me back in Sydney Town. We were boiling the whale on its own skin. The only wood needed had been for t
he first hour of the fire.

  So this was how a whaling ship could sail away from land for so long, yet still be able to boil each whale down. The whales fuelled the fires that destroyed them.

  The great pots heaved and steamed. Men ran, rolling empty barrels, filling barrels, tethering barrels, hammering repairs to barrels, as if we were a ship full of coopers, pouring out more oil into barrels then hammering down the lids, great gushes of hot liquid reflecting flames and night.

  The sound of hammers was as loud as the wind now. The oil poured into the barrels was hot enough to burn, and even the barrels were too hot to touch for long. They rolled and twisted crazily about the deck but somehow always landed in the great hatchways — not the small ones we normally used, but great gates into the heart of the ship itself — not overboard. And somehow, this time anyway, no one was crushed by one.

  Had Peg-Leg Tom’s lost leg been crushed by a barrel of whale oil, not bitten by a shark? I wondered if he’d tell me. I suspected that we could sail all of the seven seas and he never would.

  Over the side of the ship the great head still stood, white, its skull cleaved open. It must at last be empty, I thought, though the decks were still slippery with its wax and the oil from the blubber.

  Someone thrust a long hook into my hands so I too could haul out the black wrinkled skin pieces from the barrels before the lids were hammered down, and throw them onto the fire and watch them flare. The sweat poured down my face and I longed for cold, fresh water; for an afternoon breeze that smelled of soil, not flames and death; for the time when my hands were a gardener’s, and not a hunter’s or a butcher’s.

  The wind howled like it was clamouring for more whale flesh too; the ship groaned and creaked around us, the waves crashed. And the dead whale said nothing, just bumped against the ship now and then, kicking us harder than a wave even in its death.

  Our faces were red from the flames, black with soot about the eyes and neck and anywhere else the greasy stuff could gather. Men’s grey beards turned black again. Bald heads grew smoky hair. My arms were loaded with weariness. Every bit of me seemed almost too heavy to bear. I wondered if the hell Mr Johnson spoke about was like this, the red flames and the smoke and stink of burning flesh, the screaming wind so loud you couldn’t tell sometimes what the man next to you was saying.