Barney and the Secret of the Whales

by Jackie French

  I slept a bit, later that night. I don’t remember going to my hammock, but I remember the next man whose turn it was to use it tipping me out, remember crawling back up to the deck, my back aching so much it was hard to stand. The air was grey now, not black, but the flames burned just as red. And still we cut and fed the cauldrons and poured the oil into barrels, and men rolled them down into the hold.

  For another day we cut and plundered the vast whale, slippery with its oil, grimy with its soot, stained by its blood. And on the next day, when I woke from my few hours of slumber, the ship was quiet.

  Men slept, in hammocks or on blankets in the hold, all but the watch and one man at the helm. And me, picking my way across a deck still slippery with oil and black with soot, soot so thick you could skim off a piece as wide as your hand from the mast.

  I peered over the side. A few sharks nudged at a bloody skeleton. That was all the great whale was now: the hide, the blubber and the contents of its massive head, all harvested and stowed below, the meat eaten by the sharks, except the scraps we’d fed on too. Now there were only bones.

  I looked back at the brick platform, piled with white ash. How much of a whale, I thought, would make a pile of ash that big?

  Oh, that ash. I grew to know it well. Me and Call-Me-Bob swept it on and swept it off the deck, then used what was left, wetted with seawater, to scrub, scrub, scrub every inch of the ship, the quarterdeck first, for the captain to walk clean, and then the masts, to make it easier for the watch to get aloft, then the deck and galley and then the deck again, for somehow the very air still held enough soot to rain down on us, despite our rushing south through the breakers, away from the site of the whale’s death.

  There was no need for buckets of water to wash off the sooty foam. The great southern waves did that. Where ash and water met they turned to soap, frothy and so strong it took the skin from my hands so they burned and reddened. Every crevice of my body grew sore where the ash collected, rubbing, chafing, with only salt waves to wash it off. Every time we washed, more ash would cling to us.

  But I kept scrubbing, except during my watch aloft, until the ship shone white again, as white as the foam on the waves.

  By then the giant whale carcass had been cut free, what was left of it after we and the sharks had plundered it, gone to sink to the bottom perhaps, for smaller creatures to feast on in the inky depths. Only the giant head was still lashed to the Britannia: a third of the great beast, the skull now whiter than bloody, picked clean by sharks and seabirds. There’d be plenty of whalebone to take home later in the voyage. The oil was the real treasure.

  The mates climbed onto the head once more, and with their blubber knives and blubber hook cut the giant lower jaw free and hoisted it onto the deck. It lay there, tethered, while they used the blubber knives to slash the gums and cut out the teeth, forty-two of them. They looked a bit like people’s teeth, but bigger, and not worn down like old people’s teeth.

  I wondered how old the whale had been: young or old. How long did a whale live? Did they have families, as we do? I asked Call-Me-Bob, but he just shrugged. The men hunted whales, captured them with skill and daring. But they only knew whale death, not life.

  All that was left of that great beast was in our hold, its life gone and its beauty; its remains were just another piece of cargo.

  I dreamed that night of a whole world turned to ash, just like the whale; all life was held in barrels stacked in the dark, like me, Ma and all the other convicts had been on our voyage out from England. But this time we would never get out into the good air of New South Wales. Never feel the shadows of the trees touch our faces, or see the bright birds whistle overhead. This time we had nothing to look forward to but darkness and sea, and death.

  CHAPTER 13

  Hunting On

  I don’t want to tell you what I did after that. But in these books I put my honest heart for you to learn from what I did.

  The wind blew from the south, smelling of far-off snow. The waves pounded at our sides, rearing up like the monsters that we sought and crashing down. The further south we sailed, the more the wind grew, as if it was trying to push both the ship and me back to Sydney Town.

  I wished I could fly with the wind like a seagull, ride the wind north, back home. But the closest I got to flying was sitting up the mast on watch. And day after day we beat the waves, just as we had defeated the whale.

  We sailed on.

  And I did my watch again, time after time, up on that mast. Two times I called out, ‘There she blows!’ to tell the men the whales were there for capture.

  I didn’t plead, ‘Let them go.’ What would have been the use? They would have laughed, those men who knew that whale oil meant gold, gold in their hands and gold in their pockets and for their families back home.

  But I could have kept silent, not told them the whales were there. I didn’t.

  Twice the ship’s boats went out after the whales. We saw other ships that had also sailed as part of the Third Fleet, now here, giving the same chase as us.

  But each time the boats came back empty, the harpoons red with blood but the whales gone before they could be stabbed to death. They’d been saved by the storms.

  Perhaps. Maybe the whales died of their wounds, and floated in the waves until the ocean dragged them down. Or perhaps harpoon wounds healed, like my knees did every time I fell down and scraped them. I never asked; and not even in all the years since then have I asked what happens to a wounded whale once the men who chased it have gone.

  It was late dusk when I saw the black bodies again, surging through the waves. They were to the east of us, the sun setting below the land’s green mountains on our right-hand side. The waves pounded the Britannia back and forth, but the whales didn’t seem to notice. Six of them, a different shape from the ones I’d seen before. I wondered if they were a family, or a sort of family, like me and the Johnsons and Elsie and Sally.

  I should have yelled, ‘There she blows!’ and pointed to them. I didn’t. I sat up on the swaying mast, the salt wind lashing my face. I cried, because my family was days away from me, and it might be years before I saw them once more. I cried for the beauty of the whales. Even as I looked, one leaped like it was trying to catch the sun, then dived back down.

  I thought of Birrung again then. I don’t know why. Maybe because she had dived like that, as if the water was her home as much as the land. Maybe because we were taking her land, much like we were conquering the whales’ seas. Maybe because she was beautiful, and so were the whales. Birrung had gone back to her people and the whales were sailing north, and both were lost to me. And tomorrow and tomorrow I’d have to hunt. Nothing I could do would change that, for I’d signed my papers, and signed three years of my life away. And if I didn’t hunt them, there’d be others to take my place wherever men longed for gold more than the beauty of the sea.

  I didn’t call. I didn’t know what would happen if someone else saw the whales too. They’d know I must have seen them, way up there, with better eyesight than anyone on board. I’d be flogged, most like, or worse, for those whales were the reason we were here, risking our lives in a twig of a ship being tossed in the giant southern waves.

  I sat there, high above the ship, almost high enough to touch the storm-wisped clouds, and watched the whales slip away across the sea.

  One day a ship like ours might hunt them down, turn them into meat and oil, and fire and bone, with the sharks nosing through their blood. The secret southern whaling grounds would soon be secret no more, not once the first ship had returned with a hold full of oil. It only needed one of the crew, drunk on shore, to say where his vessel had been and dozens, maybe hundreds of ships would head this way. Or perhaps a letter from Governor Phillip or one of the officers back to England would give the world a clue of the riches that waited here.

  But today, in the wind and churning waves, I watched the whales sailing north, not just safe, but free from the terror of men and harpoons in boats.
The sea turned darker as the sun sank to the west behind the clouds. At last the bell clanged, and I made my way down the mast. The whales were too far away for the next watch to see, especially as dusk approached.

  I was so used to the deck beneath my feet lurching one way and then another now that I hardly slipped as I made my way down to the galley. Peg-Leg Tom grunted at me, and held out a bowl of stew. He still hadn’t thanked me for saving his life. Hadn’t spoken to me at all since that day, though I’d got a cuff about the ear a couple of times when I was slow finishing my meal and someone else was waiting for the bowl.

  I spooned the stew up, fast.

  The ship tilted. I kept on drinking, used to all that now. But still we kept tilting, more and more, as the wave beneath us climbed rather than crested. Peg-Leg Tom swore, and grabbed his pot to stop it spilling, then stamped on some cinders that had scattered on the floor before they could burst into flame and set the ship alight.

  And still the ship listed and lifted. I grasped the table in terror. It at least was bolted onto the floor. Up . . . and up . . . and up . . .

  Peg-Leg Tom’s face turned white under his whiskers. He muttered something under his breath that might have been a prayer.

  Had there ever been a wave as large as this? I tried to remember the storms on the voyage to New South Wales. I remembered clinging to the bunk, to Ma, remembered her singing to me softly, right by my ear, so I forgot the crashings of the waves and the women screaming all around. Had any wave been as bad as this then?

  Higher, and higher still. Our ship had become a seagull, heading for the sky. But we had no wings to bring us safely back down.

  And still the ship climbed.

  I’m going to die, I thought. I didn’t want to die here. I didn’t want to die at all, but I especially didn’t want to die in the cold sea. I wanted to be an old man, sleeping in my garden, with the trees I’d grown around me, and children laughing among the flowers, the smell of soil and leaves and birds to carry my soul away.

  At last we levelled out, and hung, not moving, for seconds. And then we dived, crashing down a mountain slope. All I could hear was the thunder of water; I felt the spray as the wave crashed down on us, and into the hold. The fire steamed and spluttered and went out. The world was water . . . water . . . water . . .

  And then it wasn’t. For the water drained away, down into the hold. We must have escaped the worst of the swell. I waited for us to climb the next one, but when we did it was a tiny hillock compared to the giant before.

  ‘B#*?#*#!’ said Peg-Leg Tom, using words I’d promised Mr Johnson I’d never write. (I didn’t even know what half of them were.)

  He felt under his oilskin and came out with tinder, dry, like a miracle. I wondered how many fires Peg-Leg Tom must have seen put out by massive waves crashing down onto the ship, to ensure that he always carried tinder next to his body. He pulled a flint and striker out of his pocket and got the fire going again.

  I heard Captain Melvill shouting orders above. I couldn’t make them out, with the noise of the wind and creaking timbers and the crash of water on the hull only a few feet from where I sat. I glanced at Peg-Leg Tom as the ship shuddered, changing direction so suddenly that I almost spilled the last of my stew.

  ‘Turning back to Sydney Town,’ muttered Peg-Leg Tom to the stew pot, still not meeting my eyes. ‘Won’t catch no more whales in this wind. Best be safe in harbour afore we crack a mast, if we ain’t lost one already.’

  Sydney Town! I wondered if they’d let me go ashore to see Elsie and the Johnsons. I even missed Sally. And the garden, the feel of the soil in my fingers. The bean seeds I’d planted would be a foot high now, and the potatoes coming on, and the carrots and cabbages . . .

  I bit my lip hard to stop the tears. A minute earlier I thought I’d never see them again. And now I would — but I would still be bound to the Britannia.

  I wanted to ask how long we might stay in harbour. Only a few days, I supposed, or even less, till the wind died down. It would be hard, looking out at the trees and rocks on the shore, looking up at our house and garden above the convict huts. Surely Captain Melvill would let me visit the Johnsons once. There was no way I could escape my indentures in the colony, and he must know I knew it.

  Three years of hunting whales and fighting waves, far from the song of the trees that I now knew I loved.

  A bell clanged. Time for my watch. I climbed the companionway, my body aching, up to the deck. The main mast was still there, Charlie Three-Tooth climbing down. He looked shaken, as well he might. That monster wave must have stared him in the face. It was a miracle — and the strong leather belt — that he hadn’t been swept into the dark sea. He must have breathed spray for long minutes, before there was air to gasp again. I climbed the mast, clumsy in my oilskin. The wave spray bit my face like tiny icicles. I buckled myself to the mast and wondered what it would be like to see a wave like that coming at you, with nothing to hold you to the ship but two buckles and your cold hands and legs. I imagined the ship sinking to the bottom of the sea, with my skeleton, picked clean by sharks, still tied onto the mast.

  I hoped I’d meet Ma in Heaven. I hoped there’d be gardens there too.

  But we met no more giant waves, though the seas crashed and bashed and tore at us. The wind filled our sails and we sped north, faster, ever faster than we had gone south. I watched the mountains pass and the green trees on shore as we scurried back to the safety of the harbour, our cargo bobbing in our hold.

  CHAPTER 14

  Back to Sydney Town

  The headlands of the harbour were like two giant arms, welcoming us back. We even left most of the wind behind us once we passed through them, and the chop of the waves. But there was enough breeze to keep our sails filled all the way up the harbour.

  I stood by the gunwale. You could hardly see our tiny settlement at first, just smoke rising from the fires, lots from Port Jackson and more scattered smaller puffs around the coves, where there were huts or Indian camps. An Indian woman in a bark canoe almost level with the water laughed up at us, grilling fish on her tiny fire for the children who swam next to her. The women in other canoes paddled out of our way in case our wash capsized them.

  And then the harbour curved and there was Sydney Cove, just as I’d left it. But why should it have changed? I’d been gone weeks, not months or years.

  I was the one who’d changed. I felt like a soldier who’d been to war and seen a valiant enemy destroyed. The whale though had been no enemy. We had taken it for money, for things like women’s corsets and lamp oil that didn’t smoke. I’d eaten lamb and beef a thousand times, and wrung the necks of chickens too. I couldn’t tell you why killing that whale was different. Not then at any rate. But I knew it was.

  Mud-and-wattle huts, and the fine white governor’s house, and the big splodge of the barracks and parade ground, and the long snake that was the Tank Stream, and rowing boats coming to meet us already, maybe hoping we might be from England, with news and stores. But all we had was oil. Would it stay here, for the lamps of the colony? I didn’t think so.

  ‘You want to go ashore, don’t you, lad?’

  It was Captain Melvill. It was the first time he’d spoken to me since we’d caught the whale.

  ‘Please, sir. May I visit the Johnsons?’

  ‘And will you come back, if I let you go?’ The captain looked at me, his blue eyes thoughtful.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I hesitated. Would I get a whipping if I told the truth? I’d risk it. ‘I haven’t got a choice, have I? I signed the papers. I’m bound to you for three years.’

  ‘Unless I tear them up.’ His voice was so calm it took me a moment to realise he was offering me my freedom, a way to leave the whisper of hell I’d seen on this ship.

  ‘Can you do that, sir? Would you?’

  ‘Aye, I’ll do that, lad.’ The captain nodded at me. ‘You’ve been a good crewman. Worked hard and done what you were bid. I saw what you did for Peg-Leg Tom. You’d be a goo
d man to sail with. You’ve got the best long sight I’ve known. But the Britannia is no merchant ship or man o’ war, impressing men too drunk to know where they’re going, keeping those prisoner who’d rather be on shore.’ The way he said ‘on shore’ made it sound as if it was a place for kittens, not for men. ‘You’re a landsman to the heart, aren’t you, lad?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I answered honestly.

  The captain nodded, not even angry. ‘Some are born to the sea. Some have no choice, if they’re to see their families fed. But they grow used to it.’ He grinned. ‘Me? The wind is my mother, lad, and the great waves my father. I’ll take what I want from the ocean, no matter what storm or whale I have to fight to get it.’ Captain Melvill reached into his pocket, and held some things out.

  I took them automatically and stared. They were three silver pieces, one smaller than the rest, but all of them bigger by far than a threepence, which was the only silver coin I’d ever seen before. ‘But, sir . . .’

  ‘It’s not your share of the oil, lad. You don’t get that. No one gets a share until they finish the voyage with us. But I promised a silver dollar to the man who saw the first whale and that was you. We’d not have got any if we hadn’t caught that one early.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘The Mary Ann and the William and Ann were going out as well. They were to leave the day after us, and I don’t see them here, but I’ll warrant they’ll be back soon too, with nothing to show for their voyages.’

  ‘But the other two coins, sir?’

  ‘From Peg-Leg Tom. He asked me to give them to you, from his share of the voyage to come. Aye, I said no one gets paid till it’s over, but I’ve sailed with Peg-Leg Tom nigh on twenty years now. An old shipmate is different.’