by Farley Mowat
Although there was no direct response from the Premier, rumours began to filter in from St. John’s to the effect that the Harmon would be sent; that she was already on her way, and even that Smallwood himself would make an official visit to his ward on Saturday.
As the gale increased during Thursday night, so did my problems. Curt Bungay stumbled through the blizzard, his crimson face positively blazing from the wind, to tell me that the Hanns and Andersons wanted to be paid immediately for their work.
“Wash and me,” Curt explained in some embarrassment, “we’s satisfied to wait, but the others says on account of Joey give you a t’ousand dollars for whale feed, some of it rightly ought to go to all of we right now.”
“But I haven’t got the money yet. It’s only promised.”
“I believes it, but they fellows thinks you got it in your pocket. They won’t believe no different.”
“How much are they asking?”
“Well... they figures each man should get $25 for each fishing, and $10 for each dory, and $20 for the seine.”
“That’s $200 a time!” I protested.
Curt nodded. “’Tis high, that’s certain... but they’s lots of hard feelings in Burgeo right now. Some says it’s a cruel waste for the government to give money for to feed a whale at all. Some says...” he paused, reluctant to continue.
“What do ‘some’ say?” I asked grimly.
“Well, Farley, bye, ’tis this way. Some says you and that Sou’wester crowd is only looking out to yourselves. They can’t stomach the way some of they fellows shot at the whale one day and set theyselves up to save it the next. They thinks you fellows is going to pocket whatever money comes.”
“Anything else?” I snapped.
Curt was almost too upset to answer. However, he also had a temper, and it was rising.
“Well... yiss... since you asks. There’s people so ugly at the closing off of the Pond, they says they’ll finish off the whale afore they lets you bar they out. They got their rights, you knows. Nobody takes easy to it when they gets their rights took from them!”
The defiant note in his voice gave me pause. “All right, Curt, I’m sorry. Nobody’s going to stamp on anybody’s rights. You can tell the crowd I’ll pay them what they want, only they’ll just have to wait until the money comes.”
“Me and Wash’ll wait, sure, and no charge for our boat neither... but I don’t know about them fellows.” Curt stood up and began buttoning his pea jacket. Then, hesitantly, he fished out a damp piece of paper and laid it on the table. “Don’t know as you see this... ’twas posted up at the plant today.”
With a quick “goodnight,” he was gone into the storm, leaving me to study a mimeographed handout.
CITIZENS OF BURGEO
Dear Neighbours:
You are well aware that in the past week or so there has been more publicity about Burgeo that there has ever been before. At this time when the citizens of the town and their elected representatives are doing everything in their power to get urgently needed facilities—i.e., Water, Sewer, Streets and Highways—this publicity is of immeasurable value.
Moby Joe is and will continue to be one of the most important “inhabitants” of our town as long as we can maintain it. As more and more people learn that Burgeo has a whale, we will have more and more people coming here to see and study it. The more people who come, the more important the town is and the more imperative it is that those in authority provide the facilities which are so urgently needed.
Will you cooperate with your neighbours in their efforts to keep Moby Joe alive and healthy? You can do this by not using your boat in the Pond for pleasure cruising. We do not ask fishermen or those carrying water to stay out because they usually do not disturb the whale. It is imperative though that speedboats do not enter the Pond since this does scare the whale and could cause him to ground.
We, your neighbours, are depending on you, and we trust you will cooperate.
By all means go and see your whale. If you go to Richards Hole and cross over from there, you will have a perfect view and you will not disturb Moby Joe.
Sincerely yours,
THE SOU’WESTERS
I was annoyed, for I could see how this flier, a copy of which was later mailed to every family in Burgeo, would fan the hostility against the Sou’westers, with whom I now found myself bedded.
My mood was lightened by a phone call from Marie Penny, the “Queen of Ramea,” as she was affectionately called, a widow woman of formidable ability and almost equally formidable presence, who owned and operated a small fish plant on Ramea Island, some fifteen miles from Burgeo. Marie was an old friend of ours.
“Hear you’ve got a new pet, Farley? Having trouble feeding it, are you? Asked Joey for a seiner, eh? Heard it on the radio just now. Well, boy, my guess is your whale’ll be dead of old age before you see the Harmon. You should know better than to trust a politician! Now then, we’ve got a big capelin trap over here. Cost us $5,000 and it’s as good as new. Should work as well on herring as on capelin. I’ll put it aboard the Pennyluck when she gets back from Hermitage, where she’s holed up waiting out the storm. You get somebody with some sense to set it and your whale will have a stomach ache from overeating. No... no... never mind the thanks. Just see you don’t tear the bottom out of it.”
Marie’s was the last call that night. The telephone went dead and we were able to go to bed. But the conflicts in my mind kept me from sleeping. I lay listening to the thunder of the seas and the pulsating howl of wind, feeling the house quiver on its granite rock.
What, I wondered, was the whale doing in the bitter darkness of this raging night? What had she felt during the long days of her captivity?
Pain, she had surely felt—and fear. Had she felt despair? Did she have any hope of eventual escape? As she circled the confines of the prison Pond, did she ponder the horror of her probable fate? What wordless thoughts were passing between her and the Guardian? What did she feel about the two-legged beasts who at first tried to kill her and who were now driving herring into her prison?
No answers... none. Her mind was as alien to mine as mine to hers. Strangers... strangers... we were all aliens, one to the other, even those of us who were cloaked in the same fleshly shapes. What did I really know of the innermost feelings even of my Burgeo neighbours... or they of mine? What did the world beyond Burgeo know, or care, of the passions the whale’s coming was unleashing in this community? Was there any real comprehension or true communication even between the human actors involved in this bizarre drama? The more I thought about it all, the more I realized that the inter-human conflict would grow worse for want of understanding. It might well become intolerable. Suddenly I wanted nothing quite so much as to see the trapped whale freed... not only for her sake now, but for my own ease as well. I wanted her away from Burgeo, where her presence had become a threatening shadow of disruption.
... I dozed, and dreamed vividly of the whale. She had become a veritable monster and I was fleeing from her... drowning in the unfamiliar element. I woke, sweating, and knew the truth.
The whale was not alone in being trapped. We were all trapped with her. If the natural patterns of her life had been disrupted, then so had ours. An awesome mystery had intruded into the closely circumscribed order of our lives; one that we terrestrial bipeds could not fathom, and one, therefore, that we would react against with instinctive fear, violence and hatred. This riddle from the deeps was the measure of humanity’s unquenchable ignorance of life. This impenetrable secret, which had become the core of our existence in this place, was a mirror in which we saw our own distempered faces... and they were ugly.
17
ON FRIDAY THE GALE BUILT to hurricane strength. By evening the anemometer was registering gusts of eighty miles an hour. During most of the day it was hardly possible to leave the house, let alone visit the whale. We remained apart: she in her prison, I in mine.
I spent the morning considering ways to free her. At noon I telephone
d some friends in the Canadian Navy at Halifax. Between us we worked out a scheme. If I could get clearance from Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, they told me, the Navy would be happy to send in a team of frogmen to manhandle the boulders out of the south channel and deepen it as much as possible. (We could not risk using explosives.) With the next spring tide, which would come in three weeks’ time, a section of steel-mesh anti-submarine net, floated by 45-gallon drums, would be rigged across the Pond like a gigantic seine to shepherd the whale toward the entrance. If she refused to attempt the passage on her own, I was prepared to use tranquillizer darts which would immobilize her so she could literally be hauled, or pushed, through the channel by main force.
I knew that the use of drugs would be terribly risky because too large a dose would render her unconscious and she might drown. So I phoned a whale expert in California who had had experience tranquillizing large porpoises. He was appalled by the magnitude of the undertaking.
“It’ll have to be by guess and by God. I can tell you what specific drugs might work and help you get a supply by air, but I can only guess at the dosage. It’s the hell of a chance, but if it’s that or letting her die where she is, I guess it’s worth trying.”
Finally, I again called Jack McClelland in Toronto, explained what I had in mind, and asked him to obtain the cooperation of the Department of Defence. He groaned, but agreed to do his best.
I also called an officer of the Sou’westers Club to ask if they and the town council would put additional pressure on the Newfoundland government to send the Harmon. I had heard a radio report, which later proved false, that she had been dispatched to Burgeo but had been recalled because of the storm. Since the forecast called for a fine day on Saturday, I could see no reason why she could not reach us by Saturday evening. The Sou’westers’ spokesman agreed to speak to the council, but when I went on to describe the plans for freeing the whale, he became noticeably cool.
“Why turn her loose?” he asked. “She’s doing good in the Pond. When we get the Harmon we can put enough herring into it to feed her for months. We ought to keep her there. No place else in the world’s got a tame fin whale. It’d be a sin to turn her loose when she can do so much for Burgeo.”
I was learning to be cautious, so I only mumbled something noncommittal and rang off. There was no point in my adding more fuel to the fires that were already smouldering in Burgeo.
I tried to shut my mind to what was happening in the community and concentrate on the three essentials: keeping the whale fed; keeping her protected; and arranging to set her free when the moment came.
By midnight Friday there was still no message from Premier Smallwood about the Harmon and I was beginning to despair of ever seeing her. However, I hoped we could repeat the seining operation at the cove on Saturday night, and by Sunday I expected to have Marie Penny’s capelin trap in operation.
As for protecting the whale... in the continued absence of any firm orders to the RCMP constable, this would have to remain my personal responsibility and I decided that the only way I could ensure her safety was to camp out at the Pond. The Sou’westers agreed to erect a small tent for me on the shore at Aldridges, and supply it with a stove and fuel. It could also serve as a field headquarters for the scientists if, and when, any of them should arrive. Schevill was still trying hard to reach us. He called at one o’clock in the morning to say the U.S. Navy was now planning to fly him to Burgeo before noon on Saturday.
In the outer world, interest in the whale had flared far beyond anything I had anticipated, and was becoming a nuisance. Radio stations from as far away as Texas and Colorado tried to tape interviews with me on the crackling telephone. There were wires from a Swiss newspaper syndicate and a magazine in Australia demanding information.
DURING FRIDAY NIGHT the storm blew itself out, leaving a silence that was almost palpable. Saturday dawned an arctic day, icy clear and fiercely cold, with near zero temperatures. It was ideal weather, at least in Burgeo, for the ski- and float-equipped planes that were poised in a great semicircle to the west, north and east, ready to descend on us with their loads of scientists, media people and, possibly, even Joey Smallwood himself.
One of the aircraft standing by at Gander had been chartered to pick up Bob Brooks, whose editor had instructed him to get some aerial shots of the whale as he departed. I consented to this on the understanding that the plane would stay at least 2,000 feet above the Pond, and would not make more than two or three passes.
Brooks agreed, and Onie and I dropped him off at the country path leading to Gull Pond before going on to Aldridges. We had to sheer through a skim of cat-ice that was forming in the protected runs between the islands, and the possibility that the Pond itself might freeze occurred to me. It was not an immediate danger since I expected that an eighty-ton whale would be able to break its way through a considerable thickness of saltwater ice.
Near the mouth of Short Reach we saw the spouts of at least two whales and assumed they were members of the family pod returned from their deep-sea sanctuary. As we had come to expect, the Guardian was in his usual place, patrolling between Fish Rock and the cove. We had grown so used to his presence—and perhaps he had grown so used to ours—that when our courses threatened to meet, Onie did not even slow the engine, but the whale sounded in good time to avoid a collision.
Onie smiled his gentle smile.
“That one knows the rules o’ the road, Skipper. Vessel on t’port tack always gives way.”
“Maybe he does, Onie, but I wouldn’t push it too far. I’d hate like hell to have to swim ashore today.”
There were no people at the Pond when we entered. The whale was circling in a counter-clockwise pattern and it was soon clear that something was amiss. Her movements were sluggish, lacking the powerful and fluid grace of earlier days. Also, she was blowing at very short intervals and her spout seemed low and weak. When she lethargically curved her way past our perch on a shoreside cliff, we saw that the full length of her spine showed clearly in a chain of knobby vertebral projections.
Another thing that troubled me was the presence of an irregular pattern of great swellings that showed under her gleaming black skin. Onie thought these might have resulted from bruising contacts with underwater rocks when she was being pursued by the speedboats or when she was trying to escape through the channel. I doubted it, but could think of no better explanation. Those peculiar swellings worried me, so we got back into the dory and rowed out to take a closer look. We let the dory drift directly in her path, for we had no fear that she would strike us, either deliberately or by accident.
On her first circuit she changed course slightly and passed fifty yards away but on her next she came straight for us. When she was about a hundred feet off, she did something we had seen her do only a few times before and then always at a distance. She rose to blow, but instead of breaking the surface with her hump, she thrust her whole head high out of the calm waters. The gleaming white, deep-pleated expanse of her throat, with its curving and apparently endless jaw line, seemed to belong to a creature three times her actual bulk, for such are the proportions of a finner’s head to the rest of its body. That gigantic head appeared to rear directly over us, like a moving, living cliff.
It might have been a moment of terror, but it was not. I felt no fear even when her eyes came out of water and she swung her head slightly so that one cyclopean orb looked directly at us. She had emerged from her own element as far as she could in order to see us in ours, and although her purpose was inscrutable, I somehow knew it was not inimical.
Then she sank forward and her head went under. The hump appeared, she blew and sounded and, a few seconds later, was passing directly under the dory. It seemed to take as long for the interminable sweep of her body to slip by as it does for a train to pass a railway crossing. But so smoothly and gently did she pass that we felt no motion except when the vast flukes went under us and the dory bobbed a little.
It was then I heard the voice o
f the fin whale for the third time. It was a long, low, sonorous moan with unearthly overtones in a higher pitch. It was unbelievably weird and bore no affinity with any sound I have heard from any other living thing. It was a voice not of the world we know.
When the whale had passed on, Onie sat as if paralyzed. Slowly he relaxed. He turned and looked at me with an anxious and questioning expression.
“That whale... she spoke to we! I t’inks she spoke to we!”
I nodded in agreement, for I will always believe she deliberately tried to span the chasm between our species—between our distant worlds. She failed, yet it was not total failure. So long as I live I shall hear the echoes of that haunting cry. And they will remind me that life itself—not human life—is the ultimate miracle upon this earth. I will hear those echoes even if the day should come when none of her nation is left alive in the desecrated seas, and the voices of the great whales have been silenced forever.
THAT SATURDAY MORNING at the Pond was a strange idyll. Nobody came near and nothing happened to break the companionable mood. Onie and I drifted in the dory, rapt, and unaware of the cold biting into our bones. The whale performed her slow and stately dance through the still waters, making a point of coming close to us as she completed each new circuit of the Pond. I cannot know how she felt, but I felt almost happy. I kept hoping to see her swirl into sudden action in pursuit of some small school of herring which might have entered the Pond, but it was a forlorn hope.
Just before noon I decided to go to the fish plant to see if there was any further news of the Harmon, or of the capelin trap from Ramea, and also to see that preparations for a further seining effort had been put in train. Onie had just opened the petcock, preparatory to starting the dory’s engine, when we heard the nasal whine of an approaching aircraft. It was a ski-equipped Cessna which had slipped in to Gull Pond for Bob Brooks. Having picked him up, the pilot was now climbing over Aldridges, where the plane began to describe wide circles as Brooks took his pictures.
