by D R Sherman
The boy shook his head unconsciously in a vigorous denial. The big fish was his friend, and it could not have deserted him. The awful empty feeling in him went away. He walked on, but for the first time he felt the nibbling agony of doubt.
The water was up around his waist when he reached the pirogue. He put the mask and the speargun carefully into the boat, and then the handline and the big harpoon. Fie went aboard over the stern. He moved into the bow of the boat and hauled in the anchor, coiling the short rope down as it came in. He moved back into the stern and lifted the bamboo pole.
He used the pole to drive the boat till the water in the channel was too deep, and after that he trailed it astern and used it to steer the boat a little way. He steered toward a dark blue patch of water. It looked almost black from where he stood, against the rest of the turquoise-colored sea which encircled it. He knew it would be a good place to spear fish, among the coral and the brown bladder kelp and the red Irish moss. But the thought of going under the water did not excite him as it usually did: he was preoccupied with his hopes and doubts about the big dolphin.
He moved forward into the bow of the boat and squatted on his haunches. He untied the anchor rope from the cleat and lengthened it before making it fast again. He stood up after that and threw the anchor over the side. When the pirogue started to swing he moved aft and sat down astride the thwart.
He scanned the sea all around him, but the surface was empty. He went over it again, excitement and anxiety making his heart hammer wildly, but there was nothing to be seen. He began to nibble at his lower lip. He bit with his teeth and methodically peeled off little strips of skin, unaware that he was doing it, and not conscious of any discomfort.
He stopped chewing his lip abruptly. He sat up straight, flattening his lower lip the way he always did just before he whistled. He began to fill his lungs. They were three-quarters full when he breathed out suddenly and sagged limply. He wanted to whistle and call the big fish to him, but at the same time he was afraid to do it.
What if the marsouin did not answer him? He did not consciously consider the possibility, but the thought was there at the back of his mind and it made his heart skip a beat. He fought the consternation which began to swell inside him.
It would be stupid to whistle now, he told himself, before you have caught any fish to give your friend.
He seized on the idea at once. It was logical, and it excused his vacillation. He felt a sweeping sense of relief that the moment had been postponed.
It was inconsiderate of me, he thought, to think of calling my friend when I had nothing to offer him. I must shoot some fish for his breakfast first.
He stood up, and he tried to tell himself that he was quite correct in not whistling for the fish until he had some food for it, but he could not silence the little voice inside his head which told him mockingly that the big dolphin had probably caught and eaten its own breakfast by now.
He rinsed his mask over the side, drawing it swiftly through the water. He pulled it on and adjusted it, and then he picked up his speargun. He moved forward into the bow of the boat. He sat down on the gunwale and swung his legs over the side. He balanced there briefly, and then holding the mask pressed to his face he wriggled forward till he felt himself begin to slide. He straightened his back with a quick movement that flicked him forward, dropping feet first into the water with hardly a splash. He allowed himself to sink, and when the downward momentum of his plunge had died he kicked out lazily. He turned his head from side to side, searching the water as he went up, half hoping that he might see the big fish. He surfaced a few seconds later, without having seen it.
He took a fresh breath of air and loaded the speargun under water. As he pulled back on the rubbers he told himself it was foolish to expect that the fish should come swimming up to him, especially when he had not whistled. That was what he told himself, but even as he jackknifed and swam down through the sea towards the patch of weed and coral he searched the dark water at the outermost limits of his vision, still half hoping that the big fish would suddenly swim into view. He did not see it.
In the next fifteen minutes the boy speared three green-and-white lascars and a black maconde. He climbed back into the boat after harpooning the maconde, and then he peeled the mask off his face. He knocked the fish off the spear and then ran the harpoon back into the gun.
He blew his nose over the side, and after that he rinsed his face, scooping water up in the palm of his hand. He knuckled the wetness off his eyelashes and then began ,to search the surface of the sea. He turned right round on the thwart as he went over it, drawing his glance inward from the horizon. He did not see the big fish. He knew then that he would never see it unless he whistled, and he knew that the moment was now at hand. He felt excited and apprehensive.
He stood up slowly, and he looked around once more, even probing the depths where the angle of vision was not too oblique to prevent it. He saw nothing, and the empty feeling inside his stomach became more intense.
For a moment he stared blindly at the granite boulders which littered the far line of the shore where the shallow bay commenced its wide sweep into the land. He allowed his glance to linger, and the color of the sea and the white line of the shore and the green slope of the mountains which came down to meet it etched themselves on the motionless canvas of his mind. He blinked suddenly, and then he blinked again, and he woke from his trance. He studied it with the eye of a fisherman, and he wondered how it could have looked so different a moment before.
He drew a quick breath, and he lifted his tongue up towards the roof of his mouth and blasted the breath out between his tongue and his teeth and out past his lips in a shrieking, high-pitched whistle. He did it again, and then again and once again, sending the call out to his fish. He whistled four times in all, in a different direction each time, and when he had finished he was breathing heavily from the effort.
He stood frozen with suspense, the side of his leg braced against the forward edge of the thwart. His glance flickered hesitantly across the water, and he had to force himself to search it methodically. He stood there in the gently rocking pirogue, expecting at any moment to see the big fish come bursting from the water in answer to his summons.
But the seconds passed, and the fish did not come. The seconds lengthened into a minute, and then another and another, and still the dolphin did not appear. The bright hope in his eyes died, and it was replaced by a look of pained disbelief. He waited a little while longer, and when he did not see the fish he knew then that it definitely was not going to come. It had all been a dream.
He felt a moment of utter despair, and then he felt angry. Once again he began to hate the fish which had saved his life, and then he began to hate the girl, but he hated the fish even more than the girl. If it had not let him down he could have forgotten that the girl had called him limpleg…
In sudden fury he drew another deep breath and sent his call out across the mockingly empty sea. He whistled again and again, till his lips hurt and his chest ached, and then when he was too exhausted to whistle any more he sat down on the thwart and buried his face in his hands. For a long time he did not move.
He stirred after a while, and his hands slid from his face and dropped into his lap and he lifted his head with a great weariness inside him and stared out along the length of the deep channel.
My father was right, he told himself.
He thought he saw the place in the sea where he had first come face to face with the big fish. He threw a glance towards the land, checking its position in relation to the line of the shore. He looked back at the place in the water, and he knew it was there, or somewhere very near to there.
He stared at the bright reflections of the sun on the water in that one particular spot. He remembered the shark, and he remembered the big fish, and then after a while he could not see the place in the water any more because his eyes were filled with tears. His shoulders heaved once as the pain inside him tried to fight its way
out.
He straightened up suddenly. A low growl burst from his mouth: it was an inarticulate exclamation, without any meaning, but it conveyed all of the anger and disgust he felt at his sentimentality.
“Mon Dieu!” he rebuked himself aloud. “Are you a fisherman or what?”
He dug the blindness out of his eyes with the heel of his hand. Once again he blew his nose over the side of the pirogue and rinsed his face, scooping the water up in his cupped palms. He stared out across the sea to the place in the deep channel where he had first seen the dolphin.
I will go there, he thought, even though my father is right.
He stood up, and he moved into the bow, and he felt a little flutter of hope and excitement stir in him as he hauled in the anchor. He told himself that he was being foolish, but the fever in him mounted.
Perhaps he has been waiting for me there, he thought. It is quite far, he went on in his mind, and it may be that my whistle did not reach him, especially if he is deep down under the water..
He tried to ignore the fact that the dolphin had to come up to breathe. He told himself indignantly that even if it had to surface now and again it was quite possible that it had come up while his back had been turned.
He fitted the oars and then pulled on them till the bow came round in the water and the length of the pirogue was lying parallel to the line of the shore. He began to row, but then in a sudden burst of anger he splashed the flat of the blades into the water before lifting his wrists and pulling. He did it for the first four strokes, and the blades struck with a sharp report each time. It was a childish exhibition of temper and frustration, but it helped to soften the pain and humiliation that was still in his heart. The tempo of his short, frenzied strokes slowed, and he began to pull with a long rhythmic sweep of the oars.
He leaned a little to his right and glanced over the side of the pirogue to see how fast he was going. He saw the water which rippled and bubbled as it slid past the hull and he heard the gurgling chinkle of the bubbles as they formed and broke and flowed into the wake which streamed smoothly astern. He gave a grunt of satisfaction.
You have always been good with the oars, he thought.
He admitted it to himself with an innocent and unaffected modesty. He began to row a bit harder. He was leaning over the side to gauge the effects of his increased effort when the dolphin jumped.
It came out of the water twenty feet to his left on the seaward side, and it made its leap parallel with the boat. It cleared the water with a flurry of its tail, and as he watched it seemed to him that it rose straight up out of the water and into the air, and then when it was at the height of its leap he saw the big domed head turn towards him. The large brown eyes regarded him for a moment with the same friendly curiosity they had shown before, and then the whole great length of its body did a graceful half-roll in the air before the fish plummeted back into the sea.
The boy backed water and then quickly shipped his oars. He stood up in the rocking pirogue and stared at the spot where the dolphin had vanished. He peered into the depths all around it, tense and shivering with excitement. To his right he saw what looked like a dark shadow about two fathoms below the surface, and as he turned towards it the shadow flashed upward and the dolphin surfaced ten feet from the side of the pirogue and lay quietly in the water.
“You came back, marsouin,” he crooned breathlessly. “You came back to me.”
He wondered then whether it had come in response to his whistles, or whether it had answered the flat reports of the striking oar blades which made a noise something like a big mackerel or a mullet jumping in the water. He decided it must have been a combination of both, because he refused to believe that the big fish came to him only for the food he gave it.
He felt a sudden urge to be close to the dolphin, and to touch the big fish gently with his hands and with his body. But the big fish did not come closer.
He danced a little jig of impatience, never once thinking of the fish he had speared for the dolphin or remembering how he had called it to him before. All he could think of was that he had to touch the fish before it swam away once again. An idea came to him suddenly. It was so simple that he did not know why he had not thought of it before. If the fish would not come to him, he would have to go to the fish.
He turned in a flash and picked up the anchor. He lowered it over the bow and into the water without making a splash, so as not to frighten the fish, and only when the anchor was a full fathom below the surface did he let go of the rope. He turned back quickly to see whether the fish was still swimming close to the boat where it had been before.
But the fish had gone, and the sea was empty. His belly turned over and the nerves knotted. He searched the depths frantically. At last he saw the dark length of the dolphin’s body arrowing down through the water after the sinking anchor. He was wondering whether it would come back when it abruptly lost interest in the stone and rolled over in a sharp turn. He saw the white flash of its belly, and then it came streaking back towards the surface. It came up a few feet from the side of the boat, and the turned-up mouth made it look as if it were smiling at him.
The boy snatched up his mask and pulled it over his face. He moved right into the bow of the pirogue. He crouched down, and holding onto the gunwale with both hands he swung his legs over the side and lowered himself into the water. He kept his eye on the dolphin, and when it did not swim away he lowered himself to the full extent of his arms. He hung like that for a moment, and then he let go and sank silently into the water.
Before he had time to orient himself he felt the broad body of the big fish come nudging up tentatively between his legs. It came from behind him, and the smooth wet-rubber kind of skin brushed coldly against the inside of his thighs. He felt a moment of fear as the big back of the fish pressed up into his crotch. It slid forward smoothly between his legs and then he felt the dorsal fin hard up against his buttocks and the awful slippery sliding movement between his legs came to a sudden end. He felt himself begin to move off through the water.
He leaned forward quickly, and he tightened the grip of his legs without making them too tight and wrapped his arms around the big neck of the dolphin. They gathered speed, and he lay low across its back, with his face low down and close up against the shut-off blowhole. His arms only reached halfway round the neck of the dolphin.
They were two fathoms below the surface, and moving at about six knots. It was slow for a dolphin, but it seemed to the boy that he had never traveled faster in his life. He glanced down, suddenly apprehensive, afraid that the fish might be taking him out to sea. But he saw from the slope of the seabed four fathoms below and the familiar coral outcrops that they were not moving seaward, but toward the shore.
He became conscious abruptly of the strangling pressure in his lungs. He knew he would have to let go of the fish and go up to breathe. He was beginning to relax the grip of his thighs and arms and getting ready to fall off the back of the fish when he felt the first minute alteration in the angle at which it was swimming. He paused uncertainly. The pressure of the dorsal fin against his back increased with a rude abruptness and then the whole length of the great fish canted suddenly and he realized with astonished delight that they were rising quickly towards the surface. He did not let go.
He heard the blowhole of the big fish open and snap shut, and he barely had the time to breathe ,out and take in one hasty breath before the splashing water closed noisily over his head once again. He became conscious instantly of the sudden startling silence which followed. It contrasted shockingly with the sound of rushing water that had been in his ears a moment before, and as they slipped smoothly and silently through the water he remembered the feel of the small wave which had slapped against his mouth and the faceplate of his mask in that instant before they submerged.
He wondered why the fish had gone up, and he wondered whether it was possible that it had known he needed air. He thought about it, and then he remembered how the fish had come
up from behind him and carried him off in a forward direction, and he wondered if it was because it knew that he did not like to ride on it with his back facing forward as it had made him do yesterday, when he had become frightened and thrown himself off.
He began to think then that it might have surfaced just now because it remembered how he had been forced to abandon it yesterday when it stayed down swimming while he hung on with his lungs bursting.
Perhaps it is beginning to understand that I am not its brother, he thought.
He felt the need for air again, and he began to loose the grip of his arms on the neck and on the back of the dolphin. Once again he felt that minute alteration, and then as the big fish rose and bored smoothly through the blue water towards the surface his heart gave a silent shout of exultation.
It knows, his mind cried ecstatically, it knows that I am not its brother, and that is why it gives me air when it has no need itself. It must love me, he thought, even though I am a man.
As they went in towards the shore the boy lost the last of his apprehension. It seemed to him that the big fish truly understood. He experimented, relaxing his grip on it even when he had no need to breathe, and to his increasing awe and delight, every time he did it the great fish responded unfailingly and began its drive towards the shimmering milk-white film of the surface.
They passed the beginning of the deep channel, the dolphin and the boy who rode on its back. They were in four feet of shallow tidal water when the dolphin rolled suddenly onto its side. The boy fell off its back, and he floundered helplessly for a moment before gaining his feet. He peered anxiously into the water which had become clouded with sand, thinking that the dolphin had gone. A moment later his anxiety vanished as he felt the wash of the big body and the touch of the smooth wet-rubber skin against his legs. The head of the dolphin came up in the water beside him.
