Tommo and Hawk

by Bryce Courtenay

  But in me heart, I knows that feelings of family ain’t as strong as feelings of greed. O’Hara is a New Englander and they is notorious penny-pinchers. It’s conscience against greed and I ain’t yet seen care for one’s fellow man hold out against rapacity. As Ikey says, ‘It ain’t religion what makes the world go round, ‘tis everlasting avarice, my dear.’

  My mind is filled with anxiety as I climb up the mainmast to the highest of the watch stays. I stand on the cross-stays, holding fast to the masthead hoop. The sun’s heat is weakening though the sky is not yet turned to saffron to make visibility difficult. It’s fortunate that the hunt took place in a nor’easterly direction so that I need not face direct into the setting sun. It’s good fortune, too, that it took place downwind from the Nankin Maiden so the sailing conditions be good. Tonight is a full moon and the earlier clouds have cleared. A sighting in the moonlight is by no means impossible.

  I want to pray, but I’m not sure how. I ain’t had much practice since the age of seven at bedtime, and then it were only to repeat at Mary’s knee the words she give us to say.

  Gentle Jesus, meek and mild

  look upon this little child…

  I forget how the rest goes.

  The only God I knows is the one what comes to sit at Mary’s table of a Sunday to escape from the cold and the wind moaning in the organ pipes on Mount Wellington. But I doesn’t think our White Tablecloth God of the warm brown gravy and the roast mutton is the sort of cove to find a whaleboat what’s a thousand miles out to sea and bring my brother back safe to me.

  ‘I wonder if you’d mind very much going out and finding me twin brother, God?’

  ‘And where might he be, son?’

  ‘Whaling, Sir. His whaleboat be lost or took by a whale.’ Then I adds for good measure, ‘The master be a Quaker and very pious.’

  ‘Whales, eh? Sperm, is it?’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ I nods me head.

  ‘Sperm whale be my particular pride and joy, Tommo. Biggest creature of all ‘cept for the blue whale, what’s just a bit too big for my liking, not quite perfect-made like the sperm. There be no other creature in the heavens, on the earth or in the waters like the sperm whale. Did you know that I gave that creature a brain five times the size of man’s? The largest brain of any creature on earth? Did you know that, Tommo?’

  ‘Yes, Sir, Hawk told me.’

  ‘Well then, why d’you suppose I done that?’

  ‘Dunno, Sir.’

  ‘Well you see, Tommo, every creature’s got its mongrels and the sperm whale, what don’t do no harm to no one, has got you lot, the terrible-est bunch o’ mongrels of all! Sometimes, if you’ve got sufficient brains, it is possible to win against the mongrels.’

  ‘Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir. It’s just that I was hoping…’

  ‘Pass the salt,’ God asks and then adds, ‘No day can be judged until night has fallen, Tommo.’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ I says, not knowing what that last remark’s supposed to mean. There is no arguing with the Almighty and I am more troubled than ever. I fears that God is on the side o’ the whale and me brother forever lost. What God done for Jonah it don’t seem likely he’s gunna do for Hawk.

  There is nothing to be seen out there ‘cept an albatross what’s been following us for two days, and the endless waves stretching to the horizon. A gold colour starts to spread in the sky and if a search don’t begin before sundown it’s unlikely to begin at all.

  Old Tommo’s on his own again, just when I were beginning to feel like a twin, knowing there be somebody else what’s connected invisible-like to me. First I thinks Hawk a fool for wanting me back, wasting his life over yours truly. Then he become a nuisance, watching me, fetching me back home when I were drunk, looking sad-faced at me. Then, when he brung me aboard this ship, I think it better than staying with Mary, who made me feel so bad, like a naughty child. Later, I planned to jump ship as soon as we were in some port, piss off and leave Hawk to go home where he be needed by our mama. Yours truly would be alone again with his cards and a bottle, what suits me just fine! But now Hawk feels a part o’ me again, creeping back into me heart and mind like when we was brats. Mind, I don’t know how I’ll feel when I gets me hands on a bottle again.

  When I came down on deck this mornin’ to find Hawk gone as crew in Seb Rawlings’ whaleboat, with Crawlin Nestbyte in command, I were full o’ fear. The feeling of the mongrels being near, what I had when I were aloft, come back so strong it took all me courage to stay on deck and not climb back up the mainmast, to hide up there, like the mast were a river gum and I back in the wilderness again.

  All day I’ve felt Hawk be in danger and that’s how I know our twinship is returning. It’s like it were meself what’s suffering. All day me hands hurt awful and I thinks at first they’s becoming like Mary’s. They is rough and battered from the years in the wilderness. But I know it’s more than that, it’s something bad to do with Hawk.

  If by nightfall Hawk ain’t returned, I’m gunna jump to me death from where I now stand. I ain’t staying another day on this bloody ship without Hawk. If he dies I won’t even have the black bottle to comfort me. Alone on this ship at sea, I’ll be in a wilderness not much better than the last. Sooner or later I’ll get in a row over the cards, or a brass bimbo will come for me in the dark and I’ll use me axe on him, and that will be the end of yours truly too. It all be as certain as the sun coming up in the mornin’.

  Suddenly I hear the rattling of chains and I look down to see men scrambling to the starboard. I can’t believe me eyes! They’s unchaining the cow from the side of the ship and two whaleboats has been lowered on the port side to tow her away and anchor her at sea. My heart thumps as I watch the men climb the rigging to unfurl the sails and the Nankin Maiden turns to catch the wind. The sun is setting in a blaze o’ glory and the sky is afire as the search gets underway.

  We sail for an hour and a half, and the moon is now well up. The sea is cast in bright moonlight and if I had with me one of Hawk’s books I could read it as if it were daylight. It is then that I see the whale, a dark shape looming in the water to starboard.

  ‘Whale-o! Whale-oooooo! To starboard!’ I shouts. Me heart is beating so fast it must burst from me chest any moment and drop to the deck below. Then I see the whaleboat moored not fifty feet from the dead monster but I can’t see nobody in it.

  ‘Oh God! Please, God, Sir, let me brother be safe!’ I looks upwards through the topmast to heaven. ‘I promise I shall return to Mary if he’s saved!’ Then I think, ‘Oh shit! Me and my big mouth, I should’ve waited until we got a bit closer!’

  In the pouring silver of the night, I see a head raise up above the gunwale of the boat and then it stands up and I know it’s me lovely twin brother and I begin to weep like a stupid little brat!

  We lifts the whaleboat back on board and sets to towing the monster whale behind the ship. It’s the biggest bloody whale killed in the history of the Nankin Maiden and Tom Stubbs reckons it be the biggest whale ever took by a single whaleboat. There is much cheering on deck, the whalemen having forgot that they was against the search. They’s counting only their share of the oil, what now means profit for us all.

  But I am only concerned to see me brother again. Hawk is the first to climb from the boat, and the Maori follow, carrying between them the limp weight o’ Hammerhead Jack. It’s clear they’s been through a terrible ordeal. The boat is now empty, and we sees that Nestbyte is not among them.

  Captain O’Hara ain’t a happy man when he realises the first mate be missing. He’s tall and frightening to behold, his eyes glowering from beneath midnight eyebrows, what meet across the bridge of his nose. As soon as they has lain Hammerhead Jack on the deck, he calls the four survivors to his cabin for an explanation. But o’ course, none is possible. The four Maori got no English and, without Hammerhead Jack to talk for ‘em, they is staying stum. Hawk, being dumb, can’t say nothing without me. Finally O’Hara says he’ll deal with the matter afte
r we gets the cow, and gives orders to sail back to where she’s waiting.

  This is most lucky, for it gives me the chance to find out what happened. As we sails back, Hawk tells me the story of their hunt and I becomes afeared again.

  ‘They won’t believe ya, Hawk!’ I says, after he explains how Nestbyte lost his balance and fell into the briny.

  ‘Why?’ Hawk says, moving his fingers slowly ‘cause of the pain. ‘It is nothing but the truth, Tommo.’

  ‘It’s a truth what will get you all hanged from the yard-arm!’ I cry.

  Hawk is wrung out. His hands is swollen to twice their size and is all red raw flesh. I’ve had me hands hurt from the pit dogs and the crosscut saw, and blistered once when Sam Slit’s whisky still exploded, but never like this, never as terrible as this. He is nearly asleep as he speaks to me, his eyelids closing. Yet his great concern is not to tell me what happened nor that his hands be looked after, but that the skipper should give him medicine to care for Hammerhead Jack.

  ‘He will die, Tommo,’ he signals wearily to me. ‘Then it will be my fault!’

  ‘You will die!’ I says. ‘They will say you pushed Nestbyte if you tells it how it was. They won’t believe you, Hawk!’

  Hawk shakes his head. ‘I am too weary to lie, Tommo. The truth will stand us in good stead.’ He can’t touch a finger to his palms without wincing with the pain and soon he gives up, too weary to use his hands or lift his arms to talk any longer.

  I thinks to let him sleep awhile. I will hear him out again later, and talk a plan into him, once we is anchored alongside the cow.

  It is nearly eight bells when we gets back to where we left her. In the bright moonlight there is so many sharks feeding on her that it be almost like watching a school of mackerel in the shallows of Salamanca beach. But the whalemen is much less worried now about losing bits of her bulk. The bull is good compensation, three-and-a-half times bigger in blubber than the cow. It’s as though we has caught four whales.

  We barely arrives when Captain O’Hara calls for Hawk and the three Maori. Seb Rawlings is also called from his sick bed, it being reckoned that they be his crew and perhaps he may get some sense from them. The fourth mate sends straight for me where I am working in the try-house to get ready for the flensing of the whales at first light. That I should be called upon be me deepest hope. With me translating for Hawk I reckon we has a chance to beat the mongrels.

  ‘Evenin’, Cap’n, sir,’ I says, removing me cap as I stands at the door of his cabin waiting permission to enter.

  O’Hara grunts. ‘Come in, boy!’ he barks.

  Hawk and the three Maori is standing in the small cabin and the captain is seated behind a table with Tom Stubbs besides him. Seb Rawlings is also seated, being too weak, I suppose, to be on his feet. With all of us in the cabin there’s scarce an inch to move and I find meself squashed against the oldest of the Maori.

  The captain turns to Stubbs. ‘Thou mayst go, Mr Stubbs, there is much to be done. Mr Rawlings will remain as witness.’ We push aside to let Tom Stubbs pass.

  O’Hara points to me without looking up from the ship’s log which lies open before him. ‘Thou wilt speak to thy brother, and he will tell thee what happened and thou us.’

  ‘Sir, me brother has already told me the whole of it. It will be much the shorter if I speaks and then you asks questions what I shall put to him.’

  Captain O’Hara looks up sharply, thinking me to be too forward, but I keeps me head down and me hands clasped humble-like. ‘The sign language be most tedious slow, sir. This will be the quicker.’

  ‘Is this the lad who saw the pod this morning?’ O’Hara asks Rawlings.

  ‘He is the one, Captain,’ Rawlings says. ‘He is reliable enough and not too stupid.’ He points to Hawk. ‘They claim to be twins, though how this can be I cannot imagine!’

  ‘Most curious,’ the captain says, but there is no curiosity in his voice and I reckon he don’t care if Hawk and me be twins or the first two of the three blind mice. ‘Speak, boy!’ he commands.

  I tell of the placing of the two harpoons and how Nestbyte passed the other boats and shouted for help and then how, after being towed by the bull, they approached the whale from the weather side. I says nothing of the fight ‘tween him and Hammerhead Jack. I tell how Nestbyte wished them to fasten to the whale while there were still much life in him, so’s they might more quickly open a major blood flow, as the first mate did not think they could otherwise wear the bull down sufficient to take him with one boat.

  ‘Mr Nestbyte did confide all this to them?’ O’Hara questions.

  ‘No, Cap’n, but it were clear enough to me brother.’

  ‘Clear enough, was it? Your brother is an expert on the whale and whaling, and what actions to take in every circumstance?’

  ‘No, Cap’n, but he didn’t think Mr Nestbyte were going up to bid the whale the time o’ day!’ It were a stupid thing to say and I’m sorry the moment it come out of me big mouth.

  ‘Hold thy tongue, boy!’ O’Hara growls. ‘I’ll not take lip from such as thee!’

  I drop my head. ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,’ I says. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Hawk is trying to talk to me. I ignore him, not wishing at this moment to meet his eye, but Rawlings sees his movements, ‘What’s he saying, Tommo, what’s your brother saying?’ he stammers, all a-chittering and a-chattering o’ teeth from the fever.

  What Hawk’s saying is that I should tell the story like he told it to me. He thinks the captain just wants to write it down for the record. Ho! I thinks. Hawk may be the smart one, but he don’t know a mongrel when he sees one! Captain O’Hara here ain’t just keeping his log, he’s holding a trial. He wants revenge for his brother-in-law! I know this for sure. Old Tommo’s nose for mongrels is working well.

  ‘What does he say?’ the captain demands to know.

  ‘Yes, sir! He says that he’s sorry for presuming to know what Mr Nestbyte was thinking about what to do with the whale. He says I must say only what happened and should otherwise shut me big mouth.’ I doesn’t look at Hawk as I says this, and I can only hope he’s got the nous to keep his hands to hisself.

  ‘Continue!’ O’Hara commands, a bit happier.

  So I tells how the whale rolled to windward and capsized the boat. How only the Maori and Hawk come up again, with Hawk rescuing Hammerhead Jack from the briny after he had lost his arm.

  ‘Did Mr Nestbyte do anything when the whale rolled to windward?’ Captain O’Hara asks.

  It’s not a question I can answer. So I turns to Hawk, who gives me a most despairing look, like I’ve done them in. He has no way now to tell the truth and must go along with my tale. He signals that Nestbyte shouted they should ship oars.

  ‘He said that they should ship oars, Cap’n,’ I reply.

  ‘Aye, aye!’ O’Hara says impatient. ‘But did he do something?’

  ‘Do something?’ I look to Hawk, who says he does not recall anything. Meanwhile the others’ eyes are near closed as they tries to sleep standing up.

  ‘Me brother don’t recall, sir.’

  ‘Do something with this!’ O’Hara shouts, taking up a bowie knife from under the table and thrusting it, blade forward, at Hawk.

  The three Maori jolt awake in surprise and pull back, falling over each other. I am pushed against the cabin door, where I bump me shoulder.

  ‘Ha! I have thee!’ the captain exclaims. ‘This is Mr Nestbyte’s knife and there is blood on it! Human blood!’ He stands up and with the tip of his forefinger indicates a dark stain on the blade and points to Hawk, ‘Thou didst murder him and then threw him to the sharks!’

  I am took completely by surprise. Hawk ain’t said nothing about Nestbyte’s knife. I look at Hawk and see that he is smiling and shaking his head. He alone has not flinched when the captain thrust the knife at him.

  ‘Well? Answer me, man!’ O’Hara barks.

  ‘You were right, Tommo, he wants a victim,’ Hawk says with his hands. ‘Tell
him the truth. I used it to cut the mess which was Hammerhead Jack’s eye. The blood on the blade is Hammerhead Jack’s and that on the handle is from my hands.’

  I says all this and Hawk holds up his hands to show their cruel state.

  ‘How came he to be in possession of Mr Nestbyte’s knife?’ O’Hara demands. ‘A man doesn’t leave his own knife lying around, leastways Mr Nestbyte didn’t.’ He stabs down upon the table with the bowie knife so that it judders as he releases it. ‘Thou takes me for a fool, boy! There is a boat-knife for the purpose of cutting! Why did not Hawk use that knife?’

  ‘Tell him that when the whale rolled, Nestbyte took out his knife to cut the line but we were thrown out before he could do so. He must have dropped the knife in the boat where I later discovered it,’ Hawk signals to me.

  It ain’t Hawk’s fault he’s so bad at lying— he ain’t had much practice like me. Besides, he’s weary. First he says he didn’t see Nestbyte do nothing when the bull rolled, now he says Nestbyte were busy cutting the whaling line with his bowie knife and loses it from his grasp as the boat turns over. So, I asks you, how could that be? The boat capsizes, and by some miracle Nestbyte’s bowie knife grows hands of its own to cling to the bottom of the boat so it don’t fall out with everything else?

  But the captain is waiting for me to translate what Hawk’s just told me so I has to invent an explanation quick. Billy Lanney has recently shown us how to tie the short-warp to the harpoon rope and so I says desperate, ‘He took it off from his lanyard and give it to Hawk to fix the short-warp to the harpoon rope, Cap’n, the boat-knife being tied to a marlin line in the stern of the boat and the warp to be fixed in the bow. Me brother then pushed the knife into his belt on account that they had to quickly man the oars. He thought to return it later to the first mate.’

  ‘This happened just before the whale rolled?’ the skipper asks. He must think me a fool to fall into such a silly trap.