The mongoose, too, is well suited for hunting. Millington told me it sometimes even swims in rows like soldiers, and he has seen it attack dolphins and the calves of sperm and humpback whales in the open sea. He has seen it eat the tongue right out of a living whale. Its sharp, conical teeth are capable of tearing apart all kinds of fish, and its throat is large enough to swallow them. Millington has also witnessed them in a skirmish line, maybe eight or ten of them, actually zeroing in on a lone shark. This time it was the shark that was prey. As they closed in on the shark, they shifted formation, spread out, and encircled it. No escape. The shark was trapped. The attackers launched a lightning attack and closed in on their victim quickly. It only took seconds to destroy it. When the mongoose were finished with it, they regrouped in formation, basically, a straight line, and swam away. They didn’t eat the shark. They just killed it.
Mongoose is a formidable predator, but there is nothing on record or in the folklore of the trade about them attacking and killing humans. Millington does not dream about the mongoose.
My thoughts were full of sharks that day, so much so that I was completely unprepared for what happened next. The dragline off the stern went suddenly taut. Something had taken the bait. Millington immediately gave the line a hard jerk to set the hook. The line stayed taut. Whatever was there had gobbled the pogie and was caught. Veron and Aaron stopped what they were doing and watched as Millington began to haul the line in steadily hand over hand. The line slackened for a second then went taut again as the fish fought back and took it straight down. Millington quickly paid out the line, letting the fish have it all. The line went nearly vertical. It was so taut you could twang it. The fish was almost straight down below the boat when it shifted gears and swam away again. I moved to the center of the boat to give Millington more room.
“Dolphin,” Veron said.
I didn’t think I heard him properly.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“Dolphin,” repeated Veron and indicated the line with a movement of his chin.
This just did not compute. It was common knowledge that dolphins were regularly caught by accident in gill nets set for tuna, but who actually fished for them? Who deliberately baited a hook and rigged a line for dolphin? Obviously, the crew of The Faith did, although it might as well have been a mackerel or a cod down there, some commonplace fish that schooled in millions, for all the emotion they showed.
The dolphin had taken the line all the way out to the end without rising to the surface. I marveled that such a slender line should have the strength to hold a small whale fighting to break free, for that’s what dolphins are, small, toothed whales, card-carrying members of the cetacean family. Then Millington leaned back on the line and resumed hauling it hand over hand, and I marveled at the strength of the fisherman, too. There was no slack in the line, yet the dolphin was coming in. A dolphin may be small for a whale, but it still weighs hundreds of pounds, a thousand even, certainly a match for a man with a line; and, yet, the dolphin really was coming in … until it wasn’t. This one had a strong will of its own. It streaked back out to sea, dove on a dime, and took the line down, then turned and rocketed back up toward the surface. I knew this, of course, by the play of the line that went straight out then down and tight then slackened again.
“Fish be comin’,” said Veron.
It sure was. It broke the surface and launched itself into the sky. Drops of water popped off the line and caught the spectrum of the sun like glass beads. What was on the hook was not what I expected. It wasn’t a dolphin at all, at least, not what I thought of as a dolphin. Instead it was the most exquisite fish I had ever seen, a creature conjured up by a wizard, a torpedo of peacock blue and silver yellow with a forked tail of flashing gold and translucent, copper red fins like wings. It arched above the sea then all three feet and more of this fish reentered the water with barely a splash only to immediately propel itself into the air once more. This time its blazing leap must have carried it forty feet. It simply radiated light, and I stood mesmerized by its uncommon beauty.
Millington played the fish until he could bring it close enough to the boat to crack it senseless with his club. I helped him haul it aboard, not because he needed any help from me but because I wanted to touch such a glory of creation. My guess is it weighed about forty pounds. In death, its colors began to fade immediately. Veron gutted and filleted it right away. He sliced off pieces of firm, pale pink flesh and handed them around. Even though I don’t like to eat fish, especially raw fish, there was no choice but to taste this one. Veron was treating me as one of the crew, and I had better act like it. Without hesitation, I put a piece in my mouth and chewed slowly. It had a delicate, almost sweet flavor, really quite delicious, not at all fishy. Veron handed me another piece, and I ate that one, too. Later I learned that what these men called dolphin was really a fish called the dorado, a gourmet treat served in fine restaurants as mahi mahi. The species of mammal I thought of as dolphin they referred to as porpoise, regardless of how big or small it was.
Porpoises, as the fishermen knew them, came in the afternoon.
“Pawpus,” said Millington, and an instant later at least a dozen dolphins, as I knew them, burst from the water on the starboard side of Faith. Another dozen or more appeared at port. I had seen dolphins before in other waters taking bow rides or following wakes, but that was only two or three, maybe four animals at a time. Now the sea teemed with them. There may have been a hundred. There may have been more. It was as if I were witness to a miracle, the world lavish with countless beings leaping from the sea. Music was playing, symphonic music, Tchaikovsky, the 1812 Overture, and every time the cannon fired more dolphins would leap from the water. Every time the cymbals clashed another troupe would soar through the air. The drums would roll and the sea would open and with the exuberance of the truly free these living things would defy the gravitational pull of planet Earth. Port and starboard, bow and stern, they jumped and twisted and dove and jumped again. A full orchestra played on and on. There were scores of them, hundreds, wild creatures absolutely delighted with being alive. Was I dreaming? No, the dolphins were there, always just beyond my reach, but there, right there. It was a wonder.
So enthralled was I by the spectacle of dolphins that I forgot about the fishermen until the harpoon gun fired. I turned in time to see the last of the harpoon line snake out from its coil on the deck. One dolphin rose and spun partway out of the water then belly flopped down. Millington had maneuvered the Faith so that the dolphins had to cut across her bow, and Aaron had sent the harpoon home at a distance of about fifty yards. I couldn’t tell where the harpoon hit, but I knew the wound must have been fatal because he was having no difficulty pulling in the line. Veron stood poised with his harpoon ready to strike if necessary, but the dolphin was already dead by the time it reached the boat. Millington, Veron, and Aaron Moses hauled nearly a thousand-pound carcass out of the water so that the tail was in the boat and the rest of the “pawpus” hung out limply over the water. Then Millington and Aaron held it in place while Veron sliced its belly open. Blood gushed out and formed a brilliant red crescent in the water as Veron quickly gutted the animal and returned its entrails to the sea. After this, all three men lashed the carcass onto the port side of the Faith. Once done, Aaron reloaded the harpoon gun, Millington returned to the tiller, and Veron bailed out the boat that had, as usual, taken water.
The crew had executed well. Everything had been accomplished efficiently and matter-of-factly. There was no joy and no sadness—at least, none that I could tell. Yet, it was hard for me to accept that this was only a job to them. After all, they didn’t choose to be bait fishermen. They chose to go after the biggest game of them all. Didn’t Aaron stand on the bow and sing to them? Didn’t Millington work at hard labor for years while he dreamed of the day he could buy his own boat? Wasn’t Veron, at seventy, still pleased with the way he could put the harpoon? These men were hunters; they carried themselves proudly. They
were not like the other men on the island, the clerks, the van drivers, the crop tillers, the beggars. They didn’t sell ganja or poach parrots from the forest. Maybe they felt joy was inappropriate when they took lives as big as the ones they had taken. Maybe, if they thought about it at all, sorrow was just too dangerous an emotion for a predator to have. Maybe a quiet satisfaction was as far as they went. People depended on them to kill well, and they had done that. Life was not a gift but a daily battle they fought with skill and determination. It was a very difficult thing these men did. Did they need to feel reverence, too? What more did I expect from them, and what right did I have to expect it?
Shortly after the dolphin was dressed out, the sharks came in. Veron picked up his harpoon and pointed out two gray-brown dorsal fins swimming alongside the carcass. Aron had the wooden club in his hand. He pointed off the bow to three more.
“Hahmmahead,” Millington said.
Hammerhead. In an instant, it felt as if ice were packed around my heart. My reaction was completely involuntarily. I wanted to back away as I had trained myself to do when confronted with a deadly predator, but I was in an open boat. Where was I going to go? It was the first stage of panic. One hears stories of aggressive sharks attacking small boats. Not only was this a small boat, but there was nearly a ton of raw meat lashed to its bulkhead. I knew that the hammerhead is one of the most dangerous sharks to man. Some claim they’re not, but you’ll understand if I take Millington’s word for it. His word? Actually, words: “a bad infliction.” They are fearsome hunters who follow the blood trail with their peculiar heads swinging back and forth. My first clear sighting was of one lengthwise, parallel to the boat. It appeared as if it were some strange species of deformed life bred by a demented engineer. Most unnerving were the appendages that stood out from either side of its head, each with a bulging eyeball at its tip, like the cue ball on a pool table. These things, these appendages were as thick around as the business end of Babe Ruth’s bat. Of course, its head moved side to side as, I presumed, it searched for a target. I was both alarmed and enthralled. “Alarmed” doesn’t quite do justice to what I felt. “Terror” doesn’t either, nor does “fear” because the hunters showed none so I smothered mine—more like I was struck dumb. It wasn’t the jaws that mesmerized me, it was those protrusions on either side of its head. They belonged to a creature to whom I was nothing but an easy kill.
The fishermen seemed concerned, but they didn’t seem afraid. They’d been here before, and I hadn’t. These were my first sharks in the wild. Veron stood and tracked their movements with the harpoon poised to strike. Stay still. Watch. Learn something, I told myself. Focus. Focus. This is not your fight. Be glad. Glad. Watching Veron calmed me down. I felt those sharks were in more trouble than I was.
The first strike came from portside at the stern. It was a sixth shark, one I hadn’t seen before, another hammerhead. It erupted from below with open jaws, a cavern lined with sharp knives, and tried to rip the tail off the dolphin, but Millington struck down with a long, thick, automotive screwdriver and embedded the shaft deeply in the hammerhead’s skull, dead center, between its two eyes. It twisted its head, wrenched away from him, and writhed and thrashed in the water with the screwdriver still firmly fixed in its skull. Veron got the second one, but not before its jaws locked onto the dolphin and began tearing off a hunk of meat the size of a beer keg. Veron thrust downward and pushed the heavy harpoon deeply into the shark’s body at the place where its head connected to its neck. Still, the hammerhead would not let go. Veron leaned on the harpoon and pushed it even deeper into its body until it did let go, but its jaws continued to snap as it quivered on the harpoon. Blood spewed out into the water as Veron twisted and jerked the harpoon free, and then the shark sank slowly, even gracefully out of sight.
Nobody told the shark with the screwdriver in its head that it was dead. It continued to thrash about in agony as if it were having an explosive grand mal seizure a few feet away on the surface of the water. Violent convulsions shook its body. Its head flailed from side to side. It rolled over, revealing an off-white belly, then righted itself by lashing its tail. The shark was in its death throes, and its convulsions suddenly interested the others more than the body of the dolphin lashed to our boat. There were four of them out there not including the wounded one, and they attacked him as if they were a kamikaze unit. The hit was swift and pitiless. They tore chunks out of him, swallowed them, and tore out more. The water seethed and turned red until all that remained of the wounded shark was a blood slick. A second one must have sustained a bite of its own during the attack because the three that were left turned on him and shredded him, too. Shortly there was nothing left of either shark except for the slick of blood. One shark stayed at the surface snapping at the slick, but the other three disappeared. Soon he did, too.
Faith arrived back in Barrouallie at sunset. Esther Irene waited on the beach and supervised the butchering of what remained of the “pawpus” as she had done the pilot whale a couple of days before. I sent a small boy to the rum shop for four bottles of Hairoun beer, took one for myself, and handed the rest out to the crew. Esther Irene was annoyed at being left out, so I sent the boy for six more bottles. Millington’s simple house backed onto the beach; and, once the gear was stowed away, he invited us to go there. We never went inside at all. Instead, he built a fire in a pit in the sand of his backyard, and we sat around drinking beer as the sun went down.
SHARKMAN
By Jerry Gibbs
For thirty-five years, Jerry Gibbs was the fishing editor of Outdoor Life magazine. He retired and moved with wife Judy from northern Vermont to the coast of Maine. He writes as an introduction to this wonderfully weird story: “There is a story about the angler who went to Australia intent on fishing for great white sharks. Just before his charter boat sailed, the fisherman suddenly realized what had been bothering him. There appeared to be no bait at all aboard the vessel. The captain was quick to ease concern.
‘Don’t worry,’ he told the sport, ‘it’s coming now.’
Indeed it was. Being led along the pier in hide that fit like oversize pajamas, plodded an ancient, swaybacked cow …”
In the tradition of Hunter S. Thompson, no story ever got weird enough for Jerry.
They arrived in darkness. The air was heavy, thick with sea-wet. The two men climbed stiffly from their car after the long drive from the city. They walked with crunching footsteps in the gravel parking lot to the long boat. The boat was the Huntress, and she lay clean and white beneath night lights. It was forty-five minutes before they were to sail.
“You want some coffee?” Ed Hammond asked. “There’s that diner we just passed. I could use a little walk.”
“Sure,” the other man said. “Just black.”
“Be right back,” Hammond said.
Tommy Wakeman watched his friend walk away. He had never seen him stay in one spot more than a few minutes except in a car or on the telephone at his ad agency. Wakeman envied his friend’s mountain of energy.
Tommy stretched. His eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep, but otherwise he felt good. He looked forward to the day. Six years of selling magazine advertising space with its ritualistic business lunches was beginning to show around his middle section. Leaning on a strong enough fish or two would be a welcome workout. And kind of a nice way to wind down before the big change came. He thought a moment about Amanda, asleep in her small apartment back in town. They would be married in—he counted—just three days.
When Hammond returned, the two stood sipping coffee gratefully. Boat lights began to wink on slowly, one here, another down the line. There was pale light growing in the east and the stars glittered weakly, fading. The air was rich with pungent odor of marine organisms living and dead. They scanned the dock for some sign of the Captain. They needn’t have worried.
Ten minutes before sailing time the parking lot exploded in the rattle of gravel hurled against wheel wells. Out-of-line headlights caught the
m as a battered pickup slammed through the lot and skidded to a stop. The engine died, then ran on dieseling before coming to ticking silence. The Captain unfolded from the truck cab looking waxen in the predawn light. Except for his height there would be nothing outstanding about the man to the casual observer. His straight, dark hair was streaked with gray. The hint of fast-growing beard shadowed his jaw. His eyes were what stopped you. They seemed overlarge for the man’s angular face, so dark that iris and pupil flowed together, and they were flat, without depth. Perhaps it was just the light. Tommy gulped his remaining coffee.
Walking over, they greeted the Captain with enthusiasm. The man looked at them noncommittedly.
“You boys see my mate yet?” he said when the silence was about to become awkward.
“Don’t think so,” said Hammond. “He’d be down by the boat, I guess.”
The Captain nodded. “Well, you’ll see him.” He was pulling things from the back of the truck. He looked up smiling with closed lips and Tommy thought he had never seen such a long slit of a mouth. His eyes fluttered. “You’ll see him if he knows what’s good for him,” the Captain said.
He turned again, rummaging in the truck, turned and was in front of them suddenly with something swinging in one hand that made them take a quick step backward. In this left hand, held by the ears, were two dead cottontail rabbits.
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