Wonder at the Edge of the World

by Nicole Helget

  “Look,” he says. He points way out.

  “What?” I squint. “I don’t see anything.”

  “It’s coming,” says Eustace. “You’ll see. Be quiet.”

  I wait and look and wipe my eyes some more. Then I do see: A shadowy figure floats on the water, far, far away. I tilt my head and lean over the ship’s side and stare. Whatever it is makes me want to crawl back into the hold and pull the covers over my head. My spine tingles and my gut feels sick, as though it might unload overboard whatever is in it. “What is that?” I say.

  Eustace won’t answer. He leans on the rail of the ship and watches. Fob sits and stands and fidgets around.

  For a half hour, as the sky gets even lighter, the figure floats closer, until I can see that it’s another ship. “Another whaling ship?” I ask.

  “No,” says Eustace. He bites his nails. “I don’t think so. Listen.”

  I do. And then I hear it. It’s the saddest sound I’ve ever heard. From the ship comes a deep, mournful cry that’s made up of hundreds of separate wails of misery.

  Fob howls softly. Eustace reaches down and strokes his nose.

  “What is that?” I ask. Even though I don’t believe in ghosts, the sensation I have is just like the feeling you’d get if you thought you saw one. I can hear my own heartbeat thudding. My breathing races. I put my hand on my chest.

  “It’s a slave ship,” he says. “We’re just south of the West Indies, where they’ll bring the people that survive the passage from Africa.”

  Slaves, I think. People. People like Ruby and like Eustace. This is where they’ve come from. This is how they get to America. “Goodness,” I say. “You mean that’s slaves making those noises?”

  Eustace nods. “It’s illegal. The slave trade to the Americas. But it’s still happening.” He sets his jaw and straightens his back. “They’re all chained up in the hold of that ship, stuffed and packed like the rocks we fit together for that pig fence.”

  I think about that fence we made. I remember how we pieced it together so the stones fit each other tightly.

  The wailing and crying get louder and clearer.

  “Sounds like a brew of all the misery I’ve ever heard,” I say.

  Eustace stands up straight and crosses his arms. “It’s sorrow and pain and hunger and sickness and broken hearts,” he says. “Separation and loneliness and hopelessness and death and grief is what that sound is made of.” He glares at the ship. His chin points up, and his jaw is clenched.

  The ship is still far away, but I can hear the gut-wrenching wails as though they were right next to me or even surging through me. Again, my spine shivers. My mouth is dry. “We’ve got to do something,” I say.

  “Like what?” Eustace says. He grips the rail of the ship. “There’s nothing we can do for them. Not these ones. Except to know how bad it is. That’s all we can do for now. Not look away. Not stop listening.”

  “I don’t know if I can bear it.” The crying from the slave ship makes my hair stand on end, and so does Fob’s. He whimpers. I reach down and scratch his head. He coils around my legs.

  “You have to,” says Eustace. “So that when you go back, you remember every second of what you saw and heard. And you can tell people.”

  “Then what?” I ask. “How does that help?”

  He faces me. “And then they can tell people,” he says. “And then the people who know how rotten this slave trade is will outnumber the people who don’t.” Eustace says this as though he’s thought about it a long time. He sounds like he’s been waiting for someone to ask.

  I wonder if Mother knew about the slave ships. I wonder if this is why she became an abolitionist. If every person heard what I heard, they’d all be abolitionists. I think that after I get home to Kansas, I’ll be an abolitionist, too.

  The ship comes ever closer and eventually passes behind us. Eustace and Fob and I watch it the whole way. In its wake, dozens of sharks follow, and I remember what Father told me.

  CHAPTER 27

  More weeks and then months pass. But we are still in the warm waters. We see whales sometimes, but now Nova won’t allow the whaleboats to chase them without permission from Captain Abbot. Anytime the lookout shouts, “Thar she blows!” the captain emerges from his cabin, takes out his spyglass, peers into it, and then shakes his head.

  “Sail south,” he always says. “Farther south.”

  This makes the crew angry. Like Eustace and me, most of them are on their first voyage with Captain Abbot. They’ve heard rumors about him. And they all signed on because he always comes back with the fullest hold, the most tons of whale oil, the purest, too. But they weren’t expecting to be sailing for months and months without a pursuit. A lot of them are just plain bored and ready for something to do.

  Nova tries to keep them busy so they don’t get grumpy. “Patch the sail,” she orders. “Scrub the deck,” she barks. “Sharpen the spear tips. Empty the latrines. Catch that turtle for supper.” The men spy her through slitted eyes and slink away to carry out the orders. Some nights, she allows them to share a bottle of rum. Still, they are dissatisfied. When they come to the galley for their meals, I hear the word “mutiny” more than once.

  They are eager to get whales, render the fat, make money, and get back home. Captain Abbot doesn’t seem to be interested in those things. Nova becomes more and more nervous as she runs out of jobs for the men to do. Some of them even take to defying her. Yesterday she ordered a man up to untangle a rope on the mizzenmast, and he told her to do it herself. She had him tied to that same mast and whipped him ten times. Eustace and I watched from separate sides of the ship, and I wondered what he thought about a black woman whipping a white man, but I didn’t ask him. After the whipping, the men fell back into order and were more agreeable.

  Despite her fearsome approach with the crew, Nova remains kind to me. More and more, she spends time with me in the galley. She sits on the stool and plucks feathers from the seabirds we sometimes catch for eating. She smokes.

  “Nova,” I ask. “Why don’t we ever catch any whales?”

  She blows out a huge plume of smoke. “He’s waiting for the big ones,” she explains. “The giants no one else can get, in the coldest, darkest places.”

  “Yes,” I say. I’m careful. I don’t want to make her mad. But I also don’t want to be on a ship that gets seized by its own crew and takes me off the course of my journey. “But wouldn’t the crew settle down if we just caught a couple of smaller ones in the meanwhile?”

  “Hmm,” she says. She puffs on her pipe. “He has his reasons.” She stares off toward Captain Abbot’s cabin. After a while, she walks across the deck to it, knocks, then enters.

  I tinker around in the galley. I throw a huge pail of rancid shrimp into a pot of boiling water. I add salt and a rotten onion after I pick out a pocket of tiny white worms. I add the moldy potatoes I found in a corner of the forecastle of the ship. I’ve got a slop bucket full of chicken feet. Those go in, too. I put in a spoonful of lard and woody turnip, then turn up the heat on the stove. The blacksmith took my stirring spoon and melted it down to make a hook, so now all I’ve got to stir with is an old whalebone.

  Today it’s hot but breezy. The spray off the ocean hits me in the face whichever way I turn. I haven’t seen myself in a mirror in months. I’ll bet Priss would faint if she saw how red my cheeks must be. The heat, the cooking, the salt water, all of it makes me angry. And all day I’ve been listening to that darn Medicine Head. Sometimes it’s real, real difficult not to kick it into the Atlantic Ocean. But I can’t do that because some doltish animal might come along and destroy it accidentally.

  Even though Nova talks to me some and Eustace does once in a while, I spend a lot of my time alone. I’m as lonely as I’ve ever been in my life. But one good thing about loneliness is that it gives a girl plenty of time to sort through problems. I’ve been remembering my dreams, and I’ve been remembering the visions with the Medicine Head. Sometimes it whis
pers Hold me as I lie on my hammock with my hands behind my head. I lean over and look under my hammock at the crate. But I don’t open it. I don’t hold the Medicine Head. Even though I want to.

  I want to hold it in the hopes that it will show me my father again. Or show me Mother and Priss. Sometimes I want to hold it just to get a glimpse of dumb old Kansas. Sometimes I tell myself that the Medicine Head isn’t evil, that maybe its purpose is to prepare me for challenges, like dreams can. Once in a while, I have to admit, I think about keeping the Medicine Head forever, until I die. Sometimes I even think about living forever. I imagine all the wonderful things I could do if I had enough time.

  Then the lookout shouts, “Thar she blows!”

  These days, the men hardly move when the lookout shouts. They only expect to be sent back to their boring work. This time, though, I hear the voice of Captain Abbot.

  “Well!” he shouts. “Get your blasted bones moving!” I hurry to watch. I sit next to my stove. Captain Abbot stretches his back and smooths his beard. He walks to the ship’s rail and stares out to where the lookout points. Then he shouts, “Go get him, men!”

  The men leap to their posts. Even I get a little excited. I try to remember all I know about whaling, which, I have to admit, is quite a bit.

  A couple of years ago I read a book on whaling by a man whose name I forget. It was a very long book about whales and whalers. Hardly anybody liked it because they thought the book was too dull in some parts, talking about cetology all the livelong day, boring readers to death with information about bones and blowholes and flukes. I bet a lot of those people put the book down before the best part, when a big, mad white whale wrecks the whaling ship by ramming its big head into it. But my father read the whole thing, and I did, too. And my father liked it, and I did, too. Father said there’s nothing better in the whole world than a big, bold adventure story mixed up with good information to learn.

  “Lower the boats!” shouts Nova.

  The men head to the pulleys and yank the ropes so that the whaleboats come down and can be guided into the ocean. Nova heads to the harpoons. Again, she gestures for Eustace and hands one to him. I am suddenly struck with the desire to go, too. I want to get as close as I can to the adventure.

  “You come with me,” Nova says to Eustace.

  “Hey!” I shout. “I want to come! I want to come, too!” I drop the whalebone spoon into the stew I made and rush over to Nova. “Take me,” I say.

  Nova ignores me.

  “Get back to the galley, Lu,” says Eustace. “This is dangerous.”

  “Don’t you talk to me that way, Eustace!” I say.

  He reaches above me and puts his hands on the bottom of the whaleboat, which is being lowered, lurching, out of the davits above our heads.

  “Lu, you’ve got to move,” he says.

  I duck.

  “You’re going to get hurt,” he says. The whaleboat swings a bit on its ropes and smacks me on the back of the head.

  “Ouch!” I shout at Eustace. “You did that on purpose!” I rub my head where it smarts.

  “Get back to the galley, Lu!” says Nova. “Now! This is dangerous.”

  I slide back to the galley. I sit down on a small stool. Fob curls around my feet and I pat him on the head. I pout out my lip and glower at Eustace, who ignores me.

  Six men climb into each of the two whaleboats. Then the other crew lower them onto the ocean’s surface. Everyone on board grabs an oar and begins stroking the water. Nova’s boat takes off toward the whale first. She rows as strongly as Eustace and the other men. The other boat follows. The whaleboats veer headlong into waves and weave their way toward the breaching whale, whose long, curved back breaks the water’s surface every few minutes so that the whale can breathe.

  The boats look tiny in the huge expanse of water, against the high waves, under the endless sky, and next to the whale.

  I’ve read that whales can grow to a hundred feet long. This one’s not that enormous. But it is big. At least half the size of the Xerxes, maybe fifty feet long. I squint. I see Nova stand at the prow of the boat, brace herself, and then hurl her harpoon at the whale. The harpoon misses its target, so she pulls it back in. The harpooner on the other boat throws his spear. But it, too, lands short of the whale and sinks into the water.

  Eustace is stationed just behind Nova. He helps her ready her harpoon. Then she braces herself again, reaches way back with her harpoon, brings it forward, and releases it in a perfect throw. The harpoon pierces the whale behind its head. Eustace lets out the rope that’s attached to the harpoon.

  The whale’s body glides into the depths of the water. Its fluke seems to wave good-bye at all of us as it goes down and disappears.

  Nova and Eustace and all the men in the whaleboats lean over the side, looking, seeking their catch. The ocean seems to go very still. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Nova missed again. Maybe the harpoon broke off and the whale swam away.

  Then, very near Nova and Eustace’s whaleboat, the water seems to flutter and bubble as though it’s boiling. Suddenly the whale rises up and out of the water. Its enormous head is blue and gray and covered with discolored patches of white and yellow. The mouth is curved and strange. The animal looks as though it is from a prehistoric age. The whale flies so high that its fins break the surface and look like wings about to take flight. Then the weight of the animal draws it back to the water’s surface, raising a fantastic column of foam and water. The men hurl spears and lances. More and more and more. So many that I cry out “Stop!” and “That’s enough!”—though no one hears me.

  The whale lingers near the surface now, thrashing and flapping its tail. It’s angry. It’s in pain. It’s fighting for its very life. I worry for Eustace. What if the tail hits the boat? What if he’s thrown into the water? But the men in the whaleboats seem to relax, as if they’re waiting for the whale to do something.

  And then it does. The whale begins to swim. With the harpoon attached to Nova and Eustace’s boat. The whaleboat and all in it are tugged behind. The sleigh ride. This is what whalers call this part of the hunt. They’ll allow the whale to pull the boat until it tires. For twenty minutes or more, it swims around and around. The drag from the boat slows the whale’s journey, tugs at its energy, depletes its life. Blood from the whale’s wounds has made the water a swirling pink canvas, beautiful and gory at the same time.

  Finally, the whale stops. From its blowhole a sad blast of red water rises into the air. The whale’s last exhalation. I hold my own breath. In another minute, the animal rolls over onto its side and floats. It bobs. Lances and spears and the harpoon and ropes all over its body poke up like fence stakes. The whale is claimed.

  Then the whalers begin the long tow back to the Xerxes.

  I exhale. I gasp. And then I cry. I cry real hard.

  I run back down into the hold to hide. I don’t want anyone to see that I’m a sensitive child who can’t handle the realities of whaling, the realities of the price of the light I live by.

  CHAPTER 28

  Hours later, the dead whale is attached to the side of the Xerxes. Nova and the men climb all over it with giant cutting tools, which strip the animal of its blubber. The slices of blubber look like slabs of bacon for a giant. The blacksmith has started a fire beneath the try-pot in a large brick oven in the center of the ship. The cooper hauls barrels from the hold to the deck. The men use hooks and cutting spades to chop the blubber slices into pieces they can toss into the try-pot and boil to liquid.

  The entire deck is slick with blood, sea water, blubber, and slabs of fat. Men slip and slide and fall. Fob dares not move from my feet lest his paws skate in four directions. I am disgusted, but I cannot look away.

  The stew I’ve made for the sailors has congealed into a slimy mess, and it’s long forgotten. I decide to empty the contents of my pot overboard. I skid my way to the rail and dump it into the ocean. When I look down, I find a frenzy of sharks. Sharp triangular dorsal fins everywhere. They j
ab and jab with their pointed snouts and terrible teeth into the jelly-like carcass of the whale. I step back. Catch my breath. But all I inhale is sooty, stinky smoke from the rendering. I inhale again. And again. I feel like I can’t get enough air. My ears only hear muffled noises.

  I turn my face away from the fire and smoke. I look for Eustace and see him in the middle of the deck, pitching slabs of blubber into the try-pot. He’s been through so much today, but he doesn’t look fatigued. He looks strong and capable, is what he looks.

  I decide to go below into the forecastle and curl up in my hammock. I whistle for Fob, but he won’t come. He’s scared to walk on the greasy deck. I slide over to him, pick him up, and carry him down the hatch with me.

  As soon as I set Fob down, he scrambles back up the ladder. I lie back in my hammock and stare up at the ceiling. I think for a while about all I saw today. I think about that cask of spermaceti sitting in our barn. I think about the lamps in our Kansas home. One thing about people is that a lot of them don’t like to know where the goods that make their life easier come from. They prefer not to think about it. That’s a way to never feel guilty about how other people risk their lives at their jobs or about the horrific deaths of the animals that provide the goods.

  But just maybe they should, and then maybe people wouldn’t be so wasteful. You should think about that for a long time. I know I will.

  The commotion on deck goes on for a long time. Finally, long after dark, I hear the last sounds of a broom and a mop being wiped along the deck. Only after that does the Xerxes go quietly to sleep. I try to sleep, too, but I can’t. One thing about living on a whaling ship is that you’re likely to see things that might give you bad dreams. You have to be very brave to live on a whaling ship. Father was.

  But I’m not sure I am.

  I don’t want to close my eyes, even though I know that a bad dream can be good practice for the many hard times I have ahead of me.