Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes

by Highsmith, Patricia

  Encountering a large male shark, the whale lunged for him, just to see the shark scurry away, a flash of frightened white.

  The odious little brown men! He was aware that the little beasts did not usually try to fight a creature the size of himself, or of his mate either. The little men attacked sea-cows a quarter his size. Sharks terrified them. The whale swam sullenly on, not caring about direction but unconsciously seeking cool streams for his wounds.

  He was south of the equator and heading still south. He swam steadily till his anger abated a little and, when he came up for air, the sun was low on the horizon. Before dark, he met a vast school of small fish and swam into it with his mouth open.

  In the next days and weeks he swam lazily, not having, at this time of year, any cause to head in any certain direction. The equatorial area of the Pacific was a huge world. And it was odd to be alone after five years of being with a mate, of knowing that she was somewhere near, able to be found soon, even if she was not in sight for a while. They had always refound each other, always agreeably gone in the same direction, usually one of his choosing.

  He avoided the islands, though the little fish near their beaches were tasty, and so were the patches of green plants. Once in a careless moment he leapt a little and fell back, exhaling a tall jet of white steam, and his left eye saw a boat. The boat was distant, but it had the dark, thick shape of the ships that hunted whales, the kind of ship that had a motor. He had dived at once, without much air in him, and headed at a right angle away from the ship’s course. Now it would be a matter of zigzagging, of trying to elude while still managing to get enough air to swim fast. Many a time he had evaded such vessels. Why not again? It was not a question, however, but a necessity.

  The chase went on for half an hour, then one hour. The whale let the twisting, rocking ship come quite close, or rather close to his wake that he left after surfacing for air, then he sounded to swim under and astern of the little ship and to keep going.

  For several minutes, the ship lost its quarry. Its motors at full speed made the ship keel hard as it turned, seeking, guessing.

  He swam as long as he could before his exertions made him come up, and again he had to blow out before he took in air. The ship was now far away, but the whale knew he would have been seen. He inhaled for as long as he dared, then swam under the surface with a feint to the left, changing underwater to the same course he had been on before. Broad daylight, alas!

  Two more hours passed. When again the ship was very near, the whale had not the strength for any great speed, and he was in need of air.

  A harpoon gun cracked. The lance missed him, and its timed bomb exploded underwater at a distance of at least the whale’s full length away from him. In crazy anger, he seized the metal cable of the harpoon in his mouth and tugged, as if he could upset the ship in this manner or even tow it. The thin cable was ridged, and cut his mouth a little.

  The cable also cut the whale’s huge but delicate tongue, and the man at the winch saw the blood on the water. They lowered a boat and idled their motor still more. The strong winch on deck began to pull the cable in.

  The whale felt the tug of the cable in his mouth, heard the slap of a boat’s bottom and knew what it meant: a boat with lances for the final strikes behind the fin, into the eye, down the spiracle, then ropes to fasten the corpse to the ship. Fools in their wooden boat!

  With a slow gesture of his tail, the whale positioned himself to face where the slapping sound had come from. Now he could see the boat bottom. He rammed the little craft from below, rising with his back against it. At the same time, a lance hit him in front of his tail, across the end of his spine, stinging at once. The whale swam downward.

  From the whaler ropes were flung to at least three men in the swirling water. The wooden craft had broken in half, ropes and lances had fallen into the sea. The screams did not stop: one man had somehow got his arm torn open on a jagged board and was bleeding badly, another floated face down and motionless, and a man from the ship went over the side with a rope to try to save him. The winch had dragged up an exploded but whaleless harpoon. And some others on the ship were surprised to see one half of the wooden boat floating away rapidly into the distance. The last lance hurled had lodged in the whale, and the end of the lance’s rope was fastened to a metal ring in the boat’s gunwale.

  They could, of course, have followed the now visible whale track. But the course of the whale was not their assigned course for one thing, and more than half the crew were occupied with the nearly drowned men and with recovering what they could of the lances and tackle of the other half of the boat before they abandoned it. But that crazy whale was a big one, they all agreed. Full of hell!

  The whale by now realized that he had an appendage. The first time he had come up for air, he had not seen the hunk of wood behind him. The second time, he did. He had been aware of a resistance when he dived to a certain depth, though he was capable of pulling the half-boat underwater and of keeping it there, if he chose. The rope was flexible, not like the ridged cable, and was perhaps thrice his length. The boat fragment was irksome. It was wise to swim deep enough to keep the boat beneath the surface. Yet when he came up to breathe—and it took a long while and many inhalations to lay in a goodly store of air—the half-boat was going to float up behind him.

  This fact caused some strange stories on the islands that the whale cruised past. Children and young boys told of a wrecked ship or boat which they had seen floating for a while, and which had suddenly disappeared. The story spread from island to island, repeated by the men and boys who encountered one another on their fishing boats, and was chuckled at yet not entirely disbelieved, because too many reliable men swore they had seen it.

  “It is magic,” said one man, speaking in a respectful tone, because his people respected magic.

  But was it good or bad? Might it mean good fortune or a catastrophe, like a great wind with a wave that would wash over their islands, flatten their houses, and send everyone into the sea? There were a few white men on some of the islands, and they professed to know about typhoons, earthquakes, eclipses of moon and sun. Maybe they did. But the appearing and vanishing boat was different. The white men would laugh at the story. But they didn’t always know what was important and what was not. How could they? They were but men, after all.

  Often when grazing on floating greenery or schools of tiny fish, the whale would lounge on the sea’s surface, enjoying the warmth of the sun along his back. Usually there was no island within his vision, but the islands were no hazard, if he kept a distance. However, on one such lazy day when he nosed above the surface, he saw a catamaran with a sail making for him, or so it seemed. The suddenness and the silence of this approach stirred him with fear and defensiveness, and he dived a little and turned, so as to face the boat. The catamaran was the size of boat he could crack and seriously damage, if he so chose.

  The whale perceived that the men were interested in the half-boat that floated to one side of him now. There were two men in the boat, and one had a rope in hand. The other man saw him, gave a shout, and quickly lifted a spear. The whale moved his horizontal tail and charged, gliding under the catamaran’s projection, striking the side of the boat with his nose, staving it in. The standing man with the spear fell into the water, and the whale, having circled with a great churn of water behind him, bit the man’s feet off. The other man was easier prey. The whale simply rammed his body, knocking the wind out of him and more.

  The catamaran’s mast with its sail wilted at a slant toward the sea. The whale might have lingered for another strike or two but, when he lifted his head for a quick breath, he heard the bark and shriek of men’s voices, distant but clear. Another boat? The whale did not tarry, but dived at once, and swam away from the sounds.

  The men were finished, one dead from crushed ribs and lungs, the other from loss of blood. A second catamaran had set out from the nearby island with the intention of rescuing the two men. They had not seen
the whale, but they had seen the first catamaran break in half near the floating piece of boat, and then they had seen the boat piece disappear below the surface of the sea. So they approached the still-floating but broken catamaran with caution, and one of the men wanted to turn back while they still could.

  “It is magic!” he said. “You see? The boat is in two pieces and they are going to float and sink other boats now—and kill us!”

  One man caught sight of a floating corpse. “There is my brother!”

  They had not expected corpses. They had expected to find the two men perhaps injured, but clinging to the wreckage of the catamaran. When a boy cried out that he saw the second corpse in a sea of blood, it was instantly and unanimously decided that they would turn back.

  “Don’t look at the boat!” yelled one man. “Turn your eyes away!”

  They turned their eyes away, the catamaran turned, paddles were plied until arms ached and the men gasped for breath. A man not rowing recited chants to ward off evil spirits. Back on the island, they told their story in frightened bursts, their knees shaking with a collective awe. The rest of that day and evening, the others on the island were afraid to touch any of the four men.

  So that story spread, and was enlarged. The famous magically appearing and disappearing piece of boat had merely touched a catamaran and it had cracked in half! And the two men on board had been instantly killed as if struck by an evil spirit.

  The half-boat was sighted off other islands and avoided. The possibility that the half-boat might be being towed by a shark or whale was actually uttered, but if so, it was the spirit of a whale or shark, impossible to kill, yet able to kill anything with ease, and to destroy any craft merely by its evil will.

  The whale swam on in the temperate waters, irked less and less by the dull pain just above his tail, caused by the harpoon which passed into his coat of blubber and out, like a pin. The floating boat was the nuisance. The whale glided past rough underwater coral, thinking to wear the rope through or bump the boat from the rope, but so far he hadn’t succeeded. He endured a sullen melancholy, all alone. He encountered three whales like himself, one a young female, the others males, and he might have joined them for company for a while, but one of the males shied at the boat that dragged behind him under the water. The whale was shunned.

  So the whale sang alone in the deeps: “Hoo-wa-a-aaah-ou” in a rather high-pitched tone, talking to himself. He used to communicate with his mate like that, telling her where he was, warning her of an enemy, or with another tone telling her that food was in sight where he was swimming.

  One morning when he was floating hardly below the surface, bobbing up now and then to get an easy store of air, he heard the plash of a paddle.

  The whale’s left eye saw a tiny boat with a single figure in it, making not for him but for the wooden wreck which the whale knew floated to one side and behind him now. The little craft was no challenge, but the whale scanned the horizon for other boats, for an island, and saw a pale line of land quite a distance away. He swam a bit deeper.

  The boy in the boat saw the whale, shuddered and half stood up, gripping his paddle in both hands. He had come out on a dare, and minutes ago he had said to himself, I don’t care if I live or die. This had given him a crazy courage. He had imagined being struck dead by magic, by something he would not be able to see or understand. Now he had seen, and that was a whale bigger than any he had ever heard about. He saw the shiny grey monster circling his boat just under the surface. His boat rocked wildly. The boy fell backwards, and without thinking shipped his long paddle for safety. The rope that held the half-boat to the whale glided past the prow of the boy’s boat and touched it, making his boat turn. With his right hand the boy fended off the half-boat that might have damaged his canoe. The monster was still circling. The boy saw the long shining lance that passed through the whale’s skin. It had a splendid point. It was made of metal, and was longer by far than the boy was tall. The boy coveted that spear. Could he capture it?

  The madness that he had felt on his island returned: he did not care if he lived or died! As the rope slid by on the left side of his boat, the boy seized it just under the water. He felt the terrifying pull of the whale, and he took a tighter grip on the rope with both hands and set his teeth. What if the whale took him on a great voyage to the edge of the earth and down? What if the whale turned and swallowed him? The boy’s boat moved, and he pitched forward, then got to his knees. His boat moved ever faster, first to one side then the other. Then suddenly the resistance was gone, and the boy fell backward, bare feet in the air for a moment. The rope hung limp in his hands, and he panted, scared, relieved and puzzled. He looked around but saw no whale, only a whirlpool in the sea nearby, where the whale had dived. He pulled the limp rope in hand over hand, and there was his prize—the beautiful lance!

  The lance was even a little longer than his boat! It had an arrow-like tip, sharp and strong. At the other end, a metal ring, an integral part of the lance, served to hold the rope which was securely tied to it. The wreck of a half-boat floated near. The boy’s parted lips began to smile. There was nothing to fear now. The lance was his, his weapon now. The half-boat, which his people had thought was magical, was nothing but part of a wreck. The whale had swum off. Or had it?

  The boy gazed carefully around in a circle once, and then again. The waters looked calm. He took up his paddle, reached for the rope that lay over his boat’s side, and gave the wreck a tug. There were valuable metal pieces on the wreck, he had noticed. He would burn these off and keep them.

  On the beach of the island, the boy was erect and silent, like a chief of the old days. A crowd of his people had been waiting for him, had swum out to pull his boat and the wreck on to the shore. The boy answered their excited questions calmly and briefly, like a man. He carried the lance straight up beside him, and would not let anyone touch it at first, then he did—smiling proudly as older men ran their thumbs along its tapered edge. The girl he liked was watching from a distance. She did not take her eyes from him, but when he had set out on the desperate voyage to the wreck, she had said she did not want him. Now things would be different. The whole world was different for the boy.

  It had occurred to the boy to say that he had killed the whale in whose body the lance had been fastened, but he decided against this. He simply told of a whale that had been pulling the half-boat, the biggest whale he had ever seen or heard of, as long as their island. He had managed to seize the end of the lance, he said, as the whale swam by, and had tugged it from the whale’s flesh. This everyone believed. Everyone went and touched the wreck, as if to assure himself that it held no magic powers. Men lifted and let fall the metal ring that held the rope, listening to its clink against the metal in the wreck’s side.

  The boy was even haughty for a while toward the girl he liked, pretending not to see her, though she was the main thing on his mind. He said that the whale was not only huge but stuck all over with lances and harpoons like a big pig stuck with spices for roasting. The whale was so big, no weapon would ever penetrate to its vital organs. Thus the boy enhanced his courage.

  That still left the whale, and the story of the impregnable monster became known in the islands, and lookouts were sharper on the little fishing boats, the idea being to avoid the beast. The story reached the ears of professional whalers, who with their harpoon guns were not afraid, and who reckoned that, even if the whale were not so large as reported, it would still be worth capturing. One of these whalers pursued the whale one day, and the whale eluded the ship by diving under and behind one of the long tankers that was moving on an undeviating course.

  The whale was heading north into seas that were cooler now and would become still cooler. Enough of the islands! He had a few more bone-tipped lances in him since he had shed the boat fragment. A lance near his left eye annoyed him, especially when he swam past vegetation that the lance touched. He was in a rather irritable and fighting mood all the time. This caused him to cru
ise some distance up a river one day by mistake.

  He had swum fast for several seconds into the river’s broad estuary, not realizing that it was not part of the sea, until the sour and bitter taste, the vibrations caused by something heavy being thrown in near him, alerted him to the fact that he was going in a wrong direction, toward a likely impasse as well as human enemies. He could even hear the churn of machinery. He turned and dived lower, heading back the way he had come.

  The water was foul, the river bed covered with jagged metal pieces, cylinders large and small, rotting ropes and chains. Boats above him tossed in the disturbance he made on the river’s surface, and men’s voices cried out. The whale shot forward with a great thrust of his tail, and something scratchy swept over his head, tweaked a lance, and stuck.

  For a few seconds he felt resistance, but not enough to stop him, and he reached the open sea at last. But when he paused, he felt a weight on either side of him, tending to pull him downward. He could see several weights on either side, all attached to one another on a cord which lay across the back of his head. The whale swam backwards, but the weights stayed with him. The rope or chain was somehow caught in the lances that stuck in him. He nosed toward one weight, but did not touch it: it was shaped like the floating things that bordered the routes into rivers, but these were smaller. To rise for air was now not so quickly done and, if he wished to cruise near the surface for brit, the weights came with him reluctantly, and slowly sank again.