by Farley Mowat
Claire made no attempt to persuade me to leave my family for her, but resigned herself to the situation as it was. So the two of us spent the winter in a kind of limbo, lightened by an occasional loving rendezvous.
I immersed myself in work and by March had completed two books: Owls in the Family and The Serpent’s Coil. My state of mind was not improved by a cryptic note from Martin Dutin that same month. Martin wrote to say Itchy had sunk, but had been raised and, assuming she was insured, he thought there should be no problem restoring her. I promptly cabled that she was insured (though not for much) and asked for details. When none were forthcoming, I feared the worst but hoped for the best.
Early in June I brought Jack the manuscripts for both books, ready for the press.
“You’ve been a good chum,” I told him. “In a couple of days I’ll be heading east to St. Pierre. With luck Claire will join me later on. I don’t know when I’ll be back. If I’ll be back. But I’ll keep you posted.”
Jack grinned his crooked grin and wished me well.
On July 1 an old DC-3 biplane flew me to the pasture airstrip in St. Pierre. It was not a happy landing. Neither Théo nor Paulo was at the strip to greet me, and when I tracked them down they were constrained and evasive. It was a while before I learned the whole story of the disaster that had befallen my vessel.
After my departure from St. Pierre the previous autumn, Théo and Paulo had been unable to agree whether Itchy should be hauled out at the shipyard where Paulo worked or on the beach where Théo wintered his dory. Since neither would defer to the other, she was not hauled out at all but was left moored to an abandoned wharf.
In February arctic pack ice laid siege to St. Pierre and a hard westerly gale pushed some of it into the harbour, where it stove Itchy’s stern and sank her in twelve feet of water.
Worse was to follow. Blaming each other for what had happened, Théo and Paulo both declined to do anything about it. In consequence, my poor little ship remained in the muck at the bottom of a filthy harbour for two months, sinking ever deeper into the ooze of fish-plant debris and town sewage. Not until nearly the end of May did my two friends, spurred by the knowledge that I would soon appear, declare a truce. Only then was Itchy finally refloated and hauled up on the slipway for repairs.
The shipwrights refused to touch her until she had been cleansed of the noxious slime that filled her bilges and cabin. Since nobody could be found to tackle this noisome task, she had been left as she was, pending my decision as to what should be done with her.
Ella Geradin at l’Éscale had no doubt what that decision should be.
“You should sink her again. A lot deeper and farther out to sea. I can smell her here at the bar when the wind blows the wrong way. Ugh!”
There being nothing else for it, I cleaned her out myself–an experience I would not wish to repeat. Then I had difficulties getting the damage repaired. The shipyard’s owner agreed to do the work–but had his own agenda. So long as there was other work for the yard (and in spring there was plenty of it), none of the shipwrights went near my vessel. She could wait until they had nothing else to occupy their time.
July was one of the bleakest months I have ever lived through. Théo’s family had abandoned him after accusing him of trying to make love to his daughter-in-law. He was shunned by almost everyone in St. Pierre, as were those who admitted to being his friends. Since I was staying in his now otherwise empty house with him, this included me.
He and I and my vessel were virtual pariahs.
Nevertheless, Itchy slowly recovered. Repairs were made and several improvements implemented. Among these was the installation of a new engine–a twin-cylinder diesel of the type used in British lifeboats. And, with Claire very much in mind, I rebuilt the cabin, installing a homemade toilet consisting of a pail with a seat and a cover, and improving the galley. And the bunks.
One day a telegram was delivered, telling me Claire would arrive in Sydney by train on July 29, hoping to travel on to St. Pierre aboard the small French freighter Miquelon. The telegram also told me she had taken two weeks’ leave from work, which, along with her annual holidays, meant we would have almost a month together.
St. Pierre had been solidly fogged in for a week, but on the twenty-eighth the sun broke through, literally and figuratively. I had heard that Henri Moraze, a Basque who had made a fortune out of le whiskey, was setting up an air service to ferry tourists to the isles, and that his one and only aircraft, chartered from St. John’s, was expected to arrive next morning for the inaugural flight to Sydney. This was too good a chance to miss. Next morning I was waiting on the wet grass of the strip as the mist parted and a four-seater Comanche zipped in beneath the cloud cover. Almost beside myself with impatience to see Claire again, I asked the pilot, a rangy young man called Charley, if he would take me on the flight to Sydney. Happy to have company, he agreed to do so.
We landed in Sydney an hour and a half later and when the train pulled into the station at midnight I was there to meet it. Off stepped the golden girl of my dreams. I hustled her off to the Isle Royale Hotel, where I had booked the best room, overlooking the harbour. It was a still and lovely night and the moon shone full into our windows, spilling its light over the double bed with such intensity we never did bother to switch on the electric lights.
Late next morning–a sunny Sunday–we went walking hand in hand along the esplanade past a row of superannuated steamships to where the Miquelon was moored. She seemed abandoned too, but we found her second mate aboard. He told us the vessel had broken something vital in her engine and would not be going anywhere for at least ten days. As an apology he gave us a packet of dried capelin and a bottle of wine.
I phoned Charley at the airport to see if he could take us back to St. Pierre, only to be told the fog was too thick for him to fly.
Claire and I hardly cared. We were together, and the day was fair. We ambled happily about Sydney, a coal-mining town not much celebrated for its beauty. We found it charming. That night we dined excellently at its premier restaurant–Joe’s Steak House–after which we idled along the esplanade, where we joined an extraordinary assembly of dogs, young and old, large and small, of all colours and both sexes, who seemed to be staging their own promenade. We were the only human participants.
After a time the moon began to rise so we went back to our room, where, when we grew a little peckish, we toasted capelins on candles provided by the hotel in case of emergency and drank the bottle of wine from the Miquelon. Bathed in moonlight and love, we did not care if we had to spend the rest of our lives in Sydney. Claire whispered in my ear: “This might be the closest we ever get to a honeymoon, darling. If it is, I won’t mind a bit.”
In the middle of Monday morning, Charley called to say the fog had lifted and St. Pierre might be found if we moved fast. After hurrying to the airport, we discovered we were the only passengers, sharing the plane with Charley and several bags of mail.
It was a perfect day for flying. At my request Charley took us close enough to the south shore of Newfoundland so that Claire could see something of its mighty fiords, its tiny settlements, the Blue Hills of Couteau floating on the vast inland plateau, and the Annieopsquotch Mountains rearing on the northern horizon.
We made landfall at Miquelon, and Charley gave us a guided aerial tour of the French Isles, flying so low over the Great Barachoix and over La Dune that we sent seals and wild horses splashing and skittering away in all directions.
The farmer whose cows grazed St. Pierre’s airstrip (and sometimes had to be herded off so a plane could land) drove us into town and to the wharf where Itchy lay waiting, all freshly painted and smelling of attar of roses (thanks to a gift of perfumed soap from Ella) to welcome Claire back aboard.
That night when we climbed into our new bunks (into one of them) and blew out the small flame of the oil lamp, the manifold trials and tribulations of the past several months vanished out of mind. At midnight the ship’s clock struck its round of bells and I sleep
ily murmured the watchkeeper’s ancient chant:
“Eight bells…and all is well.”
Toward dawn I came suddenly awake to the sound of stentorian breathing from somewhere close at hand. Groggily I poked my head out the companionway and shone a flashlight into the murk. Its pallid rays revealed a school of pilot whales circling the inner harbour.
The sleek black creatures, some of them fifteen feet in length, cruised slowly past the stern of the boat, blowing great gusts of fishy breath as they passed. Puzzled by their presence but relieved to know the source of the strange sounds, I saluted them and went back to Claire.
We woke, somewhat belatedly, to the clatter of pounding feet and went on deck to find what seemed to be most of the town’s population scrambling to find vantage points from which to watch an extraordinary spectacle.
Twenty-two whales, including several great bulls and a number of cows accompanied by their calves, were being harassed back and forth and around the inner harbour by men in motorboats led by Louis Paturel, son of one of the town’s richest merchants. The men were armed with stabbing weapons, mostly contrived from butcher’s knives with wooden staffs as handles; one of the men, a visiting sportsman from France, was wielding a stiletto-like blade two feet long.
Running their boats alongside the panic-stricken whales as these rose to breathe, the pursuers thrust at them indiscriminately. Their crude weapons were unable to deliver mortal blows, but several whales were soon spouting geysers of blood from their blowholes while others gushed crimson fountains from backs and flanks.
At this juncture Théo appeared and pushed through the crowd to ask if I wanted him to bring Oregon into the harbour so we could enjoy a better view of the sport. He seemed surprised and somewhat offended when I brusquely refused his offer.
Although Claire was revolted by what was taking place and I was infuriated, there appeared to be little we could do about it except chase away the spectators who were trying to use our vessel as a vantage point.
We were foreigners here. When I saw Martin in the crowd, I asked him to do something to stop the butchery. He replied, with some embarrassment: “Farlee, the St. Pierrais, they are fishermen, non? This is their harbour. So it is for them to do what they please.”
What they were pleased to do was spend the remainder of the day tormenting the whales, driving them round and round the harbour in which they were being contained by a fusillade of bullets fired by riflemen posted at the harbour entrance.
By noon some whales were so injured or so exhausted they could no longer flee. These became targets for ramming. Unable to sustain herself, one cow with calf ran herself up on a shoal and, as she lay there, was attacked by men wielding axes.
It was too much for us. Cravenly, we abandoned ship, hurried through the town, and climbed into the hills until we could no longer hear the growl and snarl of boat engines. We did not return to Itchy until dusk had sent the sportsmen to their homes–or to the cafés and bars to relive the day’s entertainment and to plan what they would do on the morrow.
When darkness had fallen, I undertook a quixotic attempt to avert what promised to become a massacre. As Claire quietly cheered me on, I took our little dinghy and rowed into the night, hoping to herd the whales to freedom through the now-unguarded harbour entrance.
They were not difficult to locate for they were clustered close together, blowing so loudly I had only to row toward the whistling rush of their laboured breathing. I approached them nervously, very much aware of their size, of the mystery of them, and hoping they would not turn on a member of the species that was tormenting them.
As I shipped my oars and slowly drifted in among them, my apprehension dissipated, to be replaced by something akin to the sense of oneness I had felt during my brief meeting with the white-sided dolphins at Miquelon.
I found myself talking to them.
I told them they must leave–begged them to leave, telling them that in the morning they would be slaughtered. I told them to follow me, then, picking up the oars, I began rowing slowly toward the lighthouse at the harbour entrance.
For a time I thought they were following, but the darkness was almost absolute and I could see nothing clearly. Nearing the entrance I stopped and listened. I could still hear their sonorous breathing but there were no rippling water sounds.
The whales were not with me.
I tried again, and yet again, but they would not follow, choosing to remain in the illusory safety of the middle of the harbour. Eventually I returned to Claire and when I told her I had failed, she took me in her arms and we wept together.
Early next morning the holocaust began. The sullen roar of speedboat engines rose to a crescendo. Someone organized a dozen boats into a semicircle to drive the exhausted whales into shoal water at the end of the harbour and to hold them there until the falling tide had stranded them in viscous, stinking mud.
Once the whales had been immobilized, thirty to forty men and boys (some as young as ten or twelve years) waded into the muck and began butchering them with knives and hatchets. The waters of St. Pierre harbour ran red with blood as, one by one, the whales perished.
It was as berserk and gory a spectacle as any I have ever witnessed, more terrible than anything I saw even during my years as an infantryman at war. It was the ultimate Killer Animal at his demonic worst.
The aftermath was as demented as the massacre had been. Louis Paturel later claimed to have had expectations of selling the giant corpses, but nothing came of this, there being no market for whale flesh.
The dead whales began to rot. In the end, the carcasses had to be laboriously winched ashore, loaded onto trucks by means of a mobile derrick, and carted across the island to the cliffs at Savoyard, where they were dumped into the ocean for wind and current to carry away.
Perhaps the bodies of some of the victims drifted onto the beaches of La Dune, where their bones may still remain.
Pushthrough
The troubles that had beset Itchy (and me), combined with revulsion at the massacre of the whales, soured me on St. Pierre. I was ready and anxious to depart. Though still romantically enamoured of the place, the whale butchery had deeply upset Claire, and when I proposed that we sail immediately to Newfoundland on a shakedown cruise to test the new engine and to ensure our little ship was again in good order, she agreed.
Early one morning we set off for Fortune some thirty miles distant on the northwest shore of Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula. The day was bright and clear, the wind light and fair. I experienced a powerful feeling of relief as St. Pierre fell astern. A small voice in the back of my head was muttering that there was really no need for us to return to St. Pierre at all. All Newfoundland lay ahead inviting our exploration.
At noon we met the Spencer outbound for St. Pierre. As we passed one another, the French Isles dropped astern and we sailed into a different world. The water soughed under Itchy’s forefoot as she shouldered her way through sparkling seas. She was fully alive again, doing what she had been built to do, and doing it superbly. Claire sat at the tiller, the wind in her face and her eyes as bright as the dazzle from the sunlit waves. Once in a while we looked at each other, laughing with the sheer joy of being alive on such a day. The hours slipped by until at seven o’clock we were abeam of Fortune Head, close enough to shore to wave to a woman who came to the door of the light-keeper’s cottage. The sea ahead was full of dories whose crews were jigging squid. They beckoned us on as if we were one of their own little schooners returning out of the past.
Entering Fortune was not quite the same thing as entering Paradise. An enormous fish plant had so poisoned both air and water that even the gulls appeared sickly. We found a mooring at the Spencer’s home wharf and before long were found by officialdom in the shape of George Squires, Canada Customs officer.
George was apologetic. Because we had arrived from a “foreign port” we could not simply step ashore–we first had to be cleared back into Canadian jurisdiction.
“
Damn foolishness!” George muttered as he passed me yet another paper to sign. “Never ye mind, skipper; when we gits done with all this balderdash, you and your Missis’ll come along of me to the house for a scoff.”
I glanced at Claire to see how she took the assumption we were a married couple. When she met my anxious look with the flicker of a smile, I felt I had just been given carte blanche to enter a new world.
Having done what he absolutely had to do, George forewent an examination of the ship for contraband. Which was as well, for I had stowed a good many bottles in lazarettes and lockers and even under the floorboards.
Regretfully George informed me that Itchy could not, however, enter Canadian waters as a Basque vessel, or under any but her properly registered name. We would therefore have to lower the Basque flag and replace the name boards. However, though our little ship again became Happy Adventure, she never did entirely succeed in shucking off her sobriquet. Those who knew her intimately would continue to call her Itchy.
Our official re-entry into Canada strengthened the secret hand I was playing. That night as we sat in the little cabin I remarked to Claire, “Since we’re here anyway and it’s going to be a hell of a nuisance clearing out of Canada again, why don’t we spend a few days cruising the coast? It’s a world of wonders.”
I had powerful memories of the great tangle of fiords called Bay Despair not far to the west of Fortune Bay that I had glimpsed from the deck of the Baccalieu four years earlier. Claire was receptive. She knew next to nothing about Newfoundland and wished to know more. Although not exactly enthralled by the ominous sound of the name, she agreed that we should make a sally into Bay Despair.
I had no large-scale chart of the Sou’west Coast so early next morning I went aboard the Spencer for a chat with her skipper, a white-bristled old seadog who took me into his wheelhouse, where he unrolled a yellowed chart so defaced as to be almost illegible. Ignoring the chart, he then proceeded to recite from memory the courses and hazards lying between Fortune and the head of Bay Despair.
