A Whale For The Killing (16 page)

I WOKE LATE, TO THE familiar whine of a sou’west wind and the dry rustle of snow blasting against the house. Already, great grey seas were pounding the headlands of the offer islands. It was clear there would be small chance to visit the whale this day. I viewed the storm with mixed feelings. We could do no further seining while the sou’wester lasted but, on the other hand, the whale would be left in peace, free of human interference and intrusions, to feed on the herring we had already driven into the Pond.

But if she was to have a day of peace, we were not. Before I had been up ten minutes I was called to the phone, and for the balance of the day was engaged in dealing with an almost continuous telephonic siege.

Many of the calls were querulous requests for help from newsmen and camera crews stranded in stormbound airports all the way from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to St. John’s, Newfoundland. Some of them seemed to take the storm, and Burgeo’s isolation from the world, as personal affronts. How was it, asked one television interviewer, with an edge in his voice, that he had recently been able to cover stories in Helsinki, Tokyo and Chile, all within the space of a week, but couldn’t reach a godforsaken little burg in his own country?

A bit impatiently I explained that he could always do as we natives did and catch the weekly steamer to Burgeo from Port aux Basques. This suggestion seemed to give him little comfort.

It also gave small comfort to Bob Brooks. He was now in a fever of impatience to be gone with what was still a photographic scoop on the whale. However, although the westbound coastal boat was due in Burgeo this day, he could not be persuaded to book passage in her. Apparently modern media man, deprived of winged machines, is something of a cripple. And it was obvious that the only wings we were going to see over Burgeo for the next day or two would belong to storm-tossed gulls.

I did not feel much sympathy for the problems of the news people but it was quite another matter when I got a call from Dr. William E. Schevill at the marine research station, Woods Hole, Massachusetts. I knew Schevill to be one of the world’s foremost whale biologists. He told me he had heard about our whale and was ready to come to Burgeo at once. His difficulty was how to get to us. I suggested he try to arrange something with the U.S. naval air base at Argentia in southeast Newfoundland. This he did with such dispatch that he was able to call me from Argentia late that evening with the news that not only had he reached Newfoundland, but he was standing by with an amphibious navy aircraft at his disposal, ready to descend on Burgeo the moment the weather cleared.

“It may not clear for days. If you want to be sure of getting here, you’d better come by sea,” I told him, adding half facetiously that he might ask the navy to lend him a destroyer.

Alas, the navy was not to be persuaded. The storm had worsened and the naval commander at Argentia decided that the roaring rock wall of the Sou’west Coast was no place for one of his ships.

The Burgeo whales seem to have decided that the inshore waters were no place for them that day either.

Early in the morning the Canadian government ship
Mont-gomery,
which maintained and serviced lighthouses and navigation aids on the coast, put into Burgeo for shelter. She dropped two anchors in the mouth of Short Reach only a few hundred yards from the entrance to Aldridges Pond and there she rode out the gale for the next two days. One of her people, an oceanographer, made the most of this opportunity to watch the Burgeo whales.

Shortly after the
Montgomery
came to anchor, a pod of four appeared in the mouth of The Reach. They were fishing hard, as if perhaps they knew it might be some time before they would feed again. Time after time they worked shoals of herring in toward Greenhill Island and the oceanographer could see sudden flurries of little fishes break the surface at the end of each whale’s rush.

About noon, by which time the sea was building to formidable size, three members of the pod swam past the ship in close formation, heading resolutely southeast toward open water. When their spouts were last seen they were nearly a mile offshore.

“I guessed what they were up to,” the oceanographer told me later. “We’d heard the marine forecasts and we knew there was a devil of a blow coming. Our skipper had to choose between running in to the lee of the land for shelter—which he did—or heading out to sea to get as much of an offing as we could. And I think the whales must have had just about as good an idea of what was brewing as we did. Only
their
choice was to go offshore. It made sense. Even in as good an anchorage as ours, the groundswell was bad enough to keep the ship tugging at her anchors like a wild horse. The surge coming right up from the bottom would have made lying uncomfortable for a whale. But once away from land they could go way below the turbulence and drift around in comfort with just the occasional trip back up to spout. It’s the same principle submariners use in a storm: go deep and find the quiet water.”

Though three of the pod made this choice, one of the whales remained “on station,” as the watcher put it, seldom more than a quarter of a mile from the mouth of Aldridges Pond.

“That would have been your Guardian whale, I expect. And I’ll tell you, he never shirked his duty. Except when the snow drift got too thick, or at night, every time I looked that way I’d soon see his spout. It was curious how often he spouted, too. When the pod was fishing together they only blew about once every ten minutes, but this chap was up and down every two or three minutes and he’d sometimes stay up for quite a while, usually when he was right at the entrance to Aldridges Pond. I got the idea he was thinking of having a go at the channel himself, though I never actually saw him try it.”

While the rest of the family went seaward, leaving the Guardian at his post, the lady whale remained unmolested in the Pond. But when Danny and Murdoch made a patrol in mid-morning, before the weather got too rough, they found that the barrier net, which we had replaced the previous evening, had again been cut adrift and badly mutilated.

“The whale seemed right contented,” Danny reported. “We stayed about half an hour and she swam right up to we, as if she recognized us and was glad to have a visit. Once or twice I thought she was going to rub along our side like a cat’ll rub against a man’s leg. Thank God she didn’t do it. She’d have heeled the old launch right over on her side.”

Danny had one disquieting thing to say. “Remember when we first saw her, her back was smooth as a baby’s bum? Now she looks sort of lumpy over pretty near the whole of her topsides. Don’t know what to make of it.”

Without giving it much thought, I assumed this “lumpy” appearance to have been due to a continuing loss of weight, and it made me even more concerned about the food supply. There was no way of telling when our barrier net had been cut, or how much of the herring school had escaped.

Since by Thursday noon Premier Smallwood had not replied to my request for the
Harmon,
I sent another even more urgent wire in which I also asked that the RCMP be empowered to protect the barrier net and to restrict boat movement in the Pond.

Although there was no direct response from the Premier, rumours began to filter in from St. John’s to the effect that the
Harmon
would be sent; that she was already on her way, and even that Smallwood himself would make an official visit to his ward on Saturday.

As the gale increased during Thursday night, so did my problems. Curt Bungay stumbled through the blizzard, his crimson face positively blazing from the wind, to tell me that the Hanns and Andersons wanted to be paid immediately for their work.

“Wash and me,” Curt explained in some embarrassment, “we’s satisfied to wait, but the others says on account of Joey give you a t’ousand dollars for whale feed, some of it rightly ought to go to all of we right now.”

“But I haven’t got the money yet. It’s only promised.”

“I believes it, but they fellows thinks you got it in your pocket. They won’t believe no different.”

“How much are they asking?”

“Well... they figures each man should get $25 for each fishing, and $10 for each dory, and $20 for the seine.”

“That’s $200 a time!” I protested.

Curt nodded. “’Tis high, that’s certain... but they’s lots of hard feelings in Burgeo right now. Some says it’s a cruel waste for the government to give money for to feed a whale at all. Some says...” he paused, reluctant to continue.

“What do ‘some’ say?” I asked grimly.

“Well, Farley, bye, ’tis this way. Some says you and that Sou’wester crowd is only looking out to yourselves. They can’t stomach the way some of they fellows shot at the whale one day and set theyselves up to save it the next. They thinks you fellows is going to pocket whatever money comes.”

“Anything else?” I snapped.

Curt was almost too upset to answer. However, he also had a temper, and it was rising.

“Well... yiss... since you asks. There’s people so ugly at the closing off of the Pond, they says they’ll finish off the whale afore they lets you bar they out. They got their rights, you knows. Nobody takes easy to it when they gets their rights took from them!”

The defiant note in his voice gave me pause. “All right, Curt, I’m sorry. Nobody’s going to stamp on anybody’s rights. You can tell the crowd I’ll pay them what they want, only they’ll just have to wait until the money comes.”

“Me and Wash’ll wait, sure, and no charge for our boat neither... but I don’t know about them fellows.” Curt stood up and began buttoning his pea jacket. Then, hesitantly, he fished out a damp piece of paper and laid it on the table. “Don’t know as you see this... ’twas posted up at the plant today.”

With a quick “goodnight,” he was gone into the storm, leaving me to study a mimeographed handout.

CITIZENS OF BURGEO

Dear Neighbours:

You are well aware that in the past week or so there has been more publicity about Burgeo that there has ever been before. At this time when the citizens of the town and their elected representatives are doing everything in their power to get urgently needed facilities—i.e., Water, Sewer, Streets and Highways—this publicity is of immeasurable value.

Moby Joe is and will continue to be one of the most important “inhabitants” of our town as long as we can maintain it. As more and more people learn that Burgeo has a whale, we will have more and more people coming here to see and study it. The more people who come, the more important the town is and the more imperative it is that those in authority provide the facilities which are so urgently needed.

Will you cooperate with your neighbours in their efforts to keep Moby Joe alive and healthy? You can do this by not using your boat in the Pond for pleasure cruising. We do not ask fishermen or those carrying water to stay out because they usually do not disturb the whale. It is imperative though that speedboats do not enter the Pond since this does scare the whale and could cause him to ground.

We, your neighbours, are depending on you, and we trust you will cooperate.

By all means go and see your whale. If you go to Richards Hole and cross over from there, you will have a perfect view and you will not disturb Moby Joe.

Sincerely yours,

THE SOU’WESTERS

I was annoyed, for I could see how this flier, a copy of which was later mailed to every family in Burgeo, would fan the hostility against the Sou’westers, with whom I now found myself bedded.

My mood was lightened by a phone call from Marie Penny, the “Queen of Ramea,” as she was affectionately called, a widow woman of formidable ability and almost equally formidable presence, who owned and operated a small fish plant on Ramea Island, some fifteen miles from Burgeo. Marie was an old friend of ours.

“Hear you’ve got a new pet, Farley? Having trouble feeding it, are you? Asked Joey for a seiner, eh? Heard it on the radio just now. Well, boy, my guess is your whale’ll be dead of old age before you see the
Harmon.
You should know better than to trust a politician! Now then, we’ve got a big capelin trap over here. Cost us $5,000 and it’s as good as new. Should work as well on herring as on capelin. I’ll put it aboard the
Pennyluck
when she gets back from Hermitage, where she’s holed up waiting out the storm. You get somebody with some sense to set it and your whale will have a stomach ache from overeating. No... no... never mind the thanks. Just see you don’t tear the bottom out of it.”

Marie’s was the last call that night. The telephone went dead and we were able to go to bed. But the conflicts in my mind kept me from sleeping. I lay listening to the thunder of the seas and the pulsating howl of wind, feeling the house quiver on its granite rock.

What, I wondered, was the whale doing in the bitter darkness of this raging night? What had she felt during the long days of her captivity?

Pain, she had surely felt—and fear. Had she felt despair? Did she have any hope of eventual escape? As she circled the confines of the prison Pond, did she ponder the horror of her probable fate? What wordless thoughts were passing between her and the Guardian? What did she feel about the two-legged beasts who at first tried to kill her and who were now driving herring into her prison?

No answers... none. Her mind was as alien to mine as mine to hers. Strangers... strangers... we were
all
aliens, one to the other, even those of us who were cloaked in the same fleshly shapes. What did I really know of the innermost feelings even of my Burgeo neighbours... or they of mine? What did the world beyond Burgeo know, or care, of the passions the whale’s coming was unleashing in this community? Was there any real comprehension or true communication even between the human actors involved in this bizarre drama? The more I thought about it all, the more I realized that the inter-human conflict would grow worse for want of understanding. It might well become intolerable. Suddenly I wanted nothing quite so much as to see the trapped whale freed... not only for her sake now, but for my own ease as well. I wanted her away from Burgeo, where her presence had become a threatening shadow of disruption.