At the Midway (19 page)

The whaler drew alongside and a large chain was lowered.  William looked on as it was wrapped around the small of the tail.  Loud metallic clanking pounded his ears as the chain was drawn through the forward hawse-pipes.  It seemed like a dirge for both the whale and Lead Foot, who sat glowering like a man just kicked by his lover.

It was the larboard boat's privilege to be raised first, if practicable.  Rowing to the
Lydia
Bailey's
port side, the first mate called up for the falls to be lowered.

William was bracing an oar against the steamer's hull when the duff sauce came down.  Otherwise, it might have dropped straight into his eyes.  Lead Foot saved him from falling over the gunwale by grabbing the waist of his pants and pulling backwards.  It was a near thing.  Had he gone overboard, his head might have been crushed between the whaleboat and the iron-tough Australian greenheart that sheathed the
Lydia
Bailey's
hull.

The liquid bomb from above was remarkably accurate.  The other men in the boat caught only a few splatters.  Pegg's hair became a sticky gumbo.  His clothes reeked of foul sauce.  His neck burned fiercely as the heated sauce ran under his slicker.

Here was another kind of baptism.  The high priests of vindictiveness showed their chins overhead.  The bucket from which the duff sauce had been emptied was waved in triumph.

"Down lad, down..." Lead Foot cautioned, making feeble attempts to hide his own mirth.

William's hands were now too slick with sauce to maneuver the davit hooks.  Lead Foot made him sit, then assumed the boatsteerer's position and took hold of the grapples.  Coordinating his efforts with the first mate, bow and stern were made secure and the boat was raised.

"Down lad, down...."

"Whew!" Chandry clowned as the boatmen jumped on deck.  But there was no time to rub the sauce in Pegg's wounds of embarrassment.  Tradition demanded the presence of the ship's captain when first cutting into a whale.  The cutting stage had been lowered and the flensers were awaiting his arrival to start.  Above them, the steam winch putt-putt-putted louder and louder as the strain on it increased.  This was caused by the weight of the sperm whale against the five-and-a-quarter-inch rope it lay on.  The lines rose to large snatch blocks high over the shrouds in the foremast, then came back down to the winch.  As the whale settled into the cradle, the steam engine driving the winch had a harder time keeping it from sinking.  Soon, though, the weight would be turned to the whalers' advantage.

Chandry clambered down the Jacob's ladder to the cutting stage.  The platform extended ten feet from the side of the ship and was connected by a twenty-two-foot long walking plank.  The plank was wide enough for a man to work on without too much trouble, so long as he was sober--a state rarely observed in the skipper.

He took several ritualistic belts from his mug before stepping out upon the middle of the stage.  Wobbling up and down the platform with a long-handled cutting spade over his shoulder, he looked for all the world like a rummy Father Time with his sickle.

Blessed with the knack for parading his mistrust, Chandry always ordered his flensers to perform tasks long since done.  The second and third mates were the flensers that day, but out on the cutting stage they had no more status than common deckhands.  Chandry sanctified the proceedings with few choleric shouts.  The flensers punched a hole through the rubbery fin and linked it to the tackles overhead.  The other end of the chain was attached to a windlass at the back of the flensing deck.  Using a stevedore's hook to gouge handholds, the third mate lifted himself to the fin and struck it a few times, extending it so tightly it barely shuddered.  He looked down at the captain, as if to say, "See that, you old fool?"

A useless, even harmful, waste of time.  There was no telling how much unnecessary strain had been put on the tackles and masts over the years because of the captain's penchant for doing things twice
-
-
in all likelihood, because he'd forgot doing them the first time.
 
Leaning back against the pole that was lashed to the iron rods supporting the platform, Chandry nodded sagely.

Pushing off from the post, he hefted his cutting spade and faced the whale and ship.  "Ready above!" he slurred.  The men on deck barely heard him over the steam winch and the roar of the boilers under the flensing deck, but they knew the routine.  Taking up handspikes, those assigned to the job inserted them into the windlass and started to turn.

It was not their task to rotate the whale.  The weight of the carcass opposed to the pull of the steam winch accomplished that as soon as the flensers cut in.  Making their incisions at six-foot intervals, they separated the fin from the shoulder blade, using that portion as a lead, then rolled the blubber off the body.  It was like peeling an apple, the whale's meat and musculature exposed as its fat was lifted by the men at the windlass like a banner of flesh.

William concentrated on maintaining his grip on the handspike he was pushing against.  The duff sauce had begun to harden into a glossy shell.  But where his hands met the spike, the friction melted the sauce and made things slippery.  The men at the windlass with him plied him with complaints.

"You smell like a turd someone slipped on."

"Trade places with me, mate.  I'll puke, one more minute next to this dead fish."

Seeing that William's presence was affecting work at the windlass, the first mate relieved him, drafting a hapless cook to take his place.  Eyes downcast, the boy stood to the side, glazed and useless.

"What's this oakum boatsteerer about?"  Captain Chandry stormed across the flensing deck.  Smoke from the boilers and rendered blubber swam around him so he no longer looked like Father Time, but Satan himself.

He had not lasted long on the cutting stage.  He never did.  There was always an extra man at the cradle to take his place whenever the strain overtook him.  Treating each whale like a new building, he broke the ground, then let the contractors take over.  Once back aboard, he took three more sips from his mug and glanced about.  He saw his newest boatsteerer idling next to the donkey engine.

At first, it seemed he was going to lay hold of the boy.  One whiff warded him off.  "Stay to looward, boy.  You're a fat chip off a whale turd, you are."

Staring openly at Chandry, with his gray hair slicked back and his walrus-brush moustache soggy with booze, William was tempted to take a handspike to his bloated face.  He sensed a cautionary aura at his elbow, but Lead Foot's silent warning only boosted his wrath.  Philosophers!  Old men!  He was sick of them.  They were all either drunk or resigned to incomprehensible speculations.  Why should they be listened to?  Why should they be in charge?

"You're a bastard, Chandry," Pegg said.  "You near killed me in the forecastle.  And now...
this
."  The martyr pose he stuck was marred by clenched fists.

The captain's eyes nearly popped with delight.  The boy's previous restraint had perplexed and bored him.  This was more like it.  Cupping a hand over his ear, he leaned closer.  "What's that ye say?  You'll be hard of hearin' too, when you been boxed enough times."

"I said you're a--"

If he'd known the captain could move with any semblance of coordination, William would have dodged the blow.  As it was, he'd barely time to blink before Chandry's huge fist caught him on the side of the head and sent him sprawling.  Strong-jawed and stronger-willed, Pegg was up on his feet in an instant.

But the captain was down.  His metal mug was rattling on the deck.  His face twisted in confusion.

Lead Foot massaged his knuckles.  "Well... there it is...."

"Yeah...."  Chandry sat up and made a cutting motion across his throat.  "There it is, Mr. Manahan."

Manahan?  William glanced at the old man.  Lead Foot had a real name?  Hard to believe.  It was like slapping a cheap label on the Sphinx.

A shout from starboard.  Fearful something was awry with his precious catch, Chandry leapt up and started to run for the railing.

There was a loud explosion of jolted wood and the ship lurched violently to port.  A huge fan of water blew in from the starboard beam.  Every man was knocked off his feet.  William just missed falling into one of the vat openings on the flensing deck.  Through the hatch he heard screams as the men below were burned by super-heated blubber and he slammed into the starboard rail and held on for dear life.  There were shouts as several men went overboard, then something dropped with a sickening "
whap
!" amidships.  It was the lookout falling from the crow's nest.  The drop must have broken every one of his bones.  His body rolled like a sack when the ship lurched again.

The movement stopped.  Raising his head, Pegg saw Lead Foot clinging to the side of a hatch cover.

Everything pointed to a broadside collision, yet there was no other ship in sight.  The deck was awash in salt water and whale blood.

Leaning over the starboard rail, they saw nearly half the sperm whale was missing.  The section attached to the derrick had fallen and lay crosswise over the carcass, while the portion still attached to the whale stretched out ten feet or so into the water.  A fleet of wood fragments told them the cutting stage had disintegrated.

"Where's Billings?  Pitts?"

These were two of the flensers who'd been out on the platform.  The purser pointed at some heads bobbing in the water.  Billings, Pitts, and those who had tumbled overboard were swimming frantically towards the ship.

"What the hell was it?" Chandry shouted at them.

"Something's out here!" the second mate yelled.

Abruptly, the huge carcass began jumping, thrashing, and leapt half out of the cradle of the steam winch cables.  The remains of the platform, the brackets that had connected the ship to the walking plank, boomed against the hull.  The whale's internal organs looked as if they were boiling.

"There's something
inside
it!" William cried hoarsely.

They leaned out.  Something was beginning to appear under the exposed ribs.  The gluey, purplish mass seemed to be dissolving.  Suddenly, in the thrash of blood and water, two black eyes appeared.

"Sweet Jesus!"

William was not the only one to jump away from the rail.

"Captain...."

"Yeah... I see...."  Chandry was following the outstretched arm of one of the Portuguese.  The head that was unveiled under the ribs was attached to something outside the whale's body.  With a start, he noticed the huge brown outline at a right angle to the ship.  The seamen in the water were no longer trying to get on board, but cutting waves as fast as they could to get away from the thing.  Chandry took a stab at estimating its size, and failed. 
Must be the aguardiente,
he thought secretly.  He found himself blocking off stretches of ocean in his mind.  What he was seeing could not be that big.  Each time he did so, however, his eyes blurred and he had to readjust his perspective.  Finally, he fixed in his mind the largest living creature he'd ever seen, a blue whale, and matched it against the outline.

Again, his gauge was inadequate.  This monster was bigger than a blue... holy Mother.  He turned to his first mate.

"What do you make of her?"

The mate's eyes were stark with disbelief.  "It's a serpent...."

"I can see that, fool!"

To either side of the outline water splashed loudly.  The beast backed out of the whale, ripping off a chunk of meat as it raised a flipper and initiated a massive turn around the ship.

Chandry stood back and nudged the clump that had been the lookout with his toe.  "Ain't much left of him, is there?  Damn thing near hulled us."  Unsteadily, he marched aft, following the progression of the monster as it described a slow, lazy circle around the
Lydia
Bailey
.  "A serpent!  We have a serpent!  A kraken!  A dragon!  A hippogriff!  A big fat eel!  How many barrels are in her, you think?" Chandry asked, dragging the first mate with him.  "How many you think, mate?"

A blue whale could yield upwards to two hundred and fifty barrels of oil.  This creature must hold at least that much.  Naturally, the way it ate through the carcass, it would have nothing in the way of baleen.  This was a flat-out flesh eater, probably with long sharp teeth--ranks of them, if its mouth was like a shark's.  But the oil would be enough, even if its long neck held not an ounce.  At a stroke the cruise would be saved.  Chandry would pass through Golden Gate with heavy holds and purses unclasped.

"How many barrels, mate?  How many, you think?"  He tripped over coils, fallen tackles, spar rings and his own feet as he circled the ship to keep the thing in sight.

"He's not going after it?" William asked pensively.

"Why not?" Lead Foot said, his eyes locked to the whale carcass.  He was watching two new monsters, both smaller than the first yet still immense.  They were nibbling the meat off the whale's ribs.  One of them had a pair of faint olive streaks running back over its knobby brow.  Lead Foot could not know he was looking at the young female Tu-nel, or that the markings on her head would vanish when she reached adulthood.

 
The mother returned to starboard and snapped at the young male, driving him away a short distance.  She bit off another chunk of whale meat, then began orbiting the
Lydia
Bailey
again.