Eye of the Whale (6 page)

“Is a funny sound,” the boy said.

“Whales make all sorts of sounds. Sometimes they sound like elephants trumpeting or dogs barking or birds chirping. Whales can sound like every animal you’ve ever heard.” She knew she was exaggerating, but only slightly. The whales echoed the whole chorus of the natural world.

Elizabeth took out the tape, labeled it, and carefully packed it away with the others in her equipment bag. She put a fresh tape in
the player and packed it in its yellow waterproof case. Like a professional photographer who always makes sure her camera is ready to shoot, Elizabeth always made sure she was ready to record. She felt a tinge of sadness. She wouldn’t be making more recordings until next January, when she would return for the beginning of the whale season.

“Is a
mama
whale?” Milton’s son said at last, after thinking about Elizabeth’s explanation of a contact call.

“Generally, it is the mothers who use the call, but in this case, it’s a male who’s singing. Only the boys sing.” It was strange to find these particular sounds, usually spoken between mother and child, in one of the songs, sung by a male.

The wooden slatted front door burst open.

“What is it?” Elizabeth asked as she stood up.

Milton had his hands on his knees and was trying to catch his breath. He was clearly in a panic. “Teo gone to get the whale family.”

FIVE

6:35
A.M.

E
LIZABETH AND
M
ILTON
ran down the cracked concrete steps from the road, knowing that at any moment Teo could dig his killing lance into Echo, Sliver, or the baby. They looked down to make sure they didn’t miss a step and then at each landing looked up and out at the horizon, scanning for the whaleboat. With one hand Elizabeth clutched her binoculars, and with the other she clasped her yellow case to her side to stop it from swinging and to protect the hydrophone inside. She had grabbed both instinctively when Milton had shouted to her, but now she regretted having the case, since it was slowing her down. Still, she managed to stay just a step behind Milton. Her feet knew the stairs, having descended them so many times in the predawn dark.

After stepping over a large rock in the path, Elizabeth was finally down at the beach. Half a dozen fishing boats, each painted a unique combination of bright colors, were hauled up on the sand. Milton and Elizabeth threw down the wooden skids, worn smooth and shiny by the hulls of countless boats. Each was the width of a forearm, and they laid them out like railroad ties.

Even without help, they could push the small green-and-yellow boat into the shallow water. Elizabeth hoisted herself into the boat, her lungs still burning. She tried to calm her breathing and scanned the horizon with her binoculars.

Milton released the pin and quickly lowered the Evinrude 35
into the water. He yanked on the starter cable. The engine sputtered but refused to turn over. Milton pulled on it again, but after the whine and complaint, nothing. Another six pulls, and Milton flipped back the engine cover. Elizabeth’s stomach was twisting as she looked back at him.

“Is the damn wire.” Milton jiggled a loose wire and lowered the cover. He kissed the tips of his fingers and then touched them to a sticker of the Virgin Mary that was stuck strategically to the engine cover. He again primed the hand pump on the tubing from the red gas tank and then gave the starter cable one last pull. The engine sputtered to life.

Milton gave the engine full throttle. Elizabeth’s unbraided hair was blowing behind her. They were soon cutting through the waves and banging down into the troughs as they sped past Semple Cay. Elizabeth’s heart was in her throat as she looked at the sterile white and gray whaling station. She shook from her mind the image of three carcasses—Echo, Sliver, and the baby—lying dead on the concrete ramp.

“Can’t this boat go any faster? He’s not going to remember Sliver,” Elizabeth shouted back to Milton. She thought of the promise that Teo had made her many years ago. Echo was the first whale she had identified, and Sliver the first mother. She had made those two whales real for Teo as she pointed out the distinctive patterns on their tails. “Those are your whales, Liza,” Teo had said. “We won’t take them.” But what if Teo didn’t see the fluke pattern?

“Me pray Teo don’t hurt the whale family,” Milton said.

“It’s
not
a family, Milton!” Elizabeth said, not meaning to speak so forcefully. She was trying hard to control her own feelings. Besides, the discovery that Echo was escorting Sliver was not proof of anything.

“Me know a proud papa when me see one,” Milton shot back, unconvinced.

Elizabeth continued to scan the horizon without her binoculars, which were made useless by the rolling swell. Then she saw it. “There’s the boat!” she shouted. Her heart sank as she saw that the mast had been unshipped. “Faster, Milton! Can’t you make this goddamn boat go any faster?”

“We fighting the wind and the waves, Liza.”

As they approached the twenty-seven-foot double-ender whaleboat, Elizabeth could see the hunt that was unfolding. Teo and his crew of five whalemen had harpooned the baby humpback. They had given it about twenty feet of line and were using it to lure the mother, an old trick learned from the Yankee whalers. A mother will never leave her calf.

Elizabeth knew the baby would be sending out its distress call as it strained against the rope. Elizabeth saw how small the blows were. It had to be confused and terrified.

Then she saw the dorsal fin of the mother breaking the surface as she circled around her baby and the whaleboat. Elizabeth steadied herself against the gunwale.

“Teo get an iron in the calf!” Milton shouted, now able to see the rope.

Elizabeth saw Teo in the bow of the boat, his leg snug in the knee chock as he readied the second iron, preparing to strike the mother as soon as she got close enough. His burnished copper face shone in the sunlight, and the cinnamon-wood harpoon was raised above his head. Jutting out of the shaft was an iron shank as long as his arm, and at its tip was a barbed blade.

“Stop!” Elizabeth cried, but her voice was swallowed by the whistling wind. She tried waving her arms, but all eyes were on the hunt. “Hurry, Milton, hurry,” she said as they banged over the swell and cut through the wind.

If only Sliver would fluke up and Teo could recognize her. But she knew that Sliver wouldn’t sound, wouldn’t leave her baby. Then
Sliver did something that Elizabeth had never seen a mother do before.

Sliver’s two enormous white pectoral fins towered out of the water on either side of the calf, curving toward each other. There was no way to describe this but to say that she was embracing her baby. Sliver must have come underneath so her belly could support her newborn. To help the tired baby breathe, Elizabeth thought at first. She had seen another mother whale take her “babe in arms” and strand it on her vast chest, perhaps to calm the calf. But no. That wasn’t it.

Sliver wasn’t willing to just help her baby die. As the mother whale began to roll away from the boat, Elizabeth realized she was trying to dislodge the harpoon. Sliver kept turning, the three-quarter-inch line wrapping around the mother and calf, yet the barb in the harpoon held fast. The mother was entangling herself, trapping herself as she tried to rescue her baby.

As they approached, Elizabeth waved her arms again and shouted Teo’s name. But her voice was still lost in the wind. Then she covered her mouth in horror as Teo cocked his arm back.

Teo pitched the harpoon into Sliver’s vulnerable left side just below her flipper. Elizabeth heard a cheer from the boat as the wound started to spray a four-foot jet of watery blood.

“Oh, God, no, oh, God.”

The mother had left herself vulnerable to the whalers, and they had struck her near her lung.
“Teo!”
Elizabeth shouted again, and this time she was close enough to be heard.

Teo looked up at her.

“It’s Sliver! Stop! It’s Sliver!”

Teo’s face fell as he realized what he had just done, but there was no time to answer.

Sliver continued rotating her giant body away from the whale
boat. The line was soon pulled taut, and the boat started to take on water.

“Loose the line, man, loose the line,” Teo shouted, trying to save his boat and his crew. The men let the rope run out around the loggerhead.

“Cut it!” Elizabeth shouted, but the leading oarsman did not reach for the hatchet. Not unless Captain Teo gave the order.

Sliver continued rolling and quickly took up the slack. She and her baby were now tangled in eighty feet of rope. Elizabeth could see the baby pressed against Sliver’s belly, the rough ropes starting to cut into its delicate skin.

“Get me closer,” Elizabeth shouted, hoping to put herself and the boat between the whales and the whalers.

Milton gunned the engine, his eyes wide. He knew they were in danger, and he was nervous. The swell brought them within a few feet of the whale, and when he reversed the motor, it was too late.

Sliver thrust herself out of the water in a partial breach. The fifteen-ton head came crashing down toward Milton’s boat.

“Jump, Milton,” Elizabeth shouted moments before the jaw splintered the bow of his boat. Elizabeth and Milton were thrown out of the boat as the planks shattered.

Elizabeth surfaced and gasped for breath. She was floating in the water, surrounded by countless wooden pieces. Only five feet away, a thirty-five-ton animal was still entangled and trying with every ounce of its strength to get free.

“Milton,” she shouted, “are you all right?” She knew that Milton, like many fishermen, could not swim.

“Me here at the whaleboat. Where you, Liza?” he yelled. He couldn’t see her on the opposite side of the whale.

Elizabeth did not answer. She was no longer thinking of fleeing,
as she saw Sliver’s flipper floating just under the water next to her, still straining against the line that encircled mother and calf. Elizabeth reached her hand down to touch the knobby leading edge of the fin, which seemed to stop resisting for a moment.

“Liza, get away from the whale,” Teo called out with the first traces of fear she had ever heard in his voice.

The water was unnaturally warm and smelled sickeningly sweet. It was dyed red with blood. Man-of-war birds, like vultures, were circling above.

A rifle shot startled Elizabeth. “Liza, get to the boat.” It was Teo again.

Elizabeth saw her yellow Pelican case floating nearby. She took a few overarm strokes to grab it and then swam around Sliver’s massive head. She looked for the whale’s eye, hoping to be able to judge how far gone Sliver was, but it was underwater. When Elizabeth came alongside the boat, she handed up her case. For the second time in as many days, she felt hands grab for her arms and pull her into the boat.

“Cut her loose,” Elizabeth demanded, panting and barely able to control her temper.

“She struck deep. If I cut her loose, she still die.”

Elizabeth looked around at the faces of the whalers. She didn’t know what she was looking for. She certainly wouldn’t find support. This was their moment of glory.

Uree, the midship oarsman and the youngest man in the crew, looked up at her from where he was bent over listening to the centerboard box. “The whale making noise,” he said.

Elizabeth unclipped her case. She dropped the hydrophone into the water and put on the headphones, as if the sound could help her save Sliver and her calf. Elizabeth closed her eyes and tried to decode it.
Eeee-eeee-eeee.
It was a distress call, plaintive and haunting.

The moan of maternal anguish cracked open any pretense of
objectivity shielding Elizabeth’s heart, and she had to choke back tears. Just the day before, she had witnessed the miracle of this mother giving birth and helped the baby to live. And now it was all for nothing—the calf and its mother were being murdered together. Elizabeth breathed deeply and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to will away the sight in front of her.

She knew this was the islanders’ celebration and communion, but for her the butchery remained an annual penance. The whalers were holding on to the two ropes, the mother’s wrapped around the loggerhead twice, as they pulled on the lines hand over hand, drawing the boat ever closer to the whale.

Teo picked up the eight-foot killing lance, its steel tip looming above him.

Elizabeth sprang to her feet before she had even considered her actions. She grabbed the thin brown metal shaft, smooth and worn from years of use. “Let her go.”

“The harpoon done hit the lung. Is too late for this one.”

“You promised me you wouldn’t hurt her. You lied to me.”

“I ain’t know it was Sliver,” Teo replied almost pleadingly. “I promise you.”

They both stopped dead, the killing lance between them. Everyone heard the sound coming from the far side of the boat.

It was like a trumpet. Teo knew it well from when he had been foolish enough to try to strike a bull. Elizabeth let go of the metal shaft.

“Echo come to save his queen,” Milton said, but there was fear, not joy, in his voice. The crew was looking down nervously, trying to see something, anything, in the dark blue of the deep water.

Nap, the lead oarsman, looked up and cried out, “Watch out—the whale!”

The tail towered above the boat like the hammer of God. It came crashing down on the water. Everyone fell onto the floorboards
as the wake rocked the boat violently. All steadied themselves by grabbing onto the gunwales. Elizabeth braced herself against a bulkhead and wedged her leg underneath a seat. Echo continued lobtailing, smacking his enormous flukes against the water next to the boat.

“If the whale come any closer, he shatter the boat,” Teo said as he dropped the lance and grabbed the bomb gun. Elizabeth stood up and tried to steady herself as the boat continued to rock.

“Get out the way, Liza.”

“Just cut the line!” Elizabeth said, the headphone shaken from one ear.

“Cap, shoot him, shoot him with the gun,” Rafee, the boat-steerer, cried from the stern.