The human watchers were transfixed, as if this was a dream from which they never wanted to wake. The otherworldly beauty and magic of what they were seeing removed all other thoughts and feelings, and they forgot themselves in the joy of this moment.
There’s a place where the water runs deep enough to lose the highest mountain. That’s where the whales come. So many you can walk on their backs . . .
The shot of the harpoon gun rang out across the water. Michael came back to himself and turned to see the shock and horror on his father’s face in the eerie light.
‘That’s the Ahab! Come on!’ Michael yelled. ‘We’ve got to stop them!’
Engines fired up all around them, startling the whales and sending them back down; where there had been glowing backs and jaws there were now tails, slicing down into the clouds of brightness.
The Ahab’s lights were clear to see now, and the little boats sped across the water towards her. Another shot cut through the night. The approach of the small boats hadn’t put Spargo off. Either he thought they were some strange part of Carnival, or he was confident that the islanders still wanted the blood money he was bringing.
Michael stood up in the prow, leaning forward, trying to urge the boat faster through sheer willpower.
Now the boats drew together, and raced like an arrowhead over the water towards Spargo’s ship; and as they approached, Michael could see how huge she was, her sides rising out of the water like some vast building. At the front was the harpoon platform, floodlit, and with huge lights shining down onto the sea below. The unmistakable shape of Spargo himself stood behind the harpoon gun. Lashed to the side of the ship, still streaming with glowing phosphorescent light, were the dark bodies of two sperm whales.
The water in front of the ship was alive with spouts. In the light from the ship the phosphorescence was bleached away, and the backs and heads of the whales appeared extra black, the photographic negative of what they had just seen. Michael counted at least twenty. Further away still were more blows, and tails showing briefly above the surface as the whales went down. At least they would be safe for a while; perhaps long enough to stop Spargo in his tracks.
The ship showed no sign of slowing down, so the little boats fanned out around her, encircling her as they had arranged. So-So took the tiller of Mr Dringo’s boat and pushed the outboard to its limit, bringing the boat close to the Ahab, whose crew began to shine spotlights down onto them.
Up ahead, a whale’s head broke the surface with an explosive spout, up from a long squid-feasting dive. Even over the sounds of so many engines, Michael heard the flute-like squeak.
Weeepfff!
It was Freedom’s mother!
There was a loud bang, and the harpoon, its rope vibrating like a demented snake, shot out over the water, captured in the flat glare of the floodlights. It hit her, and she thrashed her fork-tine tail and arched her body out of the water, spouting blood.
Behind the Ahab, one section of the little flotilla had been dropping chains and nets and ropes to catch on the propeller. There was a horrible grating crunch as she was brought to a halt. Everything stopped. The ring of little boats held still, their engines idling. The big ship wallowed helplessly, her engines dead.
Spargo’s crew were armed just as Samuel had said they would be. They stood on deck, pointing guns and lights out at the fishermen, but no one flinched, and Spargo knew that shooting more than a hundred and fifty people and sinking fifty-two boats was impossible.
A bright light shone down into Dringo’s boat, and Spargo noticed at last who had been leading the pursuit.
‘You!’ he yelled. ‘I should have done for you same as that boy of yours.’
Michael stepped into the floodlight beside his father, and Spargo let out a huge growl of fury, like a chained dog.
‘You’re finished!’ Samuel yelled. ‘We know about the whale meat. Interpol are on their way to pick you up.’
‘I’ll be long gone before they get here!’
‘Not with a chain around your propeller, you won’t. Bye, Spargo!’ Samuel turned the boat and drew away from the Ahab.
The whale, Freedom’s mother, still thrashed at the end of the rope, though more weakly now. Dying. Michael’s heart turned over in pity and sorrow.
‘You can’t leave!’ he yelled. ‘He’ll just get away!’
‘You going to board a ship with an armed crew?’ Samuel snapped. Michael hung his head.
‘You think I want the man who tried to kill my son to go free?’ Samuel continued fiercely. ‘He’s not going anywhere. With a fouled prop and the current, they’ll be on the Lions’ Byte by nightfall, holed below the waterline and sinking. He knows it, and his crew know it. What’s more, they know the best thing they can do is hand him over the first chance they get. If they take to the lifeboats they’ll be picked up the moment they hit land.’
‘What about Freedom’s mother?’ Michael cried.
‘There’s nothing more we can do for her, son.’ Samuel put his arm around Michael’s shoulders. ‘But let’s get back and see what we can do for your friend Freedom.’
They got back to Rose Town at breakfast time, after the quietest Carnival night anyone could remember. Policemen – dressed in their old uniforms – waited on the quay and, after a brief conversation with Samuel, set off in a police launch, with So-So as guide and a boat load of soldiers to arrest Spargo.
Samuel said that as soon as the phones, mobiles and internet worked again, he would be too busy to even think – so, dirty and exhausted as they were, he and Michael went to visit Gran.
She was sitting up in bed in her private room, tiny and fragile as a fairy, but she knew both of them as they walked through the door. She shaped both their names with her lips, although her voice was too weak to speak. They sat on either side of her bed, each holding a hand. She didn’t seem to want anything more than that.
Michael thought of the whales lined up and ready to dive, touching flippers. He felt a connection running from the hand he held in his, to the other hand that Gran was holding: a line going through her heart from his to Samuel’s. He wanted Samuel not to go away again, but he couldn’t ask. But then his father said it for him:
‘I won’t go back to England, you know.’ His voice was flat with tiredness. ‘We’ll get our boat. Go out on the ocean.’
Michael squeezed Gran’s hand, and knew that Samuel would feel it too.
They watched her face. Her smile was so sweet and her forehead smoothed of the worry lines and creases that had crisscrossed it all the time they were both growing up. When her breathing had changed to the familiar purring snore, they left.
‘I think she’ll be OK,’ Michael said happily as they left the hospital.
‘Yeah,’ Samuel replied. ‘Tomorrow, if I can escape from the paperwork, we’ll go up to the house and tidy it, ready for when she comes home.’
But the next day there was no time for anything. The story of the little island and its fight against Big Crime became international news. Louise’s video of the crazy harpoon man and the quietly determined fishermen was shown everywhere. The shots of the glowing sea full of whales spread wonder around the world.
Spargo and JJ waited in jail to be flown to London to face trial, and Samuel seemed almost like a prisoner himself, kept working in the island police HQ all day.
Whale experts flew to Rose Town from America, Europe, Canada, India, Australia – everywhere, to try and decide what should be done with the first captive sperm whale on earth. No one wanted to ask the boy who knew the whale best what he thought they should do; he wasn’t an expert, he was just some kid.
Michael tried to get into the MEC to comfort his friend, but they wouldn’t let him in. He couldn’t understand what they were waiting for – Freedom could have been back in the sea now! He feared that the whale would die of misery before they decided what to do. After anxiously pacing up and down outside the MEC for a few hours, he gave up and decided to go and see Gran. The walk up the
hill would help him to think what to do next. He had to get Freedom released; he would do it! He just had to work out how.
It was lovely afternoon. It had rained in the morning, and everything was fresh and clean. He breathed deep and let the sweetness of the air soothe him.
The lift up to Gran’s floor took ages. He stepped out, and knew the moment his feet hit the grey lino: she’d gone. Sister Taylor came up to him, smiling kindly, but he didn’t need to hear the words.
25
She looked younger, more peaceful than he’d ever seen her. He held her hand, but it was cold, like a thing, not a person. Yes, he told the nurses, he would inform her son.
He went down in the lift again. At first he thought the throbbing sensation in the air was just his heart breaking, but it was a helicopter flying so low, the vibration echoed through his whole body. The experts must have decided what to do, and now Freedom would be terrified; it was a helicopter that had begun this long nightmare.
Michael ran all the way past the wooden houses with the sea peeping between, past the public baths, the bakery just opening, the radio station and the Rathborne Hotel, down to where old Mr Levi had once had a shack and a collection of little boats.
He didn’t let anyone or anything stop him this time. He simply wriggled out of grabbing hands, slippery as a fish, leaped up stairways too fast for pursuers, and dived head first into Freedom’s tank, littered with the remains of fish and squid which the whale had refused to eat.
The water was rank and horrible. Poor Freedom’s skin was suffering terribly. He looked frayed. Without even thinking, Michael swam straight towards him, diving down to reach one universe-holding eye. The whale turned at once, that lovely pirouette, so he could look at Michael with both eyes at once, belly up. Then he rose through the water, catching Michael’s body on his left side, by the flipper, lifting him as he had once lifted the Louisa May, as his mother had once supported the little boat to keep Michael from drowning. Michael rubbed his hand around the whale’s eye. He felt the deep trembling as the helicopter hovered overhead, and glanced sideways at the people standing by the tank. He glimpsed their faces for just a fraction of a second, but saw that, at last, they understood and would leave him be. He didn’t look at them again, but kept rubbing and stroking, his eyes fixed on Freedom’s as the sling was put around them. And together they were carried out of the tank and back to the sea.
The ocean was so sweet after the stagnant water of the horrible tank, its touch as lovely as Gran’s smile. Instantly, a shiver of new energy went through the whale. Michael knew that he would be all right. He was weak and afraid, but he was back in his limitless world. Did he know already, just by the sound and feel of the ocean, that his mother was dead? Could he sense the horror still lingering there, even at this distance from the Lions’ Byte?
Freedom lay on his side, as he had in the tank, with Michael resting near his left eye, just close enough to the surface to be able to snatch a breath every few seconds. The whale seemed dazed. Then he sank just below the surface. He began to click, as if trying out his voice again, then came back up and breathed: Pppffffffffffff – big and slow, in his own majestic time once more.
Pfffffffffff.
He lifted the curved corner of his snout out of the water, swimming slantwise. Michael remembered that first time, when he thought Freedom was laughing at him. He felt it again now: the whale was telling him, Weird little land creature, let go of your smallness. And for a moment Michael did. Freedom pushed his square nose against Michael’s body, carrying him around like a limp starfish. And Michael felt the hugeness of the whale, and its oneness with all around it, the same fluid inside and out, up and down and along.
As an adult male sperm whale, Freedom would explore every part of the blue world, every sea and ocean. He would meet humans. Humans like Spargo, like JJ, or just humans too joined to their little land-animal smallness to understand that no one gains anything by harming a whale. To be safe, Freedom must never again be this close to a human being.
Would he feel betrayal? Hatred? It wrenched Michael’s heart to think so. And to give up for ever this feeling of connection with so great and gentle and alien a being was a grief almost too great to endure. But love was about doing what was best for the person you loved. So Michael knew that in return for all that Freedom had given him, there was small but invaluable gift he could offer in return.
Mistrust.
He fumbled for the silver half-moon on the string around his neck, pointed and sharp as a tooth. It was too small to do lasting damage to so large a creature, but it would sting, and teach him a lesson: that humans could not be trusted.
It was hard to see with the tears and salt water in his eyes, but Michael drew back his arm and struck out with the silver thorn, as near to Freedom’s sensitive blowhole as his outstretched arm would reach.
A shudder went through the whale. Instantly he tipped the boy off, and turned down towards the safety of the deep, altering his buoyancy with perfect precision. Michael bobbed there on the surface, spluttering, washed in the wake of his tail, as the loveliness of Freedom’s strange body receded for ever into the blue.
Afterword
I’ve been lucky enough to spend time helping with scientific studies of sperm whales in waters off Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, off Mexico in the Sea of Cortez and off the Commonwealth of Dominica in the Caribbean, where the idea for Whale Boy was born. And every time I see a sperm whale again, their strangeness takes my breath away. They are just so weird! Their huge head always reminds me of the black plastic heating oil, tank that used to sit in my parents’ back garden!
But they are also beautiful. Once, a very long time ago, I was – like Michael – in the water with a group of sperm whales. For the first time I saw them as they were in their world of water, not just as odd body parts sticking up into my world of air. Underwater I could see how their squareness tapered to a tail stock that looked as delicate as the stalk of a leaf. They were bendy, like creatures made of rubber, twisting round each other, turning upside down and sideways, moving so gracefully. I was captivated.
Sperm whales not only look remarkable, they are remarkable. They are only visitors to the surface of the ocean. Most of their lives are lived one thousand metres down and deeper, a world more alien to us than the moon. To do that, they hold their breath for an hour and more and store oxygen in their blood and muscles. They find their way around in total darkness by echolocation – clicking and listening to the echoes of their clicks. Almost all that huge head is devoted to click-making; it’s filled with a kind of oil – spermaceti – that helps them to shape and project their clicks. Clicks are sometimes very loud, louder even than a jet plane taking off, and they can be fast or slow, long or short or come in repeating patterns. Many of them help to give a sound picture of the underwater world and prey. But clicks have another job too: communication. Sperm whales talk in clicks. We don’t know what they’re saying yet – trying to work it out is like trying to break a code – but they might be able to talk about the things that we talk about: emotions, ideas, memories. Certainly they have brains big enough for that kind of conversation – the biggest brains on the planet, in fact.
Sperm whales live in all the world’s oceans, wherever the water is deep enough for them. They live in groups of mums and sisters and aunties and their calves, led by old females, and visited every once in a while by big males, who weigh almost twice as much as the females. They form strong relationships and groups stay together for generations. Each group wanders over an area of ocean 1500 kilometres across. Females prefer warmer waters but males travel right up to the edge of the polar ice caps to find food. They travel across oceans, visiting groups of females thousands of kilometres apart.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and again in the twentieth, sperm whales were hunted for their oil and flesh. Then, in 1986, the members of the International Whaling Commission, representing countries around the world, banned whaling. But Japan, Norwa
y and Iceland never agreed with the ban and whalers from those countries have killed thirty thousand whales, including sperm whales, since that year. These countries would love to start whaling on a big scale again, but it would take three quarters of the members of the IWC to vote for whaling to overturn the ban. So they try to get small countries in the IWC to vote for whaling by giving them money and help of all kinds. Every year a few more are persuaded. But the tiny island nation of the Republic of Dominica resisted, bravely voting against whaling. Dominicans have never hunted the sperm whales that are regularly found in their waters. They are proud of their whales and now people from all over the world come to see Dominica’s sperm whales.
The threat from whaling still hangs over sperm whales and it isn’t the only one. Pollution and climate change could reduce their food supply or affect their ability to fight disease. Already they get caught in fishing nets, hit by huge ships, and their hearing gets damaged by the sonar surveying techniques used by the military and oil and gas companies. Sperm whales are highly adaptable and long-lived, but they breed very slowly and depend on their tight social structure for survival. They might be able to withstand one of these threats for a time, but taken together they could mean extinction for sperm whales.
That doesn’t have to be the ending of this story. We don’t have to hunt whales or pollute their habitat; we don’t have to let them drown in our nets or go deaf because of our noise. We can do things differently. We can change. We can make sure that sperm whales stay in the oceans for long enough for us to work out what they are talking about. Just imagine that! It might mean that one day we humans might have someone else to talk to, apart from each other.
If you’d like to help keep whales and dolphins in the ocean, you can join an organisation like the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS). Visit their website for more information: www.wdcs.org.uk
Whale Boy Page 13