The Beast of Cretacea

by Todd Strasser

  “He can’t be serious,” Gwen says. “Going after the Great Terrafin with that little stick? He has to be out of his mind.”

  “And what about the big-tooths?” Queequeg adds.

  Ishmael eyes Tarnmoor, who has remained curiously quiet.

  They watch as Fedallah begins to swim with his arms extended forward, holding the spear straight out in front of him like the long snout of a basher, and kicking with both legs together like a tail. The result is not the typical splashing of arms and feet, but the graceful undulations of a creature native to the sea. It is precisely the way he swam that day many months ago when Daggoo almost rammed Ishmael’s chase boat.

  “Ever see anyone swim like that?” Queequeg asks in wonder.

  “Likes a beast, is he?” Tarnmoor guesses. “Likes something the Great Terrafin and big-tooths be used to? Yes? Yes?”

  “Yes,” Ishmael answers. This is what Fedallah has lived for. To some, like the islanders, just being alive, just being able to take a breath of air and watch a beautiful sunset, is enough. But for others, a life without purpose is no life at all. They need a higher goal to strive for, and they are willing to risk everything to reach it.

  “Uh-oh.” Queequeg points. “The big-tooths have noticed him.”

  Red-tipped fins have begun to circle the harpooner. Fedallah continues his serpentine swim, passing right through the spiraling pod.

  “How can he keep going with all those nasty things around him?” Gwen asks, amazed.

  “No choice,” Tarnmoor replies. “If he breaks stride now, them’ll be on him like flyers on scurry.”

  Still, it’s hard to imagine the steel nerves necessary to swim through such vicious beasts, and toward such an enormously dangerous creature.

  When he is perhaps forty feet from the Great Terrafin, Fedallah stops swimming. The harpooner lifts his free hand and softly pats the water, much the way Ishmael once watched the islander woman do. The huge white beast stirs, and then slips below the surface, moving slowly toward Fedallah.

  “If I wasn’t seeing this with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it,” Queequeg whispers as the creature swims closer and closer to the spot where the harpooner floats.

  “What sees ya? What? What?” Tarnmoor asks eagerly. “Tell me!”

  Before Queequeg can answer, the great beast glides beneath Fedallah.

  The harpooner takes a breath and dives.

  “What’s happening?” Tarnmoor begs.

  No one answers. Both the terrafin and Fedallah disappear beneath the glistening surface. The ocean grows still. The sun’s rays glint between the clouds. The chase boats bob gently, the sailors aboard them quiet, waiting. The seconds drift past. Ishmael realizes he’s holding his breath.

  “What? What? Tell me!” Tarnmoor beseeches.

  “The monster swam under Fedallah, and he dove after it.” Gwen sounds awestruck. “Now we can’t see either of them.”

  “How vain and foolish, for mans to try to comprehends this wondrous beast, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton,” Tarnmoor mutters mysteriously.

  At any moment, Ishmael expects the Great Terrafin to burst through the surface, wings flapping, trailing streams of sparkling seawater as it soars into the air and then lands with a tremendous crashing flop, sending choppy waves and white spray hundreds of feet in every direction.

  But this doesn’t happen. The ocean’s surface remains flat and still, and the chase boats continue to float quietly. Even the big-tooths disperse, their red-tipped fins spreading away and gradually disappearing.

  “That’s it?” Queequeg asks, mystified.

  Ishmael trains his binoculars on Fedallah’s chase boat, and then on Tashtego’s. Their crews are staring down into the water. Suddenly Tashtego twists around and his mouth falls open. Ishmael turns to look. Several hundred yards away, a liquid mountain is bearing down on them.

  The Great Terrafin smashes into Chase Boat One hard enough to launch it into the air and throw Fedallah’s crew overboard. Almost instantly, the big-tooths reappear, turning their huge, sharp incisors on the floundering sailors.

  Ishmael guns the chase boat toward the survivors, his crew shouting and banging on the sides of the boat — doing anything they can think of to scare the big-tooths off. But the seagoing scavengers are monomaniacal in their pursuit, and before Chase Boat Four can reach the sailors, their screams die out and the churning water grows red. The carnage over, the big-tooths vanish once again.

  Ishmael cuts the engine and drifts through the debris. Here floats a shoe, and there a first-aid kit. Worst of all are the empty PFDs.

  Queequeg reaches over the side of the boat and lifts up strands of long white hair.

  They’re all that remain of Fedallah.

  Starbuck reports that the Great Terrafin has resurfaced a few miles to the south. As Ishmael steers Chase Boat Four to the location, the mood on board is somber and grim. Even wounded and weakened, the huge creature is clearly capable of bursts of enormous strength and murderous aggression.

  “Why does it keep stopping?” Gwen asks again. “If it has enough strength left to fight, why doesn’t it swim away?”

  Tarnmoor scoffs. “The mightiest beast in the oceans don’t runs away. She stays and fights to the death.”

  “What makes you such an expert?” Gwen asks. She doesn’t say, “You can’t even see,” but the words hang in the air all the same.

  The normally garrulous Tarnmoor remains quiet.

  “It was like this with the Essex, wasn’t it?” Ishmael guesses. “The beast pretending to be weaker than she really was?”

  The old man twists around to face Ishmael with his unseeing eyes. “Aye, it were like this. We was on her tails for weeks, never givin’ her times to feed or rest — barely givin’ ourselves times either. She gots slower and slower, and — we thoughts — weaker and weaker. But it were all an act. Once we let our defenses down, that’s when she struck.”

  “You . . . you’ve fought the Great Terrafin before?” Gwen asks, astounded.

  “Aye.” Tarnmoor nods. “Me an’ Ahab an’ Starbuck.”

  “Starbuck was on the Essex?” Ishmael asks. “You didn’t tell me that.” The old man had hinted that Starbuck had been on another ship before the Pequod, but not that it was the Essex.

  “There’s much I ain’ts yet said, lad. It’s a complicated hand whats must be dealt slowly.”

  But before more can be told, the crew spots the vast white back of the great beast ahead, where it once again floats idly on the ocean’s surface, looking for all the world like an exhausted, defeated creature. The two remaining chase boats slip warily closer.

  “Anyone feel like it’s setting a trap?” Queequeg asks nervously.

  Just then, Starbuck issues new orders over the two-way. “Chase Boats Three and Four: Gather the ends of the lines and return to the ship.”

  “Does he really think the terrafin’s going to sit there and let us do that?” Gwen says doubtfully.

  “What do you think, Tarnmoor?” Ishmael asks.

  The old man stares blankly out to sea. “If the beast wants us dead, ya can bets it’ll have its way — whether we gets our hands on them lines or not.”

  Ishmael steers Chase Boat Four slowly toward the orange floats. Queequeg stands in the bow with a boat hook at the ready. The crew watch apprehensively while he snares the first float, then the next and the next. Tashtego’s crew pick up the other three floats and lines. Relieved, Ishmael starts to steer away from the enormous creature.

  Perhaps the Great Terrafin has been distracted by the big-tooths that close in, emboldened by the great beast’s apparent malaise. When one of the scavengers charges and clamps its teeth onto the edge of a wing, the huge beast flings the big-tooth away. Another big-tooth attacks, and another, each one grabbing hold briefly before being tossed off.

  “Whoa!” Queequeg says.

  “What? What?” Tarnmoor squawks.

  “Looks like the big-tooths are on the attack.”
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  The drones have picked up the activity, and the two-way crackles to life. Starbuck orders the harpooners to man their machine guns. “Unload on any big-tooth that comes within range. We can’t let those wastrels get her!”

  It’s not long before an unsuspecting creature ventures nearby.

  RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT! Queequeg fires, and the big-tooth goes into spasms. Its comrades instantly attack it in a mayhem of churning pink froth.

  Meanwhile, the Pequod is growing larger as it nears, no doubt running full ahead to reach the scene before the big-tooths resume their attack on the Great Terrafin.

  Queequeg and Tashtego intermittently fire on the big-tooths, wounding enough of them to distract their fellow predators from their ultimate goal. Finally the Pequod arrives, and sailors collect the green ropes from the chase boats. Faces line the ship’s rusty rails, watching the proceedings with jumpy fascination.

  The Pequod’s winches start to turn.

  “Well? Well?” Tarnmoor demands.

  “They’re winching in the lines,” Ishmael reports.

  The old man cups his hands behind his ears and frowns. “Without a splash nor struggle?”

  “Looks that way.”

  Tarnmoor lowers his hands to his lap. “Never thought I’d sees the day — not that I’m seein’ it, minds ya. The mad cap’n must be beside hisself with joy.”

  Ishmael looks up at the sailors pressed against the rails of the Pequod, expecting to see the craggy face of the captain among them, but he can’t find him.

  Gwen points at the winch control tower. “If you’re looking for Ahab . . .” The captain stands just outside the control booth, no doubt eager to make sure nothing goes wrong.

  The green lines grow taut, and still the huge beast floats, nearly dormant.

  “Don’t know why we’re bothering with big-tooths,” Queequeg says after spraying yet another scavenger with bullets. “Look at the size of that thing. Even if all the big-tooths in the ocean attacked it, they’d hardly make a dent.”

  But Ishmael knows that Ahab is too greedy for that. After a lifetime of waiting, he wants all of the Great Terrafin. Every last bit.

  “So? So?” Tarnmoor asks eagerly.

  “Looks like everything’s proceeding according to plan,” Ishmael answers, though it’s hard to believe.

  “So Ahab’s gots ’er at last!” Tarnmoor cackles. “Never did I thinked this day would come. Never! This’ll change things, mind ya. Change ’em in big, big ways. The riches we’ll see! Anythin’ ya can dreams up you’ll be havin’ multiplied! Anythin’!”

  But Ishmael can’t share in the old man’s glee. No amount of wealth will bring Archie back. Nor the crews of Chase Boats One and Two.

  Rat-a-tat! . . . Rat-a-tat! Not far away, Tashtego fires again on big-tooths that have gotten too close to the Great Terrafin. At the same time, the crew of Chase Boat Four watch seawater begin to seep out between the ever-tightening strands of green line, signaling that the rope is being stretched to the extreme. At any moment, Ishmael expects to see the Great Terrafin being drawn nearer to the ship. But the giant beast remains immobile.

  Instead, the sea behind the Pequod begins to churn.

  “What’s happenin’? What’s happenin’?” Tarnmoor cups his hands behind his ears again.

  “It’s . . . I think it’s pulling back,” Gwen answers, confounded.

  Indeed, the colossal creature has started to resist. The terrafin’s huge wings have slowly begun to rise and fall, and the beast is angling down toward the deep. The green lines squeak and cry under the strain, and the sea behind the Pequod is frothy with the propellers’ efforts to keep the Great Terrafin from sounding.

  Suddenly the huge creature flaps its white wings so hard that the ocean erupts.

  Queequeg’s jaw drops. “The stern’s going down!”

  As the huge winches turn, the Pequod’s stern gradually dips lower and lower. Ishmael can imagine an impossibly huge anchor causing that to happen, but not a living creature.

  “Stern’s going down, ya says? Down!” Tarnmoor grips the sides of the chase boat and presses his face forward.

  It seems unimaginable, but the Pequod’s aft continues to dip, seawater inching up the slipway, while the ocean behind the ship is a swirling cauldron.

  Aboard the ship, sailors press against the bulwarks, alarm creasing their faces while they witness the tug-of-war between beast and vessel.

  “This can’t be happening,” marvels Queequeg.

  “You’d think the lines would snap,” says Gwen.

  “Not them lines,” Tarnmoor tells her. “Not when there’s six a’ them all reinforced with steel an’ the strength a’ hawsers.”

  Suddenly, the huge winches halt, and the sea behind the ship stops roiling. The sailors lining the deck seem to give a collective sigh of relief.

  But the reprieve is short-lived. A furious-looking Ahab yanks open the control booth door and hauls the winch operator out by the collar, throwing him off the tower. The captain enters the booth, and the winches resume their toil.

  The stern of the Pequod dips deeper.

  Sailors have begun fleeing forward, clutching rails as they struggle upward toward the bow. The two remaining chase-boat crews watch in stunned silence. Ishmael thinks back to how weak the terrafin appeared just a short time ago, how even the skittish big-tooths sensed the moment had come to pounce.

  Was it only putting on an act? Pretending to be weak in order to be towed close to the Pequod’s stern, where it knew it could do the most damage?

  No. It can’t know what it means to pretend. It’s a wild beast, an animal. . . .

  And yet . . .

  Ishmael turns to Tarnmoor. “How did the Great Terrafin destroy the Essex?”

  A cloud passes over the old man’s features. “We followed hers into a vast, broad bay, but it were a lot shallower than it looked. The next thing we knowed, the tide goed out and the Essex were aground, keel stuck on the bottom, unable to budge. And that’s when she went to works.”

  Ishmael shivers. “What do you mean, ‘went to work’?”

  “Attacked, lad. Battered the Essex with her wings and tails till there were nothin’ left but some broken masts and a crumpled hull.”

  “When it could have just as easily escaped?” Queequeg asks.

  “Aye.”

  “You said that happened in a vast, shallow bay?” Gwen looks rattled. “Like the one we were in when we first saw the terrafin.”

  “Ahab kept the Pequod outside,” Queequeg adds. “By the bay’s entrance.”

  “The wreck we saw!” Gwen gasps. “The one that was covered with orange and red coral? Was that the Essex?”

  Ishmael starts to shake his head. “It couldn’t be. Queek, you said that wreck must’ve been down there for hundreds of years to have so much coral on . . .” But as he says this, he realizes that this is exactly what happened. Gabriel said the undiluted neurotoxin could change men in “unnatural” ways. It’s kept Tarnmoor, Ahab, and Starbuck alive far beyond their “natural” life spans.

  He looks again to Tarnmoor. “Do you think . . . is it possible the Great Terrafin led the Essex into that bay, knowing the ship would run aground and become an easy target?”

  For a few moments the old man is quiet. “Never thinked a’ it that way. Just figured she suddenly found herself cornered, and likes any trapped wild animal, she turned on her pursuer. Buts it were an awful big bay,” he adds, almost to himself. “Ya gots to wonder, how trapped were she really?”

  “Look!” Queequeg points into the sky over the Pequod’s stern, where white-and-gray flyers have begun to wheel and dart. Above them, larger black fork-tail flyers circle. . . . And even higher overhead glide half a dozen huge winged beasts like the one that snatched Thistle.

  Hundreds of red-tipped dorsal fins cut through the water around the ship. By now the Pequod’s tilting aft section is nearly deserted. Almost all the sailors have fled to the bow and many have begun to don PFDs.

 
; The huge winches keep turning, and it seems impossible that the Great Terrafin can put up such a tremendous fight for much longer. They may have underestimated the beast’s reserves of strength, but it is just an animal. It has to grow tired eventually.

  As the level of the sea slowly continues to rise up the slipway, a single figure works his way aft, hand over hand, along the ship’s railing, heading for the tower where Ahab controls the winches.

  Ishmael focuses the binoculars.

  It’s Starbuck.

  “What’s happening? What? What?” Tarnmoor pleads.

  Chase Boat Four is quiet while the crew watch Starbuck brace himself with one hand and bang on the control booth door with the other.

  “Starbuck’s trying to get into the control tower,” Queequeg says.

  “What? To stops our supreme lord and dictator?” Tarnmoor laughs maniacally. “Ahab’ll never give in. Never!”

  Through the binoculars, Ishmael can see Starbuck’s jaw working while he hammers at the door with his fist and shouts.

  The turbulence at the stern of the ship continues to excite the flocks of flyers. The small gray-and-white ones skim along the surface, snatching scurry that’ve been tossed up in the mayhem. The medium-size black ones plunge into the waves, scooping up larger scurry thrust to the surface by the beating of the Great Terrafin’s wings. Only the huge green flyers continue to glide high above the rest, ominously waiting for still larger prey.

  In the stern of the Pequod, Starbuck backs away from the control booth door and looks around. Ishmael narrates for Tarnmoor as the first mate makes his way aft, searching, then starts back.

  “What’s he gots with him?” Tarnmoor asks.

  “Nothing. He —” Ishmael catches himself. Through the binoculars he sees that Starbuck does have something with him. “Looks like the handle of a hand winch. . . .”

  “For tryin’ to breaks down the door,” Tarnmoor says.

  By now the Pequod’s stern is nearly submerged, the bow of the ship poking into the air like the high end of a seesaw. On the steeply slanting deck, a group of sailors struggle to lower a tender. Others grasp the ship’s rail, staring in horror at the red-tipped fins of the big-tooths slicing through the sea close to the Pequod’s hull.