Rush Oh!

by Shirley Barrett

  ‘Grab the dog!’ I cried, struggling to retain my balance with the weight of the gun and the dog leaping about. ‘Shut the dog up! We will scare away the whale!’

  But it was too late. The whale curved its back and tipped up its tail flukes, suspending them in mid-air momentarily as if for our inspection, then disappeared from view.

  This was the first time that I had seen a humpback’s tail flukes in situ, and I remain convinced, thirty years later, that there is no more wondrous and stirring sight to be seen. Though dark grey on their topside, they are quite white on their underside, which is the side the whale revealed to us now. The flukes were outlined heavily in black as though drawn with a thick nib; several splodges of black were speckled across them, as if the artist had been careless with his pen, and yet the end result was as endearing as freckles on a small child. In the delicacy of their movement, the flukes seemed possessed of a charming insouciance; the overall effect was of a strange flower upon its thick stem, its twin petals opening to the sun. They were beautiful flukes, and we were hushed by them, and remained so for a long moment after they had disappeared. Even Bonnie broke off from her barking and stood with her front paws on the gunwale, staring at the water, now oddly still.

  ‘Don’t whales look different up close?’ I said, lowering my whale gun. ‘Alive, I mean.’

  John Beck turned to me and nodded. We looked about us at the empty sea. A strange atmosphere of melancholy stillness came over us as we waited, and it brought to mind the feeling as we had sat in church at my mother’s funeral, waiting for the service to commence. The organist had played ‘Abide with Me’, and I suppose he had been instructed to keep playing till the congregation settled, for I remember feeling that he would never stop, and at one point, when we thought he had finally finished and he started up afresh, Harry had got the giggles and had had to be spoken to. Yet as long as that mournful dirge continued and we sat in the presence of my mother (for she lay in her coffin at the front of the church), it felt to me as if the family were suspended together (for the last time) somewhere between the earthly world and heaven. Why I should suddenly think of it at this moment, I cannot say.

  I clutched onto the whale gun, its muzzle pointing to the sky. Bonnie leaned her wet body against me and made small anxious noises. This isn’t right, she seemed to say. We shouldn’t be here. My eyes scanned the sea for a disturbance of the water, but the conviction I had felt formerly that I was acting upon my Destiny had begun to evaporate. In truth, some small part of me was beginning to hope that the whale might not reappear at all.

  But there it was! It had surfaced on the other side of the boat now, some thirty feet away. Bosh! it spouted. Here I am again! Over here! I recognised that I must summon my resolve; I could do this, if only I steeled myself. Rising to my feet, and lifting the whale gun to my shoulder, I took aim.

  Again, the muscles of my arms commenced shaking violently, and as my finger closed on the trigger, I was struck by how tremendously heavy was its action, almost as if it might have jammed from years of disuse. As I endeavoured to overcome this resistance, I screwed up my face with the effort, and as I felt the trigger begin to give, I thought, Oh, I must look where I am firing, and I opened my eyes and saw – at that exact instant, as the whale rolled with the swell – a small calf nestled beneath its side fin. Louisa screamed, ‘Don’t shoot! There’s a calf!’ and I at once pulled my finger away from the trigger.

  It seemed to me (in retrospect) that the whale did not recognise as threatening the great weapon I was aiming at her; in fact, she had, at that moment, deemed us sufficiently friendly to reveal to us her cherished baby that she had been hiding beneath her fin. She was proud as any mother of her newborn, and with good reason; it was the dearest little thing (when I say little, it was probably ten feet long) and a perfect miniature of its mother. Even its spout was its mother’s spout in miniature; the knobbles upon its small head were tiny version of hers. It tipped up its flukes (the prettiest little flukes you ever saw!) and together, in unison, they dived out of sight.

  ‘Why did you not shoot?’ said John Beck, looking up at me.

  ‘Because it had a calf,’ I responded. ‘My father never kills a whale if it has a calf.’

  This is indeed what my father used to tell us as children, knowing how sensitive we were to small creatures being left without their mother. But in truth, although he may have wished otherwise, the Killers did not share his compunctions and would set upon a calf immediately.

  ‘Did you see its flukes?’ cried Louisa. ‘How sweet they were! Oh, Mary, thank God you didn’t shoot!’

  Just then, John Beck put his hand upon my arm. Surprised by this action, I looked at him. He said nothing, but pointed towards Honeysuckle Point, from where, unmistakably, slicing through the water in their haste to join us, appeared the tall black dorsal fins of the Killer whales. I have never forgotten it, for there seemed a great many of them and they were travelling at such speed. It was as if the Indians were descending from the hills, for if the Killer whales could have waved their tomahawks and hollered their war cries, so they would have. It was a chilling spectacle, for we knew at once that they would tear the baby apart, even before they began on the mother.

  Now the next part is difficult to describe for it happened all very quickly. Without being aware of consciously deciding to do so, I found myself lifting the whale gun once again and this time taking aim at the Killers; that is to say, I aimed in their direction, for I must make it perfectly clear I had no wish to kill one; my intention was simply to frighten them away. Again my arms set to shaking, and again I felt the great resistance of the trigger beneath my finger. I was startled by a loud extended squeaking noise, like a creaky door opening, and I realised that this was the call of a Killer whale, now almost alongside the boat. I had no time to stop and identify its dorsal fin, but I felt instinctively that this was Tom, the leader of the pack. At once I felt a great confusion – should I aim four feet to the right of this creature, as if Tom was a rabbit; or should I aim directly at him, if I did not want to hit him – for what if I were to compound the misadventures of this afternoon by inadvertently blowing up this most beloved of all cetaceans, my father’s favourite? All this went through my mind in the instant my finger closed on the trigger, and to my surprise, the resistance suddenly gave way. There was an almighty report, and as if collected by a steam train, I was hurled backwards into the bottom of the boat, which itself rocked violently almost to the point of capsizing.

  There I must have momentarily lost consciousness, for I opened my eyes to find John Beck leaning over me, while some great weight sat upon my chest and prevented me from breathing. This turned out to be Bonnie; John Beck shoved her aside and peered down at me.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he enquired.

  And there I must have passed out again.

  I have only the groggiest memories of what followed, although apparently I rallied and indeed set about attempting to load another bomb lance, before John Beck, with some difficulty, removed the whale gun from my grasp. I was told that the Killers had vanished and I have the briefest memory of Louisa crying, ‘There they are!’ and pointing to something I could not see, which she seemed to think were the whales’ spouts, some distance away. Apparently I insisted that we row after them in a bid to ensure the whales’ safety, and when John Beck argued that it was not possible to take our dinghy into the open seas, I became agitated. In the end, he had to pretend they were rowing after them in order to get me to lie down again. I spent the remainder of the trip at the bottom of the dinghy, with my arms wrapped tightly around John Beck’s boots, while Bonnie licked my face encouragingly.

  My father and the whale men had heard the report from Boyd Tower, and thinking it sounded suspiciously like the whale gun, and thinking that it emanated suspiciously from somewhere near home, my father had ordered the men to the boats to investigate. Fortunately, by the time they intercepted ou
r dinghy, the whale and her baby had long since departed. Nor at any time were the Killers sighted after that initial report of the whale gun.

  Sensing from his stern expression that my father required an explanation, John Beck proceeded to recount the whole story from the beginning. He had just outlined in detail the moment in which the whale had revealed her calf, and was about to launch into a description of the dramatic approach of the Killers, when Louisa suddenly interrupted him in the midst of his sentence.

  ‘Mary fired at the whale but she missed – she is as blind as a bat,’ said Louisa.

  John Beck turned to look at her. Of all the Davidson children, Louisa alone had inherited my father’s whale-killing gaze; thus John Beck sensed that she was willing him to keep quiet.

  ‘That’s correct,’ he agreed, though somewhat confused.

  ‘Why did you not then have a shot?’ Bastable demanded to know. ‘Are you telling me that when the girl missed, you threw your hands in the air and gave up?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I did,’ said John Beck unhappily, his colour deepening.

  ‘Leave Father alone,’ said Salty. ‘He has just had the flukes to the head. Is it any wonder he does not wish to be blasted into the hereafter by the bomb lance?’

  ‘Did the Beowas come?’ asked Percy Madigan.

  ‘Beowa’ was the native word for Killer whale. Up until then, the Aboriginal crew members had kept quiet, although John Beck noticed that some of them had been surveying the surrounding waters intently.

  ‘No,’ said John Beck, for by now he had begun to suspect why Louisa had cut him off. ‘No, they did not come.’

  ‘I thought you said something about them coming?’

  ‘No, no,’ said John Beck. ‘I may have simply said that we . . . we wished they would come. But they did not come.’

  I, of course, was still lying on the bottom of the boat, dimly conscious of what was transpiring, yet still not aware of the potential seriousness of the situation. It was thought that I may have cracked several ribs and suffered a concussion; thus, upon our return, I was put to bed at once.

  My father had a stern talk with Louisa, who wavered between brazen defiance and pinning the blame in its entirety on me. However, at no point did she let on about the presence of the Killers. (I know all this because Dan informed me later; he and the little girls were eavesdropping in the next room in the hopes that Louisa would get a thrashing.) ‘Very well, Louisa, I can see I am getting nowhere with you,’ my father concluded. ‘You may leave the table.’

  To which she responded, in her typical fashion: ‘Well, I can’t very well take it with me.’

  This set the younger ones to giggling; when they were unable to stop, my father gave up and went out on the verandah to smoke his pipe.

  Interesting Beliefs of the Aborigines

  Very early the next morning, at the first grey glimmering of daylight, my father came into our bedroom to talk to me. Bidding Louisa get up out of bed to pack the tuckerbags (to which she acquiesced hastily and without complaining), he sat on a hard-backed chair and surveyed me sombrely. Rarely had I seen his countenance so grim as he outlined to me the foolishness of my actions and the gravity of their possible consequences. He was, of course, rightly concerned that I had endangered our lives in going out to sea in the old dinghy; also in using the whale gun, which was strictly prohibited, not to mention attempting to ensnare a whale by ourselves when we should have more sensibly alerted the whale men.

  ‘I just wanted to capture you a whale!’ I cried out, unable to halt the tears that were rolling down my cheeks.

  ‘It is not your responsibility to capture me a whale,’ he responded. ‘Any capturing of whales to be done around here is up to me and the whale men. Just imagine if you had succeeded in hitting that whale. She would have upended the boat in her death flurry and you would all be drowned.’

  I nodded mutely, horrified at this possibility, which I had not till this point ever considered.

  ‘Mary, I must ask you this, and I want you to answer me honestly,’ he continued. ‘Am I right in believing that the Killers were in attendance?’

  I hesitated for a moment and then I nodded, for I could not easily lie to my father.

  ‘And is it that you fired upon them to keep them away from the whale calf?’

  How was he able to know such a thing? Were my actions so predictable, my motives so transparent? My tears started up afresh; I dabbed at them futilely with a sodden handkerchief.

  He sighed heavily and looked down at the floorboards.

  ‘Mary,’ he said finally. ‘If it happens that you have slaughtered one of the Killers, then I am afraid we have a very serious situation on our hands.’

  I stared at him for a long moment and then, suddenly, I saw for the first time, with terrible clarity, what I had done. For it was the deeply held belief of our Aboriginal whale men that each individual Killer whale represented the reincarnated spirit of a deceased tribe member. If I had taken the life of a Beowa, their respect and loyalty towards my father notwithstanding, the Aborigines might well feel compelled to take my own life in order to avenge that of their spirit ancestor.

  Many years ago, in my grandfather’s time, a headsman named Higginbotham, but known affectionately to all as ‘Flukey’, was in the process of lancing a whale when a Killer whale reared up before him and was accidentally struck by the lance and killed. The natives were so greatly distressed by this that they armed themselves with spears and, by all accounts, would certainly have killed Flukey had not an elder of the tribe intervened on his behalf. His life was spared, but only on condition that he leave the region at once. This he did, with the utmost haste, and was never heard from again. My father was very mindful of this story in his own actions, as amidst the chaos of trying to lance a whale, with the Killers working closely all around, it could easily happen that a Killer be accidentally struck.

  I remember when I was quite small, there was an infant Killer whale of whom the Aboriginal crew members were inordinately fond; his name was Jimmy, and it was believed that he was the reincarnation of a small boy of their tribe who had not so very long ago died of sickness. When Jimmy first made his appearance alongside his seniors, the Aboriginal whale men greeted him with loud cries of excitement and recognition, as if overjoyed to be reunited. Whilst out chasing whales, they would call to the infant orca in their own language, ‘Jimmy, do this,’ and, ‘Jimmy, do that,’ and Jimmy would respond to the very best of his abilities. (The Aborigines often called to the Killers in their own language; they seemed to be calling instructions, as you would to a sheepdog.) One day, the infant Killer whale was playing with the anchor rope of a whaleboat (for Killer whales have a fondness for ropes and anchors, as we have seen) when he became entangled within these ropes, and drowned. It was nobody’s fault, of course, but even though I was quite small at the time, I well remember the terrible grief displayed by the natives over the loss of this young Killer. The men wept openly and wailed, cut themselves with shells until they bled, so intensely felt was their sorrow.

  ‘I must ask you this,’ continued my father. ‘Can you be sure that you did not injure any of them?’

  I shook my head miserably. I could not be sure, for I had been too busy being ‘blasted into the hereafter’, or at least into the bottom of the boat, to pay much attention to what became of the Killers. Nor did I dare admit to my father how close to the boat one of them had come: the leader, no doubt it was Tom. Nor could John Beck or Louisa say for certain what had happened; their impression was that the Killers had dived. Had the bomb lance itself exploded? Amidst all the smoke and confusion, no one was able to confidently say, least of all myself.

  My father eyed me gravely, then stood up. ‘You must say nothing of this to anyone, not even the children.’

  He and his men, including John Beck, left for the lookout. Bruised and wretched, I dragged myself out of bed and limp
ed through my chores. I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of what I might have done, not just for the terrible consequences I would undoubtedly and deservedly face, but also for the sheer, ghastly fact that I might have, in the heat of the moment, destroyed so horribly such a noble beast. Surely, pray God, I had missed? But what if the swollen corpse of a Killer whale were to wash up on a beach somewhere, a bomb lance embedded in its flesh? And what if the corpse was that of Tom, most beloved of all orcas, himself a reincarnation of an ancient tribal warrior greatly venerated by the blackfellows? What would happen then?

  I climbed up to the headland and gazed out, willing Tom to materialise at the breakers. He was welcome to eat as many whale calves as he liked, I thought to myself bitterly, if only he would kindly leap out of the water this instant. Him and all his cohorts, especially Cooper, who was believed to have been a tribal king, and Charlie Adgery, who was known to have been a distinguished and beloved whale man in his former life. But as far as I could see from the headland, the watery world seemed utterly devoid of life, ancestral or otherwise.

  Further, I was plagued by the feeling that the rest of the family was avoiding me. Louisa assisted me in completing what remained of the washing, but was churlish and silent throughout. Uncle Aleck stayed in his shed and did not even come down for his lunch. Even Bonnie seemed anxious to stay clear of me, leaping out of the way in a startled fashion whenever I drew near. (We later discovered she had been rendered completely deaf by the explosion of the whale gun.) Thus I passed a most miserable day, compounded by the fact that the injuries to my ribs meant it hurt to draw breath.

  That evening, the whale men returned from the lookout to report that there had been no sign of the Killer whales in their favourite haunt of Leatherjacket Bay. This was not in itself completely unusual, as the Killers often occupied themselves with activities elsewhere of which we knew nothing, and yet for them to be absent that day of all days felt to me like the death knell of all hope. There was a degree of tension evident amongst the whalers that evening as I doled out their stew: Arthur Ashby and Percy Madigan, and Albert Thomas Senior and Darcy and Albert Thomas Junior (that is, our Aboriginal whalers) all seemed deliberately to avoid my gaze, while Bastable and Salty were evidently still brooding over the fact that we had let the whale get away.