by John Mellor
Way above him, with needle-sharp eyes, the Fairy Tern floated on the wind currents, her long narrow wings still, curved to the flow of the air. And still she stayed with him.
Through all the following days and nights, as the white dolphin patrolled the seas in search of ships in danger, the Fairy Tern remained overhead. Unseen and unknown she continued to accompany him; as though her task were not yet done.
And this day she watched as the little white dolphin sped through the waves towards the stricken and wallowing Malachi Jones. The Master of the Malachi Jones had always paid lip service to the charming idea of a white dolphin speeding to the rescue in times of trouble, but now that it actually seemed to be happening to him the superstitious side of the old seaman sent an involuntary shiver through his body at the prospect of yet more inexplicable events.
He stared numbly out of the bridge window, wondering what on earth a little white dolphin could possibly do to save them from the horror that hung still over his poopdeck. Then he saw Pilot Jack - for that was the name sailors had given him - leap skywards ahead of the ship in a cloud of roiling phosphorescence, then plunge back in the water and swim away in the direction of the land away on his port side.
“He wants us to follow him," said the Mate in awed tones from the other side of the bridge.
“Well we can't go in there," the Master barked. “This coast is riddled with uncharted rocks and sandbanks. We wouldn't get half a mile without piling up on something."
“That's as maybe," muttered the Mate through nervous clenched teeth that had already bitten halfway through the stem of his pipe. “But how long are we going to last out here?" His point seemed to be stressed by the great leering red eye that suddenly fell from the sky and stared directly into the face of the Master.
“Oh my God!" growled the Master. “Pass me the binoculars, quick!" Then, trying to ignore the horrendous eye that glowered no more than ten feet from his head, he focused the glasses on the dim white shape of the speeding dolphin.
And his heart leapt in sudden hope as he saw the dolphin weaving and jinking as he went, where before he had been swimming straight.
“Bloody hell," he muttered. Then he yelled: “The dolphin's following a channel, I swear it. He's showing us the way through the rocks. If we can get in there surely this damn thing won't be able to follow us." He turned to the Mate. “Take the wheel, mister, and follow that dolphin!"
The old Malachi Jones staggered over the next wave then almost rolled her funnel into the back of it as the Mate wound the wheel hard over to port in an effort to get her round before the next wave should catch her beam on. The tired old engine shrieked in protest as the prop came out of the water and raced in thin air, then suddenly she was on course astern of the dolphin. The seas were on her quarter now and she rolled heavy and uneven, like a drunk falling out of a pub. But she was headed for dangerous waters, and all aboard prayed that the beast would not be able to follow. They also prayed that the white dolphin really was guiding them through the safe channel.
Half a mile ahead of the ship there stood a white wall of boiling, breaking water where the waves piled up and broke against the hidden rocks and banks. Neither the Master nor the Mate could see a way through, and the latter's knuckles were white against the dark, battered varnish on the spokes of the wheel. The Master called the Bosun to take the other side of the big wheel to help the Mate. Even if there was an entrance through that breaking water, it would be a battle to get the ship through. The old bucket did not handle very well at the best of times, being fat and weed-strewn, with an engine that chuffed most of its power out of the funnel.
But as the ship was almost into the breakers the Master saw Pilot Jack suddenly turn hard to port and disappear round the back of a huge standing wave whose crest was continually breaking higher than the bridge.
“Get after him!" he yelled at the Mate, who was already hauling on the wheel. The Master leapt forward and put his back beneath a spoke and heaved in unison with the other two. The Malachi Jones shuddered round slowly, too slowly as the Master could see all too clearly, and the great white wave loomed up over the bridge like a sheer rock face. Then, as she hung athwart the face of the following wave, it suddenly broke and flung the ship bodily sideways past the white monster.
“Hard-a-starboard!" yelled the Master in desperation as he spotted a slick of flat water right behind the standing wave, in which the white dolphin lay as though waiting for them. The Malachi Jones rolled violently to port, dipping her bridge window right into the wave that now rolled under them, then she seemed to just ping through the gap like a flicked coin.
“Hold her steady, mister," came the cry from the Master, as he saw Pilot Jack bound off ahead into the mess of rocks, shoals and white water that lay between them and the shore. They were committed now; there was no hope of turning back and finding their way out. He did not even know what lay over on the shore; could only hope and pray that there was a safe haven and that the dolphin would lead them into it. He stared out of the bridge window, an arm firmly wrapped round the compass to steady him against the vicious rolling and lurching that the steep, high seas were causing in his ship. The night was black and the waves were white, and it was a seaman's nightmare.
As they staggered and lurched their way deeper into these wild, breaking seas in pursuit of the white dolphin, the Master gradually became aware that he had not seen any large red eyes for a while. He looked astern of the ship and there was no sign of the monster. He picked up the binoculars and scanned the sea astern of them, and finally saw a dim green glow way in the distance.
“We've lost the beast!" he cried out. “Left him out in the deep water. Thank God!" He pulled the bung out of the radio room voice-pipe and shouted down: “You can come up now! The beast has gone." And a moment or two later the radioman came up onto the bridge with old George.
“How are you feeling?" the Master asked him.
George shook his head groggily. “Alright. I'm alright." Then he looked around. “What's happened?"
The Master told him what had been going on, then pointed ahead to Pilot Jack, who was swimming steadily no more than twenty yards from the ship. “... and there he is," he finished off, in hushed tones such as one might use when speaking in a church.
George looked stunned, clinging grimly onto the Master's chair and staring out at the white dolphin. Then he stared at the white water and the broken irregular seas that crashed into the ship from all directions. Then he stared back out to sea, to where the Master had said the beast was. George was petrified, but he was not sure what of; there seemed to be so much around him that he should be terrified of and the old man could not cope with it all. Finally he gave up thinking about any of it and simply clung vacantly to the chair - it seemed the only secure and solid thing in his life at that moment.
The Master meanwhile was inspecting the approaching shoreline through his binoculars, and it looked wild in the steadily worsening weather. He could see huge clouds of spray hung along the cliffs like rain as, in the gradually dawning twilight, the waves rolled in, foaming white across the rocks, to explode in cascading sheets against the sheer face of the cliffs. He could see no sign of harbour or shelter in the direction the dolphin was taking them. Yet somehow he felt untroubled; perhaps it was because of the certain knowledge that he now had no choice but to follow their self-appointed pilot.
The cliffs grew ever larger - and George ever more frightened - as the old ship wallowed her way ever closer to that forbidding shore, a welter of black, jagged rocks and flying white spume. And still no sign of a gap.
Pilot Jack had fallen back a little until he was just visible under the plunging bows of the Malachi Jones. How he avoided that lethal stem as it reared up on the waves and crashed into the troughs, twisting its way towards the breakers, George had no idea.
Suddenly the little dolphin accelerated away from the ship, leaping ever higher, and vanished round the back of the nearest razor-edged rock pinnacle. A momen
t later he reappeared and resumed his station close ahead of the ship. He repeated this manoeuvre twice, as though to make sure he had been seen. His speed must have been phenomenal for he seemed to be away barely a moment, although it felt like a lifetime to George.
The Master tapped the old man on the shoulder and pointed to the narrow gap.
“There's our haven," he said. “Behind there somewhere." He reached over and rang the engine room telegraph to slow speed ahead, so as to give him some power in reserve for any rapid manoeuvring that might be needed. The Master's caution had been sharpened by a lifetime at sea.
The dolphin remained close ahead of them as he piloted the ship so close to the pinnacle that George could almost have reached out and touched it. The water boiled through the gap and around the rocks, and the Master put two men on the wheel again to keep the ship running straight.
As they rounded the rock, George nearly fainted again. He had been expecting calm waters - a wide, land-locked and sheltered harbour. But all he could see were more rocks, more breakers, more cliffs. Even the Master began to worry as he felt a strong surge sucking his ship uncontrollably towards a tiny steep beach between the cliffs, upon which the surf pounded like a steam hammer.
In the broadening daylight he could see on the beach a small group of men, gathered round a signal fire. They were waving wildly at the ship, beckoning it towards the beach.
“Look!" cried George. “There must be shelter there somewhere. We're saved!" He turned to look at the Master, relief flooding through his old body like a tide.
But the Master stood white-faced at his side, one eye on the men at the fire ahead of them and one on the white dolphin, who was leaping wildly from the water and racing away on their starboard side towards the mouth of a huge cave in the rock face.
The old seaman's brain was whirling. They could not both be right - the men on the beach calling him one way and the dolphin leading him another. In that tight, rock-strewn hole he had perhaps three seconds in which to make a decision, before he wrecked his ship with all hands.
He glanced at the beach. Rescuers? Or Wreckers? These had been rife along the Snow Queen's coast. But he had never heard of a dolphin leading a ship into danger. He made his decision.
He leaned over the bridge wing and yelled down to the fo'c'sle hands to let go the starboard anchor at short stay, ordered the wheel put hard a-starboard and the engine to full ahead. All more or less in the one breath. Then he gripped the front of the bridge wing and watched.
As the anchor took hold in the seabed, a huge curling wave picked up their stern and carried it forward. The ship lurched hard round to starboard virtually on the spot, the anchor holding the bow while engine and wave combined to drive the stern round and past it. Then the stern sank into the following trough, down and down until it hit the bottom with a sickening, grinding crunch. George felt the whole ship shudder and rattle. Then she bounced clear, and with the engine screaming at full speed the little ship began struggling forward, now pointing towards the cave entrance.
The anchor was hove in rapidly and the engine slowed again, and the Master, streams of perspiration running down his face, conned his ship in towards the cave, close behind the dolphin.
George, white and trembling in every nerve, clung terrified to the rail as the Malachi Jones bore in towards the black hole ahead of them, yawing wildly almost beam on to the face of the next approaching and breaking wave. The Master frantically ordered full port wheel to try and hold her straight, then everything went black as they vanished into the hole in a welter of white water.
It seemed only a moment later that they rocketed out into a vast, sheltered, tree-lined lagoon. The wave rolled in harmlessly behind them, all its violence broken by the walls of the tunnel. George wept with relief as the Master quietly rang down for dead slow ahead, then he gripped the rail firmly to try and stop his hands shaking. Ahead of them Pilot Jack swam slowly towards a small cluster of houses on the north shore, and a short while later the Malachi Jones lay safely and peacefully at anchor. The dolphin lay alongside the ship, breathing heavily and rolling a little in the slight swell that was all that remained of the seas they had come through.
And there they remained. The natives were friendly, there was plenty of food and water ashore, and there was nowhere else to go. Above them, unseen, the Fairy Tern circled, watching her dolphin as each day he went out to sea to seek out and bring in more straggling ships from the very jaws of the beast.
“He asks for nothing,” the Master said to George one day some weeks later, “and gives everything. What drives him, I wonder? What do you suppose goes on in that head of his?”
No-one knew. But the sailors aboard the many ships that now lay anchored safely around the lagoon cared for and cherished their dolphin. Nets were cast in the shallow bays for the fish that Pilot Jack would drive towards them, and the men always made sure the dolphin got his share. There was little else they could do for him as he seemed to need nothing; only, perhaps, their companionship. But the warmth of their feelings for him spread into their feelings for one another, so what they could not give him they shared amongst themselves. It was a happy little community. And a lonely, wandering dolphin seemed at last to have found himself a purpose.
Yet the Fairy Tern remained.
As did the wreckers. And they did not share the sailors' love for the dolphin that deprived them of so much business.
One dark night, late while the sailors slept, they rowed out stealthily into the lagoon and netted the dolphin. They dragged him to shore and hung him up on a tree by the water's edge to die of dehydration, and from the cuts and gashes and bruises where they had beaten him almost senseless in their rage.
George and the Master found him early the next evening when they were out collecting fruit. He was dead by then. And their beloved dolphin was no longer white and pure, but torn and battered, smeared with black, congealed blood and crawling with flies. He hung from the tree like rotting carrion.
The two men stood for a moment in stunned silence. Then George went berserk.
“It's the wreckers! The filth, the scum!” He broke down and wept.
Then the old gardener's horror turned to cold anger. “Get me a gun,” he snarled at the Master. “Get me a gun!”
The Master, who seemed very calm, gripped his friend's arm tightly. Although his own body trembled from his attempts to hold back the revulsion, and the instinctive desire for retribution that surged through him like a wave, he managed somehow to speak quietly.
“No, George,” he said. “No. He would not want that. He loved us all, and he would have saved them from themselves, just as he saved us all from the beast, if they had only let him.” His whole body shook from the emotions he was suppressing. “I know how you feel, George, believe me,” he almost cried, “but it would be wrong to compound evil with more of the same. Let it be, George. Remember what happened in your garden. There is evil trying to grow here but we must not feed it, we must not let it spread to us. It would wreck everything he did, and everything he stood for.”
The Master reached out with his knife and cut down the body of the white dolphin. Then he turned back to George.
“He's not gone, George. They can destroy his body, but as long as we don't succumb to this evil he will live on in us, and in our children and our children's children; if we hold true to what he has taught us.”
He paused, and stared for a long while out over the lagoon, as though a thought had struck him. Then he continued: “You know, George, we're none of us the same people we were.”
High above them the Fairy Tern wheeled on her long white wings and left. Her job was done: Pilot Jack had found his purpose. And the Master and George buried him, companionably close to a lonely, leafless tree, whose solitude seemed to cry for sustenance.
And as the last of the Earth closed over the white dolphin
faint wisps of a strange, familiar music began to swirl
around the grave, rising like early mor
ning mist
into the tangled, thirsting roots of a tree
destined to be for ever nourished
by the death of this dolphin
~ Then the singer came ~
o ------------------------ o
The young boy walked for a long while after this final story
away from the lonely tower and down towards the sea
where there grew a tree
curiously shaped like a guitar with too many strings
And with him went his thoughts
And beside him walked the Angel
o ------------------------ o
I Come Not to Bring Peace
THE ANGEL watched the young boy trudging wearily along the sand, his hands deep in his pockets and his head bowed low. She saw him stop and talk to some fishermen hauling their nets by the shore.
It seemed unfair, she thought, for one so young to have such responsibility and such loneliness. To be incarcerated yet again in a physical body, isolated from the familiarity of his own world, and faced with a task of this immensity, was beyond what anyone could reasonably expect. Yet he expected it of himself. Accepted it quietly.
He was stronger, she suspected, than anyone knew; more resilient than perhaps even he realised. He would survive this ordeal, as he had the last. And at this attempt she was certain he would succeed in blowing wide open the recurring cycle that gripped his beloved Earth. Particularly as this time he would have a little assistance on her part.
He would find out, of course; and he would remember the stories when he discovered the situation. But it seemed to her that he deserved a little help. He knew as well as she that only through suffering could a man gain true understanding. But surely that applied to the people of Earth no less than it did to him? It was not right, she felt, that he should take on all the suffering himself.