Ishmael, who considered this world to be a Pacific of Air, thought of it as a bottom-feeder. "It intended to flush us out by making a great noise, and so it tried to crash through to us. But now it will skim just above the roof of this jungle, pulling itself along, and it will go swiftly. More swiftly than we can run through this tangle."
Ishmael had not asked her how the shivaradoo ate its prey, but he did so now.
"Why do you want to know?" she said, shivering. "If you are dead, what difference...?"
"Tell me!"
She moved her head from side to side as if she were trying to locate the beast. It must have stopped to listen, because it no longer made a sound.
"It drips an acid on the kill," she whispered, "and this turns the flesh and the bones into a mush which it sucks up through the tentacles."
Ishmael had had a wild idea of throwing some of its poisoned darts into its mouth and so killing it. But this idea was no good now, though it probably would not have been even if the beast had possessed a mouth large enough to have swallowed a man.
"It will drift over us as silently and lightly as a cloud," she said, "its tentacles probing here and there for the heat of our bodies, and its hearing organs alert for the slightest sound. And if we don't run, it will pinpoint us and shoot a dozen darts at once. And if we run again, it will follow us until we are exhausted and then will kill us."
"I wonder how strong those tentacles are?" he said so softly that she could not catch the words. He repeated them and got the expected question, "Why do you want to know?"
"I don't really know myself," he said, and he put a hand on her cold and perspiring skin. "Let me think."
He knew now how a whale must feel. He was down on the bottom, sounding, as it were, while the killer, moving on the surface, waited and watched. Sooner or later, the hunted must make a break for it, and then the hunter would pounce.
The noise of plants bending and of plants being released as the beast started to pull itself along was renewed.
Namalee clung to Ishmael and whispered, "We must run! And if we do...!"
"It can't chase us in two different directions," Ishmael said. "I am going to run northward, north by northwest, actually, to take me away from it at an angle. You will count to fifteen after it starts to chase me -- not before -- and then run southward."
"You are sacrificing yourself for me!" she said. "But why?"
"In my world, where similar situations occur, the male is expected to defend the female in the best manner he knows. That is the principle, at least," he added, "though the practice is often enough the contrary. I haven't the time to discuss the principles or their reason. You do what I say."
Impulsively, he kissed her on the mouth and then he turned and ran as swiftly as he could through the heavy growths.
The noise of the shivaradoo's passage increased.
He ran on until his feet were caught in a tangle of creepers and he pitched headlong onto the ground. In front of him was an especially dense complex of creepers and vines strung over two large fallen plants. He crawled into it, worming and pulling until he was between the logs. He hoped that none of the creepers was in a mood to dine.
Ishmael reached up and snapped off a pod from a stalk. He punched a hole in it but did not drink. He set it by his side and stared through the tangles until he saw the shadowy mass of the shivaradoo appear above the jungle top.
The enormous moon glittered on the many minute mica-like particles encrusting its skin. It was indeed as Namalee had described it, a pancake-thin creature with bulges of skin on top which enclosed gas bladders. Its many tentacles moved about, sniffing for heat, while other tentacles clung to the plants beneath it.
After a few seconds, it pulled itself closer. It stopped while the feelers probed around, and then it moved closer again.
Ishmael flattened out even more but kept his head raised. He had to see what it was doing. His heart thudded so hard that he was sure the monster could hear it, and his throat and mouth were as dry as the leaves of an old manuscript in a desert monastery.
And soon as dead -- perhaps, he thought.
The beast, having located him, extended six tentacles which, one after the other, shot darts. Each thunked into the log behind which he lay. He counted each and then quickly reached over and jerked two loose before the second barrage came from another six tentacles.
The shivaradoo waited for several minutes during which time seemed to be gold-beaten out into a tissue as thin as the film over a snake's eye.
Perhaps it was waiting to determine, by the loss of heat, if it had struck and killed its prey.
Apparently deciding that it had failed, it pulled itself downward until it bent two dozen stems beneath it and then it pulled itself forward. The poles scraped against the lower side without injury to the creature. Poles sprang up and swished leaves and creepers and vines around as it passed them. About twenty feet from Ishmael, the monster was no longer able to force passage. This was to be no deterrent, since it could extend the tentacles on the part nearest Ishmael not only up to him but past him if it wished.
It was cautious now, however. Perhaps because it could detect that its prey was hiding behind a log. Several tentacles lifted and moved out into the air at a height about ten feet above him. Several others slid along the ground, their fore parts raised. Ishmael waited, not sure what he could do. In a minute, both worlds, the ancient -- his natal world -- and the present -- the future -- would be lost to him.
Namalee had said that the monster could not expel its darts with any force unless it was through a straightened-out tentacle. A bend considerably decreased the force of the air. This may have explained why it did not shoot immediately. It wanted to be able to use its tentacles as perfectly straight tubes.
Ishmael could hear the whoosh of indrawn air into the bladder which served it as an air tank. It gulped again and again, as it compressed the air.
One tentacle, looking in the moonlight-edged darkness like the trunk of a starved elephant or a headless cobra, moved along the ground ahead of the others. Ishmael had raised his head swiftly, seen it, and then ducked back behind the log. He estimated how soon it would glide over the log and held between two fingers of one hand a dart and in the other hand the stone knife.
Above him, three tentacles curved downward, looking with the blind eyes which saw only the heat of his body. Then one dipped down as if to get close enough so that, even with a considerably reduced charge of air, it could still flick a bone-shaft deep enough to drive its poison into him.
A tentacle curved over the log and stopped. Sniffing for the heat of a living body, it moved back and forth. Then it began to straighten out.
Ishmael rammed the needle point of his dart into the open end of the extension.
Immediately after, he rolled back across the log behind him and into the net of vegetation in back of it.
Ishmael rolled back between the two logs, picked up a dart with one hand, leaped up and jumped at the emptied tentacle.
The tentacle retreated, but slowly, as if it were not accustomed to reacting defensively. Ishmael grabbed the tip and this time drove the point of the dart into the soft fleshy part just inside the opening.
The tentacle did react violently then. It dragged him back under the huge disk of the beast, past the fore tentacles. The aft tentacles, which had been facing the other way, perhaps to act as a rear defense, began to turn around toward him.
Ishmael went up the tentacle as if he were climbing a line on the Pequod.
His weight pulled it downward hard against the trees.
A dart struck the tentacle just above his head.
The beast was turning its tentacles inward and shooting at him but striking itself.
Ishmael released his hold, fell back about five feet, and crashed into a plant leaning at a forty-five degree angle from the ground. It bent under him until it snapped, and he fell the rest of the way.
The monster abruptly soared, then settled, wobbling, a
nd grabbed a number of plants and pulled itself away.
Ishmael rolled as far as he could, got to his feet, and ran forward until he was stopped by a net of creepers. He bounced back, fell, got up, and ran around the creepers.
He stopped to look behind him.
A huge mass was settling like a cloud upon the tops of the plants. It seemed to lose its outline and to melt over and down into the jungle.
Ishmael could not clearly see the underside of the shivaradoo, but he could detect no movement of the tentacles.
Suddenly, a long torpedo-shape with an enormous head and teeth gleaming whitely in the moonlight shot out of the night.
It bit once at one of the humps on the back of the sagging pancake creature, and the hump exploded. The air shark, scenting death, had come in swiftly. Another appeared behind the first and anchored itself by biting into the loose skin of the destroyed hump. It also rotated its wing-fins to eliminate the pressure of the wind on them.
Ishmael wondered if the poison which had killed the shivaradoo was strong enough to spread through the body and also kill the air sharks.
He had no time to watch for such a development. He turned around swiftly at a noise behind him. It had sounded as if a large body was trying to move stealthily through the jungle. He got down on his knees and waited with the stone knife. Then he heard a deep and familiar breathing, and he said, softly, "Namalee."
"I could not allow you to sacrifice yourself," she said. "I wanted to help, so... oh!"
She had seen the shivaradoo, draped over the tree-tops like a cloth.
He told her what had happened, and she took his hand and kissed it.
"Zalarapamtra and Zoomashmarta will thank you," she said.
"I could have used their help a moment ago."
They continued walking, skirting the dead beast, which was now being torn at by half a dozen sharks. They walked for hour and then lay down again to sleep. Though very tired, Ishmael kept waking up because of the cold. The end of the night was on them, and the temperature, he estimated, was down to about forty above zero, Fahrenheit.
He tore off a huge leaf and climbed into Namalee's hammock-leaf, wrapped his arms around her, and covered himself and her with the leaf. She did not object, though she did turn her back to him. He went to sleep at once and dreamed of that first night in the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford when the giant savage, Queequeg, had shared his bed. Queequeg, whose bones had turned to dust and become flesh and plant again and again and again...
They continued north, sleeping four times, catching the twin-noses and cockroaches, which tasted much like crabs, and several other animals, including a flying snake. This was one of the few beasts of the air which lacked a gas bladder. Some of its ribs had developed into great wings which it was able to flap up and down in crude imitation of a bird's wings. Another night passed with its perils, and another sun arose.
"How long before we reach your city?" Ishmael said.
"I do not know," she said. "By ship, it would take us, I calculate, about twenty days. Perhaps it will take us five times that long."
"About four hundred of the days of my world," he said. He did not groan, because time was not such a precious currency to a whaler. But he would have preferred to ride. It was heavy and exasperating labor to force a path through this dense complex. He envied the beasts that sailed with such seeming effortlessness through the clouds.
At noon of that day, they saw another of the many immense clouds of billions of tiny red animals, each borne by its umbrella-shaped head. And there were the leviathans that followed and fed upon the air brit. And there was a great ship of the air. Namalee stood up, dropping the white meat of the insect she had caught only an hour before. She stood silent for a long time after an initial gasp. Then she smiled.
"It is from Zalarapamtra!"
The ship looked like a huge, rather elongated cigar beneath which hung a very thin mast and yardarms and sails and on both sides of which, at right angles to the hull, were two masts and sails. The sails, fore-and-aft rigged, were so thin that the dark-blue sky could be seen through them. At the stern were horizontal and vertical rudders.
"It's not as flat as it looks from here," she said in answer to his question. "If you could see it closer up, you would see that in profile it is twelve men high." The ship was following a pod of about thirty leviathans, which, spreading out their double pair of dragon- shaped wings, veined with red and black and green and purple, their tremendous cylindrical bodies and huge heads gleaming silver, were driving through the clouds of air brit.
"How...?" Ishmael said, and she put a hand on his arm.
"Watch," she said.
The ship had a full spread of sails. It was traveling swiftly but not swiftly enough to catch up with the whales. Then a smaller object, followed a moment later by another, put out from the big ship.
These were needle-shaped, and the crew lay down in them, Namalee told him, standing only when there was work to be done. The extra rounding on the nose contained a larger bladder than elsewhere. This was necessary because the harpooner stood there when the time came to strike and because the harpoon and its long line were stored there.
He watched as masts were extended above and below the whaleboat and out to both sides. Then the transparent sails were unfurled, and the boat began to speed toward the red cloud.
"How do they manage to drop and furl the sails without going out on the arms?"
"It's done from on board," she said. "The arrangement was invented, so it is said, by Zalarapamtra, but I think that it was used a long time before he was born."
A whaling boat sped on the trail of a leviathan that seemed to be unaware of it. It passed through stratum after stratum of redness, the density of population of the animalcules varying from time to time. It came even with the great beast, and passed on the other side of the red cloud, so that Ishmael could not see it. Ishmael turned to watch the passing creatures and then he saw the leviathan in the rear of the pod suddenly rise. A silvery sheet fell from it, the ballast of water which it stored in a bladder for two reasons: one, to draw upon when its body needed it; two, for emergencies, when it loosed it to gain levitation swiftly.
"It can float for a long time in air in which men would strangle in a short time," Namalee said. "And sometimes a whale is great enough to drag a boat up there, and then the harpooner must cut the line before he becomes too confused to know what he is doing."
The beast had by then taken the boat so high that both were lost in the dark blue. The brit-cloud was northeast of the two watchers on the ground and within half an hour would be touching the horizon. But the ship itself had turned away from the brit and was running close-hauled. Then it turned and was beating against the wind, turned, came back, turned, and was close-hauled again. The maneuvers made it evident that the men on the ship, being much higher than Ishmael, could see the wind whale and its attached boat. And they were still in the general area, vertically speaking, in which the harpoon had first been plunged into the leviathan.
After a while, Ishmael saw the whale as a very small blackish dot. It quickly became larger as it dived, and then the boat became visible. The beast was plunging straight down, its enormous wing-sails folded by its side, its body rigidly straight. The line between hunted and hunter was too thin to be seen. The boat was on a straight line behind and a little to one side of the beast at a distance of about three hundred feet.
"The whale releases its gas quickly and falls," Namalee said. "When it gets close enough to the ground, it will spread its sails and turn upward in a sharp curve. The boat, swinging around and under it, may or may not escape being dashed against the ground. It all depends upon the skill of the whale. Sometimes they err in their estimations of their speed and distance because their wounds have drained the blood from their brains. Then they crash and kill themselves but also kill the boat crew. Of course, the line can be cut before the whale gets too close to the ground, but it is a matter of honor that the harpooner does not sever t
he line until the very last moment. And sometimes the momentum keeps the boat going, and..."
She stopped. The whale, if he kept on at his present velocity and angle, would smash into the earth about half a mile north of them. The animal was now so near that Ishmael could see that this was far huger than any blue whale of his day, which was the greatest animal that had ever lived. The barrel-shaped head was much like its counterpart of the seas of Ishmael's time, but it had no lower jaw. The mouth was a round hole located in the center of the front of the head.
Ishmael asked Namalee about it, and she replied that the creature had no teeth, and its lower jaw was immovable, being grown solidly into the skull. The mouth funneled in the millions of the little red animals and, when the whale's appetite was satisfied, which was seldom, a thin film of skin fell down from inside the mouth to cover the opening.
"But there are whales that have great mouths and movable jaws and these eat the toothless whales and anything else they can, including men," she said.
"I have met such beasts," he said, thinking of the great white whale with the wrinkled forehead and the crooked jaw.
"If that beast doesn't spread its sails and start to turn upward, it will never clear the ground."
Down the gigantic body raced, showing no intention of unfurling sails. All except one of the men in the boat were hidden, doubtless clinging to whatever they used for holds. Only the head of the harpooner was visible. Ishmael expected at any moment to see the arm of the man appear and make a sawing motion with the knife at the line. But the head did not move nor any arm appear.
"Those men are very brave or very foolish," Ishmael murmured in English.
A few seconds later, he spoke in his native tongue again.
"For God's sakes, cut! Cut the line!"
Now the air whale's wing-sails were spread out so suddenly that the crack of the air striking them -- or perhaps it was the crack of the great muscles extending the bone and skin of the sails -- was like a volley of muskets. The descent of the creature was checked, and its tail, moving downward and jerking the boat about violently, caused it to begin to curve upward. But its initial direction was still maintained, and even though it was now angled upward, it was sinking.
The Wind Whales of Ishmael Page 4