by Farley Mowat
The men had not brought much ammunition and after an hour had exhausted their supply. Reluctantly they returned to their boat and to Burgeo, where they spent the rest of the evening in convivial drinking as they toured from house to house around The Harbour and The Reach, telling the story of their exploit.
Sunday broke white and clear, with blinding sunlight glaring from the snow and ice of a silent land and on the sheen of a still sea. Completely unaware of what had been happening at Aldridges, Claire and I and Albert set out to the westward for a day-long hike on the scimitar of sand beaches which bars the waters of Little Barasway Pond from the open ocean. It was an unforgettable day for we saw seventeen bald eagles—an almost unbelievable number in this age when the bald eagle has become yet another vanishing species. They had gathered on the beaches from God alone knows how many hundreds of miles away to feed on tens of thousands of dead herring—victims of the seiners—which had washed ashore.
Meanwhile in Burgeo the bells of the Anglican and United churches were ringing and men and women were making their ways along the icy roads to morning service. After the services, knots of men gathered here and there to yarn a bit before going home for Sunday dinner. The main topic was the trapped whale. It would have been difficult to ignore the subject because ever since early morning a distant obbligato of rifle fire had been audible east of the town.
Not long after dawn, between twenty and twenty-five gunners had ringed Aldridges Pond. This time each man had a good supply of shells. A number of the merchants had obligingly opened up their stores and soon sold most of the high-velocity ammunition they had in stock. The morning shooting party included several of these merchants, together with some staff members from the plant and a good representation from among the smart young fellows who spent their springs, summers and autumns working on the Great Lakes freighters, and their winters at home in Burgeo drawing unemployment insurance. Also represented was Burgeo’s first businessmen’s organization, the recently formed Sou’westers Club, which was a combination service group and Chamber of Commerce committed to the proposition that Burgeo must transform itself as rapidly as possible into a really modern town.
With the arrival of the sportsmen, the whale retreated to the middle of the Pond, where she spent as much time as she could submerged.
THE SYSTEM WHALES have evolved to enable them, as air-breathing mammals, to survive for long periods in the depths is wonderfully effective. Unlike a human diver, the whale does not rely solely on the air it can store in its lungs. If it were to dive with lungs fully inflated, it too would be subject to the crippling and often fatal effects of what we know as the bends. Instead it stores most of the oxygen it needs in the red corpuscles of the blood and, by means of a special chemical process, in the muscle tissues too. Furthermore, a whale on a deep or prolonged dive restricts the blood circulation so that the precious oxygen is only distributed to those organs and those regions where it is most vitally needed.
When a fin whale surfaces after a long dive (there are records of dives of at least a forty-minute duration), it must expel the waste gases which have accumulated and then take in enormous quantities of fresh air; and it must do this swiftly, for it is vulnerable when it is at the surface of the sea. The arrangements which make this possible are impressive.
A whale’s blowholes are actually a mammal’s nostrils, which have migrated from the front to the top and back of the head. They are equipped with powerful valves and are connected to the lungs by a huge passage capable of handling an immense volume of air. The great bellows of the lungs are so effective that when a finner surfaces it can totally exhaust and then refill them to the bursting point in just over one second! After a long submersion this breathing rhythm must be repeated several times before the depleted supply of oxygen is fully replenished, and there must be an interval between breaths to allow the blood to absorb the oxygen which has been taken into the lungs. A fin whale submerges after each separate breath, rising to spout again at intervals of two or three minutes until, fully “recharged” with oxygen, it can again return to the deeps.
The first part of a surfacing finner to become visible is usually the hump housing the blowholes. The moment the hump breaks surface the valves snap open; the whale lets go an explosive exhalation, which is instantly followed by an implosive indraft. Then the valves snap shut and the great beast begins to descend, appearing to cartwheel forward in a flat arc so that the blowholes are followed at the surface by a long expanse of curving back and finally by the high fin, which is set well aft. The flukes seldom show, but twin circular disturbances of roiling water testify to their powerful presence as the whale vanishes from view.
THE BRIEF SURFACINGS of the whale did not give the sportsmen at Aldridges Pond much chance to spot their quarry, take aim and fire, and at first the gunners did not make very good practice. However, they soon began to recognize a pattern in the whale’s appearances and to take advantage of it. When she first surfaced after a long submergence, they held their fire. When she rose again to take her second and subsequent breaths, they were ready for her. The rifles cracked and the echoes reverberated back and forth from nearby Richards Head to Greenhill Peak.
As the day wore on, more and more boats arrived and an atmosphere of fiesta began to develop. Most people were content just to watch the show from the natural rock amphitheatre which cradles Aldridges. Men, women and children, many in their Sunday best, sat or stood and watched with eyes that brightened when the whale, beginning to panic, turned into shoal water, touched bottom, reacted in terror, and then flailed her way back to deep water again while a continuous bam-whap... bam-whap... bam-whap told how well the sportsmen were doing.
Not everyone who saw the show that day was happy about it. An elderly fisherman from Muddy Hole, who had brought his daughter and grandchildren to see a live whale, was disconcerted.
“It looked like rare foolishness to I,” he said. “What war the use of it? Them bullets cost money and they was heaving ’em away like they was winkle shells. ’Twould have been better to save their bullets to get a bit of meat in the country... but I supposes the likes of them chaps got more money ’an they needs. Still and all, they had no reason to torment the whale. She war no good to they. Happen they killed her, what was they going to make of her? Put her through the plant for frozen fillets? No, me son, ’twas a pack of foolishness.”
Another friend of mine, the mate of a dragger, was there that day. He did no shooting either and his contempt for those who did was surprisingly explicit in a community where criticism was seldom openly expressed.
“There was three young chaps there I knowed for what they was... bloody butchers. March of last year when the glitter drove the deer out to Connaigre Bay, they come along to have some fun. Nothing better to do, I suppose. I was aboard the Pennyluck, anchored up the Bay with engine trouble. When them chaps come, Lard Jasus, I thought ’twas the Germans. Shoot? They never stopped, sunup to sundown. I was ashore next day and they was dead deer, cows and bulls alike, all over the place. Yiss, bye, I knowed them chaps. What was their names? That’s for me to know and you to find out. Rotten bastards they is, but I’ll not tell their names.”
I changed the subject and asked him to describe the whale’s behaviour under fire.
“It made me feel right ugly just to watch her. She had no place to go, only down under, and she couldn’t stay down forever. I expected her to go right crazy after a couple of hundred bullets had smacked into her, but it was like she knowed that would do her no good. Once or twice she got wild, but for the most of it she war right quiet.
“One thing... she warn’t alone. I was standing high up on a pick of rock where I could spy into the Pond and out across Short Reach as well. ’Twasn’t long afore I sees another whale outside. It blowed first just off Fish Island. Then there was a stretch of time when no boats was in The Reach, and it moved closer and closer until ’twas fair in the mouth of the cove.
“Now here’s the queer thing. Every ti
me the whale in the Pond come up to blow, the one outside blowed too. It happened every time they blowed. I could see both of them, but they was no way they could see one t’other. You can say what you likes, but the one outside knowed t’other was in trouble, or I’m a Dutchman’s wife.
“They fellows shooting at the whale weren’t no smarter nor a tickleass.* They was using soft-nose bullets and when they hits something they busts up... goes all to pieces. That whale must a had a foot of blubber and I don’t believe the most of them bullets got through at all. I supposes some did, certainly, but I don’t say she was hurted bad. Try and kill a thing that big with soft-nosed slugs? My son, they might as well have took to heaving rocks at her!”
* * *
* The local name for the small gull otherwise called kittiwake.
The shooting gallery went out of business early on Sunday afternoon when the supply of ammunition ran out. With nothing more to entertain them, most of the onlookers went home. My friend was one of the last to leave.
“The last I see of the whale, she was swimming pretty good. Was no blood coming from her blowhole but she weren’t blowing near so high nor staying down so long. Maybe she was just played out.” He paused thoughtfully and then concluded in a tone that indicated some embarrassment. “A man didn’t feel right about what was done that day. ’Twas no great credit to us folks in Burgeo...”
WHEN CLAIRE AND I returned from our walk late Sunday afternoon, we were tired and content. The tensions which had beset us during the long months of travel had sloughed off like old skin. The outer world of turmoil and disaster now seemed so distant as to be almost irrelevant. I do not ever recall having felt more at ease within myself than I did that night as we prepared to go to bed.
Claire wrote in her journal:
“It is so nice to be back among people who live simple and uncomplicated lives. We have really missed the people here. How I hope they are never spoiled by the savagery and selfishness that seems to be spreading over the whole world like a fog...”
10
BY MONDAY MORNING A BITTER nor’easter, blowing down from the frozen barrens, had shrouded Burgeo under a low and scudding overcast. Those who could stay at home by their kitchen stoves did so gladly. Few fishermen were out; but the plant workers, men, women and children as young as fourteen, red-faced and bending to the chill wind, shuffled off as usual to begin their bleak day’s work. They stood for endless hours on cold concrete while numbed hands filleted and packaged a thin stream of fish coming along a conveyer belt from the belly of a deep-sea dragger unloading at the wharf.
There seems to have been little talk about the whale that day. Those who had been at Aldridges on Sunday were disinclined to discuss the matter. A letter written to me by one of the Burgeo clergymen a year afterwards may throw some light upon this reticence.
“I hope you won’t think all the people were acting in their ordinary way that Sunday. Afterwards a lot of them felt very bad about it. Except for those few who did the shooting, most of the people had no idea of harming the whale. When they saw the shooting and watched it for a while they got worked up by it; and afterwards a lot of them felt very bad. They hardly knew how to tell what was the matter, but most of them was quite upset next day...”
That there was indeed something like a conspiracy of silence explains what is otherwise difficult to understand; that Claire and I, living less than three miles from Aldridges Pond, heard not a whisper about what had taken place there. Onie Stickland, Simeon Spencer, Uncle Art and the rest of our friends and neighbours, who were usually so ready, not to say eager, to keep us informed of everything that happened in Burgeo, spoke not a word to us about the whale.
On that Monday morning, while we remained in ignorance, the Hann brothers were cautiously and somewhat fearfully entering Aldridges Pond. As Kenneth recalled it:
“We knowed the gunning might have killed the whale, though ’twas more likely she was just bad hurted. But you got to watch out for even a deer with a bullet in its guts, and that whale, she had hunnerts of bullets into she. There was no telling what she might do, but we knowed one flip of her tail could put an end to we.”
Gingerly they puttered through the south channel, stopping just inside to see what the situation was. The surface of the water was ruffled only by the wind. Although they waited a quarter of an hour they saw no sign of the whale. So they started up their engine and headed across the Pond, but they had gone only a hundred yards when she surfaced close ahead and almost on a collision course. She blew once and began to sound. The two men frantically snatched up their oars to help the engine push them to the safety of the shore. They were rowing for dear life when they were appalled to see the enormous head passing directly beneath their boat.
“I says to myself, ‘Kenneth, me son, that’s it! You’re gone out now!’ I was certain sure that whale, with all them bullets into her, would be so hateful she’d lay into the first humans she could reach. Feared? I was shaking like a dog!”
But Kenneth was wrong. The whale passed majestically on her way and when she surfaced again it was at the far end of the Pond. Still shaken, the Hanns hastened to the pushthrough and on into The Ha Ha, where they spent the next several rough and frigid hours wrestling with their gear. They were glad to regain the shelter of the Pond but they were still leery of the whale, so they prudently pulled their boat to shore close to the entrance before beginning to gut their fish.
While they were busy at their task, the whale continued to cruise steadily around the deep part of the Pond, blowing at intervals of about ten minutes and showing no further desire to dare the passage of the south channel. Once or twice the men saw big, circular water boils appear on the surface and they thought the whale was chasing herring.
Such placid behaviour restored the Hanns’ confidence somewhat and as they coasted the shore of the Pond, homeward bound (and keeping, as they say, “one foot on the land”), Douglas was moved to take a bait-tub full of herring and empty it into the water not far from where the whale had just submerged.
“Don’t know as she cared for it,” he explained, “but I thought ’twould do no harm. Truth to tell we was feeling friendly toward she... she give us a clear passage through the Pond, spite of what them fellers done.”
As far as is known, the Hanns were the only people to visit the whale on Monday... but Tuesday was a different day.
The weather had improved by Tuesday noon and a party of riflemen, hearing that the whale was still alive, thought there might still be some sport to be had with her. The only difficulty was a shortage of ammunition, but there was an answer to this problem. Like many remote Canadian communities, Burgeo boasts a platoon of Rangers, a semi-military organization of volunteers under command of one of their own number who holds a temporary commission in the Canadian armed forces. Each Ranger is issued with a .303 service rifle, and cases of ammunition are kept at each detachment headquarters. Part of this ammunition is issued for target practice while the balance is retained for use in case of a “military emergency.” The Burgeo Rangers had long since exhausted their practice issues, mostly on caribou, moose and harbour seals.
It happened that several of the whale hunters belonged to the Ranger platoon. On Tuesday morning one of them visited the second-in-command of the detachment, who was also a senior member of the fish plant staff, and asked for a special ammunition issue. The spokesman did not claim there was an emergency in Burgeo but he did point out that target practice never came amiss and that it was unlikely they would ever find a better target than “that whale, up to Aldridges.”
A number of rounds were issued... just how many I was never able to determine, but I was later to count more than four hundred empty .303 cartridge cases lying in piles around Aldridges Pond, all bearing the markings of Canadian army arsenals.
Apparently Tuesday’s gunners were not entirely easy in their minds. Perhaps they were aware that an undercurrent of disapproval now existed in the community. Or possibly they were a bit wo
rried about the illegality of what they were doing since, of course, they knew that even the carrying of rifles, let alone their use, in the countryside at this season of the year was prohibited, as a measure intended to protect the caribou and moose from poachers.
For whatever reason, those who manned the three boats heading down The Reach toward Aldridges late Tuesday afternoon had waited until all the fishermen who used the Pond had left it. In fact, they were so circumspect that nobody seems to have even seen their boats depart. Had it not been for the unexpected arrival on the scene of a man and his son who, in their dory, had been fetching a barrel of spring water from a stream at the foot of The Ha Ha, the names and activities of Tuesday’s sportsmen might never have been known. Of the eleven gunners who disembarked at the Pond that day, eight had taken part in Sunday’s affray, while three were respected members of Burgeo “society” who had missed the Sunday fun because of church commitments.
The man who had gone to fetch water at The Ha Ha was not hesitant about describing what he saw.
“We heard the shooting before ever we left the spring, but never thought much about it till we come to the pushthrough. The young lad was up in the bow and we no sooner got into the Pond when a bullet comes wheening over his head, close enough so he could feel the wind.
“Well, sorr, we hauled the dory in behind a rock, right smart. Then I takes a spy over the top. ’Twas something like I never see before. There was that crowd from down The Reach, one of them fellers on every point, and carrying on like they had all gone right foolish. They was yelling and jumping, and hauling away on bottles, and shooting at the whale, and yelling some more. There was bullets flying every which way. ’Twas a wonder some of them never killed the others.”