by Farley Mowat
“No,” I said. “It isn’t my town anymore. I guess it never really was.”
He was still expostulating when I hung up. I got Hermitage and, after the usual delays, the operator connected me with a newspaper reporter who had become the whale’s unofficial agent “outside.” I asked him to contact all those who were preparing to fly in to Burgeo, or who might already be airborne.
“Tell them it’s all over,” I said. “Tell them I’m sorry. Tell them they can all go home again.”
“Farley... are you sure she’s dead?”
“I’m sure. There’s no way she could have escaped. She was so sick last night she could hardly stay afloat.” And then, with an uncontrollable burst of bitterness, I lashed out at this good friend. “She’s dead, do you hear me! Christ, do I have to rub your face in her stinking corpse to make you understand?”
He was a very good friend, and he forgave me.
Word spreads fast in the new world of technological wizardry. I had hardly finished putting on my parka when the program of music from the CBC station to which we usually listened in the mornings was interrupted by an announcement that Moby Joe, the trapped Burgeo whale, had disappeared and was presumed dead.
Word spreads fast in the outports too. Even as the an-nouncement was being made, the kitchen door opened and Onie came quietly in.
“I t’ought you might be needin’ the dory,” he said softly. “She be ready when you is.”
THE RAMBLING, SCATTERED and brightly painted houses of Burgeo; the wide-spreading, ice-encrusted islands; the glittering waters of the tickles and runs had never looked more beautiful than they did this morning as the dory made its way eastward. But now I was seeing it all as I had not seen it for many years... through the sudden eyes of a stranger.
When we turned into Short Reach we passed a longliner outbound for the fishing grounds. I knew all three of the men who stood in her wheelhouse, yet none of them waved to me, and I did not wave to them.
As we approached the cove, a jet of white mist shot upward, hung for a moment and dissolved, as the Guardian’s long back slipped beneath the waters. His presence was final proof that the imprisoned whale had not escaped, in the flesh at least. He was down a long, long time and when he rose he lingered for a while upon the surface, motionless, it seemed. I am sure he was listening... listening for a voice he would not hear again.
The RCMP launch was in the Pond when we entered and together we searched. Although the waters were so calm and crystalline that we could scan the bottom to four fathoms, the deeper reaches were too dark to penetrate. We could not look into the mystery where she lay.
I do not know, can only wonder, why she did not die with her head upon the shore. I can only guess that, in the darkness of her dying, something in her weary mind willed her to seek the deeps, the lightless ancient womb of ocean.
When we had given up our fruitless search, the launch and the dory came together and lay idly in the middle of the silent Pond. “Do you think there’s any chance she might have got away?” Constable Murdoch wondered.
I knew his question was asked out of innocence and out of hope, and so I repressed a sharp reply and only shook my head. It was Danny who answered.
“Don’t be so daft. She’s laying in nine fathom right under your feet. In three, four days she’ll blast and come back on top. And won’t that be something for the sports to crow about! Aye, eighty tons of rotten blubber to remind them what heroes they is.”
Then Danny turned to me. His lean, sardonic face was, as usual, almost expressionless; but when he spoke, the scorn had faded from his voice... almost.
“Don’t rightly know who was the foolishest... them fellows and their gunning, or you, Farley, me son. The way I sees it you done that whale no good. You done Burgeo no good. And I don’t say as you done yourself much good.” He looked directly at me, and I had nothing to say. He shook his head. “Ah, well, t’hell with it.”
20
JOE LEADS MOURNING FOR ILL-STARRED FINBACK MOBY JOE
St. John’s, Nfld. c.p. Moby Joe, apparently dead, was eulogized in the legislature today.
The tale of the trapped finback whale in a saltwater pond near the South Coast fishing community of Burgeo ended earlier in the day when it disappeared, believed to have died and sunk.
Premier Joseph Smallwood, benefactor of the 80-ton creature, rose at the opening of the sitting to announce the news.
He said: “I’m sure that all of Newfoundland, all Canada, and even all North America, will hear this news with regret.”
... The battle to save the whale ended today in defeat when it succumbed to what experts believe was a massive infection resulting from gunshot wounds ten days ago... it is presumed to have died during the night and sank in nine fathoms of water.
Wednesday, February 8, began in normal Burgeo fashion. At dawn it was blowing a gale of wind from the sou’east. Clouds streamed so low that the black islands were almost lost to view. Stinging slants of driving snow beat like whiplashes amongst the scattered, silent houses of Messers Cove. Then, all at once, the storm abated. The wind still blew, but gently, over a cleansed world shining under a pallid sun. In her journal Claire wrote:
“How sad we are on this bright and lovely day. Burgeo looks so beautiful, and I don’t care anymore. Our whale is gone. We sat together and listened to the radio news accounts and I could not stop thinking about the savage mentality of the men who stood around the Pond and emptied their rifles into that huge and harmless animal. Surely they are the beasts, not the whale.
“Now it is over. Farley and I are alone with ourselves, having to face the depressing reality of what life will be like if we stay on here...”
It was a lovely day... but one of the loneliest I can remember. There was no meeting between us and the people of Burgeo. Nobody called. Not even our closest neighbours crossed the unmarked stretch of new snow around our house. No children came, as they had always come before, to sit quietly in our kitchen after school. I felt as if we were marooned on a cold rock in a lifeless world. Our only human contacts now seemed to be with the thin and disembodied voices of strangers far away, heard over the metallic whimpering of the telephone. And soon, now that the whale was gone, those voices too would fade into silence.
The oppressive sense of limbo grew too much to bear, and in the late afternoon, as the light was fading, I took Albert, our water dog, for a walk. Deliberately I headed east along the rough path leading toward the main part of Burgeo. I met a few people but, although they returned my greeting with civility, I was not comforted. I was sure they were concealing their real feelings. I became certain of it when I passed a group of young men and women, employees of the fish plant, making their way homeward at the end of the day’s work.
They parted to let me by, but had nothing to say until several yards separated us again. Then I heard girls’ voices chanting raggedly, and not very loudly:
Moby Joe is dead and gone...
Farley Mowat, he won’t stay long...
We turned back then, Albert and I, and made our way out to Messers Head, from whose lonely summit I had watched the fin whales fishing only a few weeks earlier.
It was too dark to see very well. I could barely make out the old stone beacon on Eclipse Island where, almost three centuries earlier, Captain James Cook had taken observations on a transit of Venus.
I sat for a long time on the crest of the Head, locked in the confines of my mind, savouring the bitter taste of my defeat. Then slowly I became conscious of the eternal sounding of the seas, and my thoughts drifted away from myself and the world of men, turning outward to the void of ocean, and the world of whales.
For the first time since the trapped whale vanished, I became fully aware of a rending sense of loss. It was dark, and there was none to know that I was weeping... weeping not just for the whale that died, but because the fragile link between her race and mine was severed.
I wept, because I knew that this fleeting opportunity to bridge, no m
atter how tenuously, the ever-widening chasm that is isolating mankind from the totality of life, had perished in a welter of human stupidity and ignorance—some part of which was mine.
I wept, not for the loneliness which would now be Claire’s and mine as aliens among people we had grown to love, but for the inexpressibly greater loneliness which Man, having made himself the ultimate stranger on his own planet, has doomed himself to carry into the silence of his final hour.
IT WAS WELL past suppertime when Albert and I came home. Saffron light streamed over the snow from the bay window of the little house. I pushed open the kitchen door... and the house was full of people! Uncle Job was there with a drink in his hand and a grin on his weather-scarred old face. There was Sim and Onie, and several other fishermen. Claire, looking flustered but happier than she had seemed for days, was bringing chairs in from the dining room to accommodate Dorothy Spencer and a number of other youngsters.
Uncle Job raised his glass in salute.
“Foine weather, Skipper. But I believes she be a weather breeder. Aye. Don’t say but ’twon’t be some dirty day in the marning.”
The visitors did not stay long and, as was their custom, they did not say much. But it was what they did not say that counted. Nobody spoke one word about the whale.
Sim was the last to leave. He lingered in the door for a moment, then, with patent embarrassment, said what he had come to say.
“Don’t you fret... you and your woman, now... you got good friends in this place... the foinest kind...”
He could say no more, but he had said what was in his heart and we had understood. Sim Spencer will never know the gratitude we bear him still. The solace of his words was so effective that when, on Thursday morning, some of the fishermen who had worked the capelin seine arrived in a glum, demanding mood, I was able to deal with them with-out rancour.
They told me they wanted payment, in full and at once, for what they claimed was owing them for their work. It came to more than $500. I explained that they would have to wait until the money promised by Premier Smallwood came (not knowing then that it would never come).
“Someone’s lying!” one of them replied truculently. We’se sent off a telegram to Joey, telling as how you and they Sou’westers won’t pay we the money he sent.
“Aye,” added another. “And we knows you fellows be going to sell that whale; and she worth a fortune, sure!”
This was too much.
“What the devil are you talking about! The whale is dead at the bottom of Aldridges Pond. How do we sell a whale we haven’t got, supposing anyone was fool enough to want to buy what’s left of her?”
They exchanged uncertain glances and then the spokesman said:
“Well, bye, she’s back. She’s floating in the Pond. An’ we hears they Sou’westers has already sold she to a whaling company from up along Nova Scotia way for ten t’ousand dollars!”
He paused, then added with sudden belligerence:
“Dat money belongs to Burgeo folk. Not to they fellows. No... nor to no strangers, neither!”
There was little point in trying to argue against such wild rumours, and I did not want to argue. The whale had risen, and so there were some final things for me to do. I gave each man my personal cheque for the sum he claimed was owed to him. When they had left I called the manager of the fish plant. Had he heard that the whale had risen? He had not. And he was appalled.
“The devil you say! If I’d heard I’d have had her carcass towed out of there and turned adrift at sea before anyone knew a thing about it. Would be the best thing for Burgeo. I’ll send a boat and crew to do the job right now!”
“You’d better think about it a bit first,” I told him. “That carcass weighs about eighty tons. If you turn it adrift it’ll become a menace to navigation. In a collision it could sink a good-sized ship, and you’d be responsible.”
“Then what’ll we do? You’re the keeper of the bloody thing!”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I was the keeper of a living whale. The corpse is Burgeo’s. It belongs to Burgeo, and especially to those who had a hand in killing it. Let them look after it!”
Radio bulletins were soon announcing the news of the whale’s resurrection and shortly thereafter I had a phone call from the woman doctor, who was also Burgeo’s public health officer. According to her, the corpse was extremely dangerous. The infection, if transmitted to a human being, might well prove fatal, she explained. It was imperative that I issue a public warning over the radio telling everyone to stay away from the carcass.
I should have refused, for it was her responsibility, but I did as I was asked; and shortly thereafter all hell broke loose. The plant manager, almost inarticulate with fury, called to demand that I repudiate the warning. He reminded me that the plant drew some of the water for its operations directly from Short Reach, less than a mile from where the dead whale floated. He was obviously frightened that the federal fish inspectors would get wind of the matter and close the plant.
He got no sympathy from me.
“You might have given that some thought a couple of weeks ago, when someone down there was issuing army ammunition to the sports so they could have their bit of fun.”
I was being vindictive, but I make no apologies. In my journal notes for that day I wrote:
“The Ancient Mariner had nothing on Burgeo. He only had an albatross slung round his neck. Burgeo has eighty tons of poisonous meat and guts and blubber. Maybe the people here will get the message.”
They did, indeed, get a message, but it was not the one I had hoped for. In the face of a renewed outburst from the mainland press and radio, highlighted by a scurrilous article by Bob Brooks in the Star Weekly, the majority of the Burgeo people, even those who had been blameless in the tragedy or who had shown sympathy for the whale, now closed ranks. The media attack was a shotgun blast fired at random, and it was only to be expected that many of the residents, hurt, angry and unable to reply or to defend themselves, should have reacted as they did. Almost overnight the lines became clear-cut. The men who had killed the whale began to be regarded as innocents, if not as victims, and it was widely agreed that they had been justified in doing what they did.
In such circumstances it was inevitable that the Sou’westers Club, composed as it largely was of the town’s business and professional men, should change sides again.
Late Thursday evening I had a call from one of them. He was polite, but the gist of his message was that the club was publicly dissociating itself from me and that, from this point forward, it would be concentrating its efforts on restoring the good name of Burgeo.
I wished him luck, and I sincerely meant it.
NOT UNTIL LATE Friday morning was the weather good enough to allow Claire and me to pay our last visit to Aldridges Pond. Once again it was a frigid day, with frost-smoke rising from the tickles and cat-ice cracking under the bow of Onie’s dory. Although it was a fine day for whale spotting, we saw none. There were no distant puffs of vapour hanging like exclamation marks above the dark-skinned sea. The calm waters of Short Reach were unbroken by the swirl of the Guardian’s great flukes. The surviving members of the family had vanished, and they were not seen again that winter nor, as far as I have heard, have they or any of their kind again returned to what was once their sanctuary among the Burgeo Islands.
It would have been a lifeless scene save that, far above the still waters of the Pond, three eagles soared on the updrafts over Richards Head. Like silent mourners, they drifted in the void of air above the void of sea. As I stared up at them, I thought how fitting it was that these masters of the aerial world, themselves already doomed, should have chosen this time and place to describe their majestic arabesques... For when I dropped my gaze we were in the Pond and there before us floated all that was left of one of the true masters of the sea, a portent of the almost certain extermination of the great whale nation.
Even after the lapse of years, I grieve to write about her as I saw her
then. She had been immense in life—now she seemed twice as huge. She was floating on her back, high out of the water, and the pallid mountain of her swollen belly was like a capsized ship. From a being of transcendental majesty and grace she had been changed into an abomination; grotesque, deformed and horrible. She stank! She stank so frightfully that, as we cautiously approached her, we had to fight down our nausea.
The most revolting aspect of the scene before us lay in the final confirmation that she was female and, judging from the condition of her breasts, had been far advanced in pregnancy.
I do not know what Onie felt as we drifted beside the monstrous corpse; but Claire was quietly crying. I think we were all grateful for the distraction when the chugging of an engine announced the arrival of another boat.
It was a work boat, manned by three men from the fish plant. It came busily through the channel and, ignoring us, went directly to the whale. The men had handkerchiefs tied over their mouths and noses, giving them a sinister look. They worked quickly to secure a loop of wire cable around the whale’s tail just forward of the mighty flukes. Then the work boat, dwarfed to insignificance by her tow, put her stern down and white water foamed under her counter as she took the strain. Slowly, ponderously, the whale began to move. The bizarre cortege slowly drew abreast of us and turned into the mouth of the south channel.
And the great fin whale, who had been unable to pass that barrier alive, floated easily over it in death... returning, now that there was no return, to the heart of mystery from whence she came.
To Make Amends
BEFORE THAT MOST RAPACIOUS OF predators, the human animal, set about annihilating them in earnest during the seventeenth century, the eight species of great whales are believed to have numbered as many as 4.5 million individuals.
By 1930, three centuries later, they had been reduced to about 1.5 million.
By 2004, there were estimated to be no more than 350,000 survivors.