by Farley Mowat
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.”
What he was seeing that Tuesday afternoon was essentially a repetition of Sunday’s fusillade... with one important difference for the whale. The army-issue bullets used on Tuesday were steel-jacketed and so had a penetration far greater than that of commercial, soft-nosed bullets. Instead of shattering into small fragments after making a relatively shallow entry into the whale’s blubber, these bullets pierced deep into her body.
“The creature was drove clean crazy! She got herself into the shoal water on the eastward side of the Pond, the farthest she could get from them fellers, and there warn’t no more than just enough water to keep her afloat. And beat the water! My dear man, her tail and flippers was flying in the air! ’Twas a desperate sight, I tell you. And all the while you could hear the thump of them bullets just a-pounding into her.
“After a time she kind of thrashed into deeper water and then she took a run for where we was to. I swears to God I thought she was going to come right on top of we! She come to a stop fair in the mouth of the pushthrough with her mouth swole up like one of them balloons they used to fly on ships in the war to keep the German planes away. I tell you, ’twas more’n I cared to see! The young lad and me, we hauled back into The Ha Ha and rowed right out around Aldridges Head. I’d a rather crossed the ocean in me dory than gone across the Pond that evening!”
This man had one further detail to add. As he and his son were rowing into Short Reach they encountered four more whales.
“Three of them was in deep water a quarter-mile offshore, but t’other was right into the mouth of Aldridges Cove and he was near as wild as the one inside the Pond. He was running right up to the edge of the shoal ground, blowing high as a steeple, and sending a wash right up onto the shore. I and the young lad hauled clear over to the south side of Fish Rock and took to the lee of the islands. ’Twas a long way out of our course, but I tell you I never liked the looks of that big fellow. Far as I were concerned he could have the whole channel to hisself!”
AT THEIR HOMES in Muddy Hole that Tuesday evening, the Hann brothers knew nothing of this new assault upon the whale. They had spent several quiet hours in her company earlier in the day and had begun to take an almost proprietary interest in her, and even to feel a strengthening sympathy for her predicament.
“What a hard business,” Kenneth remembered. “’Twasn’t fitting for a creature the like of she to be barred off. Whales likes company, you see. Was times Doug and me thought she was after looking to we for company... Times us’d be gutting cod and that girt big head would come along six, eight feet off the boat, just under water and moving slow and easy as you please, with nary a ripple of a wake... Could see her eye sometimes, looking up at we. We took the habit of saving the herring out of the cod bellies and heaving it overboard when she come nigh. Can’t say as she took to it, but ’tis certain she had no use for gurry!* When we’d heave that overboard, she’d go right clear of we until it washed away.”
* * *
*The guts of the cod.
When the Hanns returned to the Pond on Wednesday, they noted changes in the whale’s behaviour and appearance.
“She waren’t blowing near as high as Tuesday and she blowed a lot oftener. Couldn’t seem to stay down more’n a few minutes at a time. When she come close up we see her hide was peppered with white spots the size of silver dollars. Doug said they was likely bullet holes but a man could hardly believe she had that many bullets into her. I thought maybe ’twas where she’d had barnacles hung onto her, and they got scraped off.
“Well, sorr, we soon found out the truth of that. Just afore we left the Pond two of them speedboats come in from The Reach and six fellows jumped ashore. They all had them army rifles, and George Oldford, he started right in to shooting.
“We hailed them and told them to hold off so we could get clear of the Pond. George, he yelled down to we they had orders for to finish off the whale. Put it out of its misery, like. I told them that was only foolishness. ‘You’ll shoot somebody yet!’ I told them. They never answered but when we was passing out of the south gut we heard the lot of them open fire again.
“Doug, he turns to me and says ’tis time somebody put a stop to it. Trouble was, the Mountie waren’t likely to take a hand unless some of the big folks told him to, and they was into it as much as anybody... People was needing to use the Pond for the fishing and to fetch water from The Ha Ha, but ’twas hardly safe to go in there at all.”
Although I still knew nothing about the continuing attacks on the whale, they were no secret to most people. The firing could be distinctly heard in the eastern parts of Burgeo and by Thursday a rising indignation on the part of those who customarily used Aldridges Pond had brought the matter to a head. Late Thursday evening some of the Muddy Hole fishermen decided on a course of action.
During my years in Burgeo I had been called upon on a number of occasions to speak, or write, on behalf of individuals and groups who felt themselves incapable of reaching the ears of those in authority. Although a little vague about the real nature of my work as a writer, they assumed I had some kind of influence with those up above.
After supper on Thursday two fishermen from Smalls Island walked into our kitchen bearing gifts of cod tongues and a huge slab of halibut. They sat on the daybed and we talked for a while about the state of the fishery, the weather and other usual topics of Burgeo life. It was not until they were leaving that the real reason for the visit came out.
“I suppose, Skipper, you knows about the whale?”
“You mean the finners in The Ha Ha?”
“No, Skipper, I means the one down in Aldridges Pond. Big feller. Been in there quite a time.”
“What the devil would a whale be doing in there?” I asked incredulously. “What kind of a whale is it?”
He was vague. “Don’t rightly know. Black, like; with a girt big fin. They says it can’t get clear... Well, goodnight to you, Missus, Skipper.”
And with that they vanished.
“Now what do you suppose that’s all about?” I asked Claire.
“Who knows? Maybe there’s a pothead caught in Aldridges.”
“Maybe. But why did those chaps come all the way up here to tell us about it and then go all evasive when I started asking questions? Something’s going on. I think I’ll slip over to Sim’s and see what he can tell me.”
Although I was inclined to agree with Claire t
hat the whale (if it existed at all) would turn out to be a pothead, I thought there was just a chance it might be a killer. The remark about the “girt big fin” suggested this and, too, some local dragger men had recently met pods of killers not far from the Burgeo Islands. Anyway, my curiosity was aroused.
Sim Spencer was alone in his little store, laboriously working up his accounts. Rather reluctantly, it seemed to me, he admitted to having heard something about the Aldridges whale. When I asked him why he hadn’t told me before, knowing how interested I was in anything to do with whales, he was embarrassed.
“Well,” he said, fumbling for words. “They’s been a lot of foolishness... a shame what some folks does... wouldn’t want to bother you with the likes of that... but now as you knows, I thinks ’tis just as well.”
The implications of this escaped me at the time, but soon became clear enough. The reason I had not been told about the whale was that many of the people were ashamed of what was happening and did not want to talk about it with outsiders; and even after five years I was still something of a newcomer in their midst.
Sim took me to see the Hanns. They were reticent at first but they did describe the whale in fair detail; and I now realized there was an excellent if almost unbelievable chance it might turn out to be one of the great rorquals. Having seen Aldridges Pond in the past, I knew it to be an almost perfect natural aquarium, quite large enough to contain even a blue whale in some kind of comfort.
The prospect that, for the first time in history, so far as I knew, it might be possible to come into close quarters with the mystery of one of the mighty lords of the ocean was wildly exciting. I was in such a hurry to rush home and tell Claire about it that Kenneth Hann’s concluding words did not quite sink in.
“They says,” he warned, “some fellers been shooting at it. It could get hurted, Skipper, an’ they keeps it up.”
Probably some damn fool has been taking pot shots at it with a .22, I thought, and put the warning out of mind. As I hurried across Messers bridge in the gathering darkness, my thoughts were fixed on tomorrow, and my imagination was beginning to run away as I contemplated what could happen if the trapped whale indeed turned out to be one of the giants of the seas.
11
EARLY NEXT MORNING I TELEPHONED Danny Green, a lean, sardonic and highly intelligent man in his middle thirties who had been the high-lining skipper of a dragger but had given that up to become skipper, mate and crew of the little Royal Canadian Mounted Police motor launch. Danny not only knew—and was happy to comment on—everything of importance that happened on the Sou’west Coast, he was also familiar with and interested in whales. What he had to tell me brought my excitement to fever pitch.
“I’m pretty sure ’tis one of the big ones, Farley. Can’t say what kind. Haven’t seen it meself but it might be a humpback, a finner or even a sulphur.” He paused a moment. “What’s left of it. The sports have been blasting hell out of it this past week.”
As Danny gave me further details of what had been happening, I was at first appalled, then furious.
“Are they bloody well crazy? This is a chance in a million. If that whale lives, Burgeo’ll be famous all over the world. Shooting at it! What the hell’s the matter with the constable?”
Danny explained that our one policeman was a temporary replacement for the regular constable, who was away on leave. The new man, Constable Murdoch, was from New Brunswick. He knew nothing about Burgeo and not much about Newfoundland. He was hesitant to interfere in local matters unless he received an official complaint.
At my request, Danny put him on the phone.
“Whoever’s doing that shooting is breaking the game laws, you know,” I told him. “It’s forbidden to take rifles into the country. Can’t you put a stop to it?”
Murdoch was apologetic and cooperative. Not only did he undertake to investigate the shooting, he offered to make a patrol to Aldridges Pond and take me with him. However, Claire and I had already made other arrangements with two Messers fishermen, Curt Bungay and Wash Pink, who fished together in Curt’s new boat. They were an oddly assorted pair. Young, and newly married, Curt was one of those people about whom the single adjective “round” says it all. His crimson-hued face was a perfect circle, with round blue eyes, a round little nose and a circular mouth. Although he was not fat, his body was a cylinder supported on legs as round and heavy as mill logs. Wash Pink was almost the complete opposite. A much older man, who had known hard times in a distant outport, he was lean, desiccated and angular. And whereas Curt was a born talker and storyteller, Wash seldom opened his mouth except in moments of singular stress.
A few minutes after talking to Murdoch, Claire and I were underway in Curt’s longliner. I was dithering between hope that we would find a great whale in the Pond, alive and well, and the possibility that it might have escaped or, even worse, have succumbed to the shooting. Claire kept her usual cool head, as her notes testify:
“It was blowing about forty miles an hour from the northwest,” she wrote, “and I hesitated to go along. But Farley said I would regret it all my life if I didn’t. Burgeo being Burgeo, it wouldn’t have surprised me if the ‘giant whale’ had turned out to be a porpoise. It was rough and icy cold crossing Short Reach but we got to Aldridges all right and sidled cautiously through the narrow channel. It was several hours from high tide and there was only five feet of water, which made Curt very nervous for the safety of his brand-new boat.
“We slid into the pretty little Pond under a dash of watery sunlight. It was a beautifully protected natural harbour ringed with rocky cliffs that ran up to the 300-foot crest of Richards Head. Little clumps of dwarfed black spruce clung in the hollows here and there along the shore.
“There was nobody and nothing to be seen except a few gulls soaring high overhead. We looked eagerly for signs of the whale, half expecting it to come charging out of nowhere and send us scurrying for the exit. There was no sign of it and I personally concluded it had left—if it had ever been in the Pond at all.
“I was ready to go below and try to get warm when somebody cried out that they saw something. We all looked and saw a long, black shape that looked like a giant sea serpent, curving quietly out of the water, and slipping along from head to fin, and then down again and out of sight.
“We just stared, speechless and unbelieving, at this vast monster. Then there was a frenzy of talk.
“‘It’s a whale of a whale!... Must be fifty, sixty feet long!... That’s no pothead, not that one...’
“Indeed, it was no pothead but an utterly immense, solitary and lonely monster, trapped, Heaven knew how, in this rocky prison.
“We chugged to the middle of the Pond just as the RCMP launch entered and headed for us. Farley called to Danny Green and they agreed to anchor the two boats in deep water near the south end of the Pond and stop the engines.
“Then began a long, long watch during which the hours went by like minutes. It was endlessly fascinating to watch the almost serpentine coming and going of this huge beast. It would surface about every four or five minutes as it followed a circular path around and around the Pond. At first the circles took it well away from us but as time passed, and everyone kept perfectly still, the circles narrowed, coming closer and closer to the boats.
“Twice the immense head came lunging out of the water high into the air. It was as big as a small house, glistening black on top and fish-white underneath. Then down would go the nose, and the blowhole would break surface, and then the long, broad back, looking like the bottom of an overturned ship, would slip into our sight. Finally the fin would appear, at least four feet tall, and then a boiling up of water from the flukes and the whale was gone again.
“Farley identified it as a fin whale, the second largest animal ever to live on earth. We could see the marks of bullets—holes and slashes—across the back from the blowhole to the fin.
It was just beyond me to even begin to understand the mentality of men who would amuse themselves filling such a majestic creature full of bullets. Why try to kill it? There is no mink or fox farm here to use the meat. None of the people would eat it. No, there is no motive of food or profit; only a lust to kill. But then I wonder, is it any different than the killer’s lust that makes the mainland sportsmen go out in their big cars to slaughter rabbits or groundhogs? It just seems so much more terrible to kill a whale!
“We could trace its progress even under water by the smooth, swirling tide its flukes left behind. It appeared to be swimming only about six feet deep and it kept getting closer to us so we began to catch glimpses of it under the surface, its white underparts appearing pale aqua-green against the darker background of deep water.
“The undulations on the surface came closer and closer until the whale was surfacing within twenty feet of the boats. It seemed to deliberately look at us from time to time as if trying to decide whether we were dangerous. Oddly, the thought never crossed my mind that it might be dangerous to us. Later on I asked some of the others if they had been afraid of this, the mightiest animal any of us was ever likely to meet in all our lives, and nobody had felt any fear at all. We were too enthralled to be afraid.
“Apparently the whale decided we were not dangerous. It made another sweep and this time that mighty head passed right under the Mountie’s boat. They pointed and waved and we stared down too. Along came the head, like a submarine, but much more beautiful, slipping along under us no more than six feet away. Just then Danny shouted: ‘Here’s his tail! Here’s his tail!’
“The tail was just passing under the police launch while the head was under our boat, and the two boats were a good seventy feet apart! The flippers, each as long as a dory, showed green beneath us, then the whole unbelievable length of the body flowed under the boat, silently, with just a faint slick swirl of water on the surface from the flukes. It was almost impossible to believe what we were seeing! This incredibly vast being, perhaps eighty tons in weight, so Farley guessed, swimming below us with the ease and smoothness of a salmon.