A Whale for the Killing

by Farley Mowat

  Sunday, January 29, was no exception. It almost seemed as if spring had come. The sun flared in a cloudless sky; there was not a breath of wind; the sea was still and the temperature soared.

  Early in the morning Onie Stickland and I went off to Aldridges in his dory. We took grub and a tea kettle since I expected to spend the entire day observing the whale and noting her behaviour for the record. I hoped Onie and I would be alone with her, but there were already a number of boats moored to the rocks at the outer end of the channel when we arrived, and two or three dozen people were clustered on the ridge overlooking the Pond. I saw with relief that nobody was carrying a rifle.

  We joined the watchers, among whom were several fishermen I knew, and found them seemingly content just to stand and watch the slow, steady circling of the whale. I used the opportunity to spread some propaganda about Burgeo’s good luck in being host to such a beast, and how its continued well-being would help in drawing the attention of faraway government officials to a community which had been resolutely neglected for many years.

  The men listened politely but they were sceptical. It was hard for them to believe that anyone outside Burgeo would be much interested in a whale. Nevertheless, there did seem to be a feeling that the whale should not be further tormented.

  “They’s no call for that sort of foolishness,” said Harvey Ingram, a lanky, sharp-featured fisherman, originally from Red Island. “Lave it be, says I. ’Tis doing harm to none.”

  Some of the others nodded in agreement and I began to wonder whether—if no help came from outside—it might be possible to rouse sufficient interest in the whale, yes, and sympathy for her, so we could take care of her ourselves.

  “Poor creature has trouble enough,” said one of the men who fished The Ha Ha. But then he took me down again by adding:

  “Pond was full of herring first day she come in. Now we sees hardly none at all. When we first see the whale, ’twas some fat, some sleek. Now it looks poorly. Getting razor-backed, I’d say.”

  We were interrupted by the arrival, in a flurry of spray and whining power, of a big outboard speedboat, purchased through the catalogue by one of the young men who spent their summers on the Great Lakes freighters. He was accompanied by several of his pals, all of them sporting colourful nylon windbreakers of the sort that are almost uniforms for the habitués of small-town poolrooms on the mainland. They came ashore, but stood apart from our soberly dressed group, talking among themselves in tones deliberately pitched high enough to reach our ears.

  “We’d a had it kilt by now,” said one narrow-faced youth, with a sidelong glance in my direction, “only for someone putting the Mountie onto we!”

  “And that’s the truth!” replied one of his companions. “Them people from away better ’tend their own business. Got no call to interfere with we.” He spat in the snow to emphasize his remark.

  “What we standing here for?” another asked loudly. “We’s not afeared of any goddamn whale. Let’s take a run onto the Pond. Might be some sport into it yet.”

  They ambled back to their powerboat, and when the youths had clambered aboard, one of the men standing near me said quietly:

  “Don’t pay no heed, Skipper. They’s muck floats up in every place. Floats to the top and stinks, but don’t mean nothin.’”

  It was kindly said, and I appreciated it.

  By this time a steady stream of boats was converging on the Pond from Short Reach, The Harbour, and from further west. There were power dories, skiffs, longliners and even a few rowboats with youngsters at the oars. Burgeo was making the most of the fine weather to come and see its whale.

  The majority of the newcomers seemed content to moor their boats with the growing armada out in the entrance cove, but several came through the channel into the Pond, following the lead of the mail-order speedboat. At first the boats which entered the Pond kept close to shore, leaving the open water to the whale. Their occupants were obviously awed by the immense bulk of the creature, and were timid about approaching anywhere near her. But by noon, by which time some thirty boats, bearing at least a hundred people, had arrived, the mood began to change.

  There was now a big crowd around the south and southwest shore of the Pond. In full awareness of this audience, and fortified by lots of beer, a number of young men (and some not so young) now felt ready to show their mettle. The powerful boat which had been the first to enter suddenly accelerated to full speed and roared directly across the Pond only a few yards behind the whale as she submerged. Some of the people standing along the shore raised a kind of ragged cheer, and within minutes the atmosphere had completely—and frighteningly—altered.

  More and more boats started up their engines and nosed into the Pond. Five or six of the fastest left the security of the shores and darted out into the middle. The reverberation of many engines began to merge into a sustained roar, a baleful and ferocious sound, intensified by the echoes from the surrounding cliffs. The leading powerboat became more daring and snarled across the whale’s wake at close to twenty knots, dragging a high rooster-tail of spray.

  The whale was now no longer moving leisurely in great circles, coming up to breathe at intervals of five or ten minutes. She had begun to swim much faster and more erratically as she attempted to avoid the several boats which were chivvying her. The swirls of water from her flukes became much more agitated as she veered sharply from side to side. She was no longer able to clear her lungs with the usual two or three blows after every dive, but barely had time to suck in a single breath before being driven down again. Her hurried surfacings consequently became more and more frequent even as the sportsmen, gathering courage because the whale showed no sign of retaliation, grew braver and braver. Two of the fastest boats began to circle her at full throttle, like a pair of malevolent water beetles.

  Meanwhile, something rather terrible was taking place in the emotions of many of the watchers ringing the Pond. The mood of passive curiosity had dissipated, to be replaced by one of hungry anticipation. Looking into the faces around me, I recognized the same avid air of expectation which contorts the faces of a prizefight audience into primal masks.

  At this juncture the blue hull of the RCMP launch appeared in the entrance cove. Onie and I jumped aboard the dory and intercepted her. I pleaded with Constable Murdoch for help.

  “Some of these people have gone wild! They’re going to drive the whale ashore if they don’t drown her first. You have to put a stop to it... order them out of the Pond!”

  The constable shook his head apologetically.

  “Sorry. I can’t do that. They aren’t breaking any law, you know. I can’t do anything unless the local authorities ask me to. But we’ll take the launch inside and anchor in the middle of the Pond. Maybe that’ll discourage them a bit.”

  He was a nice young man but out of his element and determined not to do anything which wasn’t “in the book.” He was well within his rights; and I certainly overstepped mine when, in my distress, I intimated that he was acting like a coward. He made no reply, but quietly told Danny to take the police boat in.

  Onie and I followed them through the channel, then we turned along the southwest shore, where I hailed several men in boats, pleading with them to leave the whale alone. Some made no response. One of them, a middle-aged merchant, gave me a derisive grin and deliberately accelerated his engine to drown out my voice. Even the elder fishermen standing on shore now seemed more embarrassed by my attitude than sympathetic. I was slow to realize it but the people gathered at Aldridges Pond had sensed that a moment of high drama was approaching and, if it was to be a tragic drama, so much the better.

  Having discovered that there was nothing to fear either from the whale or from the police, the speedboat sportsmen began to make concerted efforts to herd the great beast into the shallow easterly portion of the Pond. Three boats succeeded in cornering her in a smal
l bight, and when she turned violently to avoid them, she grounded half her length on a shelf of rock.

  There followed a stupendous flurry of white water as her immense flukes lifted clear and beat upon the surface. She reared forward, raising her whole head into view, then turned on her side so that one huge flipper pointed skyward. I had my binoculars on her and for a moment could see all of her lower belly, and the certain proof that she was female. Then slowly and, it seemed, painfully, she rolled clear of the rock.

  As she slid free, there was a hubbub from the crowd on shore, a sound amounting almost to a roar, that was audible even over the snarl of engines. It held a note of insensate fury that seemed to inflame the boatmen to even more vicious attacks upon the now panic-stricken whale.

  Making no attempt to submerge, she fled straight across the Pond in the direction of the eastern shallows, where there were, at that moment, no boats or people. The speedboats raced close beside her, preventing her from changing course. She seemed to make a supreme effort to outrun them and then, with horrifying suddenness, she hit the muddy shoals and drove over them until she was aground for her whole length.

  The Pond erupted in pandemonium. Running and yelling people leapt into boats of all shapes and sizes and these began converging on the stranded animal. I recognized the doctor team—the deputy mayor of Burgeo and his councillor wife—aboard one small longliner. I told Onie to lay the dory alongside them and I scrambled over the longliner’s rail while she was still underway. By this time I was so enraged as to be almost inarticulate. Furiously I ordered the deputy mayor to tell the constable to clear the Pond.

  He was a man with a very small endowment of personal dignity. I had outraged what dignity he did possess. He pursed his soft, red lips and replied:

  “What would be the use of that? The whale is going to die anyway. Why should I interfere?” He turned his back and busied himself recording the whale’s “last moments” with his expensive movie camera.

  The exchange had been overheard, for the boats were now packed tightly into the cul-de-sac and people were scrambling from boat to boat, or along the shore itself, to gain a better view. There was a murmur of approval for the doctor and then someone yelled, gloatingly:

  “Dat whale is finished, byes! It be ashore for certain now! Good riddance is what I says!”

  Indeed, the whale’s case looked hopeless. She was aground in less than twelve feet of water; and the whole incredible length of her, from the small of the tail almost to her nose, was exposed to view. The tide was on the ebb and if she remained where she was for even as little as half an hour, she would be doomed to die where she lay. Yet she was not struggling. Now that no boats were tormenting her, she seemed to ignore the human beings who fringed the shore not twenty feet away. I had the sickening conviction that she had given up; that the struggle for survival had become too much.

  My anguish was so profound that when I saw three men step out into the shallows and begin heaving rocks at her half-submerged head, I went berserk. Scrambling to the top of the longliner’s deckhouse, I screamed imprecations at them. Faces turned toward me and, having temporarily focused attention on myself, I launched into a wild tirade.

  This was a female whale, I cried. She might be and probably was pregnant. This attack on her was a monstrous, despicable act of cruelty. If, I threatened, everyone did not instantly get the hell out of Aldridges Pond and leave the whale be, I would make it my business to blacken Burgeo’s name from one end of Canada to the other.

  Calming down a little, I went on to promise that if the whale survived she would make Burgeo famous. “You’ll get your damned highway!” I remember yelling. “Television and all the rest of it...” God knows what else I might have said or promised if the whale had not herself intervened.

  Somebody shouted in surprise; and we all looked. She was moving.

  She was turning—infinitely slowly—sculling with her flippers and gently agitating her flukes. We Lilliputians watched silent and incredulous as the vast Gulliver inched around until she was facing out into the Pond. Then slowly, slowly, almost imperceptibly, she drifted off the shoals and slid from sight beneath the glittering surface.

  I now realize that she had not been in danger of stranding herself permanently. On the contrary, she had taken the one course open to her and had deliberately sought out the shallows, where she could quite literally catch her breath, free from the harassment of the motorboats. But, at the time, her escape from what appeared to be mortal danger almost seemed to savour of the miraculous. Also, as if by another miracle, it radically altered the attitude of the crowd, suddenly subduing the mood of feverish excitement. People began to climb quietly back into their boats. One by one the boats moved off toward the south channel, and within twenty minutes Aldridges Pond was empty of all human beings except Onie and me.

  It was an extraordinary exodus. Nobody seemed to be speaking to anybody else... and not one word was said to me. Some people averted their eyes as they passed our dory. I do not think this was because of any guilt they may have felt—and many of them did feel guilty—it was because I had shamed them, as a group, as a community, as a people... and had done so publicly. The stranger in their midst had spoken his heart and displayed his rage and scorn. We could no longer pretend we understood each other. We had become strangers, one to the other.

  My journal notes, written late that night, reflect my bewilderment and my sense of loss.

  “... they are essentially good people. I know that, but what sickens me is their simple failure to resist the impulse of savagery... they seem to be just as capable of being utterly loathsome as the bastards from the cities with their high-powered rifles and telescopic sights and their mindless compulsion to slaughter everything alive, from squirrels to elephants... I admired them so much because I saw them as a natural people, living in at least some degree of harmony with the natural world. Now they seem nauseatingly anxious to renounce all that and throw themselves into the stinking quagmire of our society which has perverted everything natural within itself, and is now busy destroying everything natural outside itself. How can they be so bloody stupid? How could I have been so bloody stupid?”

  Bitter words... bitter, and unfair; but I had lost my capacity for objectivity and was ruled, now, by irrational emotions. I was no longer willing, or perhaps not able, to understand the people of Burgeo; to comprehend them as they really were, as men and women who were also victims of forces and circumstances of whose effects they remained unconscious. I had withdrawn my compassion from them, in hurt and ignorance. Now I bestowed it all upon the whale.

  13

  AS WITH SO MANY ASPECTS of the life of the fin whale, so it is with their intimate and personal relationships—we know almost nothing about the subject. We have never seen them in the act of making love. No man has ever witnessed the birth of one. We do not even know with any certainty how long the gestation period is; how often a female gives birth; how old she is at sexual maturity; or even how she manages to suckle her young under water.

  Examination of foetuses taken from dead finners suggests that the young are born in early spring, perhaps in March or April. At any rate, this is presumed to be the case amongst finners who live in the North Atlantic. Because late-term foetuses have only a very thin blubber layer, and therefore not much insulation, some biologists believe the young must be born in warm southern waters, perhaps in the mysterious region near the Sargasso Sea. Other cetologists are equally positive that, because of the quantity and extreme richness of the mother’s milk (it is ten times richer than that of a Jersey cow), baby fins can produce enough internal heat to enable them to survive even in far northern waters. These men suggest that the young are born near the edge of the arctic ice pack. But the fact is that nobody knows.

  Again basing their conclusions on examination of dead foetuses, biologists surmise that the gestation period is between ten and twelve month
s and they think that, at birth, young finners must be eighteen to twenty feet in length and weigh nearly two tons! The growth rate after birth seems to be equally fantastic. Avidly guzzling at its mother’s twin breasts, the young whale is thought to grow to a length of about forty-five feet, and a weight of perhaps twenty tons, during a nursing period of six to eight months. After that its growth slows. It apparently takes at least six and probably as many as eight years for the youngsters to reach puberty, by which time the males—always somewhat smaller than their mates—may be sixty feet long and the females about sixty-five. Although sexual maturity seems to come relatively early, there is new evidence suggesting that finners are not fully grown until about the age of thirty, by which time a female may be seventy-five feet long and weigh as much as ninety tons. Until recently, science thought the finner’s lifespan was rather brief—perhaps twenty or thirty years. But during the last few years a method of ageing baleen whales, by counting the number of concentric growth rings in their horny ear plugs, has been developed and it now seems certain that, left unmolested, a blue or a fin can expect to surpass three score years and ten with ease. In fact, the baleen whales may be the most long-lived of all mammals, including man.* And since they are preyed upon by no natural enemies in adulthood, except, of course, for us, and appear to be singularly free from fatal diseases, they are probably one of the very few non-human forms of life that nature would permit to die of old age, if man did not intercede.

  * * *

  *Probably we will never know what the “normal” lifespan of any of the great whales really was. Because the oldest were also the biggest, they were prime targets of harpooners in the modern catchers. So thorough was the hunt for the big ones that, since 1950, almost no fully mature rorquals of any species have been taken. Few, if any, are left alive. However, scientists recently examined the ear plug of one of the last really large finners, which had been killed half a century ago (the plug had been kept in preservative). They estimated its age as between eighty and ninety years when a harpoon ended its life.