by Farley Mowat
When the brothers reached the plant and began forking their fish up onto the wharf, an interested audience gathered to hear their story.
“Think she’ll stay in the pond?” asked one of the plant workers.
“More’n likely. Don’t see as how she can get clear ’til next spring tide.”
“Howsomever,” Kenneth Hann would tell me later, “if I’d a knowed what they fellows had in mind I’d have told they she’d gone clear of the pond already.”
The Hanns wished the whale no harm. There were other men in Burgeo who did not feel that way.
Shortly after the Hanns finished unloading and departed for Muddy Hole, a big power skiff put out from the plant carrying the foreman and four others. Partway down Short Reach, this boat put in to shore, where each man hurried up to his house, returning in a few minutes with a rifle and all the ammunition he could lay hands upon.
It was almost dusk when the boat slipped through the pushthrough and entered Aldridge’s Pond. The vast shape of a whale rose and spouted dead ahead. The foreman immediately ran the boat ashore. Its occupants leapt out, took hurried aim, and opened fire. The crash of rifle shots echoed from the surrounding hills, with the solid thunk of bullets striking home in living flesh providing an undertone.
The gunners had not brought much ammunition–perhaps a hundred rounds–which was soon exhausted. 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 reach describing their exploit.
Most of those who heard about the incident assumed the whale would escape from the pond during the night. But, hoping she might fail to do so, nearly a dozen gunners showed up at Aldridge’s Pond at dawn on Saturday. These were mostly younger men who spent their springs, summers, and autumns crewing on Great Lakes freighters in mainland Canada, and their winters at home in Burgeo sport hunting, holidaying, and drawing unemployment insurance. However, members of Burgeo’s recently formed business organization (an embryonic chamber of commerce called the Sou’westers’ Club) were also among those present at the pond that day.
The gunners were not disappointed. Either because the next high tide had been well below the one that had enabled the whale to enter the pond, or because she had already been partially disabled by Friday’s fusillade, she was still there. When she surfaced, the sportsmen opened rapid fire.
On Friday she had been able to stay submerged as long as an hour. By Saturday noon she was so exhausted she could scarcely manage to submerge at all. And the rifle fire continued unabated, for she made a spectacular target. As one of the Sou’westers’ Club remarked: “It was like a shooting gallery in St. John’s at fair time. You guessed where the whale’s head would come up, then let fly for all you was worth. If you was quick about it, you could pump five or six bullets into it before it went down again.”
Not everyone present that day was happy with the way things were going. One fisherman, who had brought some of his children along to see what a real live whale looked like close up, later told me, “They fellows had no cause to torment that whale. What good were it to they? Happen they kilt it, what was they goin’ to get from it? Sell it to the plant for frozen fillets? No, me dear man, ’twere nothing more than a pack of foolishness they was about.”
The target practice did not end that day but continued all through Sunday, though in somewhat desultory fashion because Burgeo’s stores ran out of heavy-calibre ammunition. Some gunners took to peppering the whale with .22 fire, but the Sou’westers’ Club had a better idea. Its members unlimbered the army-issue .303 rifles and service ammunition stored at the local Canadian Rangers headquarters. And then, as one of the Rangers happily recounted, “All hell broke loose!”
Claire and I, who were too distant to hear the gunfire, knew nothing of what was going on. Perhaps because our aversion to the casual slaughter of other creatures was widely known, a conspiracy of silence seemed to have been invoked against us. None of our neighbours, even including Sim Spencer and Onie Strickland, breathed a word to us of what was happening. Not until Thursday did I hear a rumour that a whale of some sort was trapped in Aldridge’s Pond. Supposing it to be one of the smaller cetaceans, a pothead or perhaps a porpoise, I walked over to Sim Spencer’s to ask what he knew about it. Rather reluctantly Sim admitted that a “girt big whale” was trapped in Aldridge’s Pond. When I asked him why he hadn’t told me about it, he was embarrassed.
“Well…” he said, fumbling with his words, “they’s been some foolishness…a shame what some folks does…didn’t want for to bother you with the likes of that. But now you knows, p’raps ’tis just as well.”
He took me to see the Hann brothers. As they described the whale, I realized it was probably a finner–a fin whale–which might mean a rare opportunity to observe one of the truly great whales in life at close range. The prospect was wildly exciting. I was in such a hurry to tell Claire about it that it was not until I got home that Kenneth Hann’s concluding words sank in.
“Some people been shooting at it. Could be hurted.”
Shooting at it? Appalled, I phoned Danny Green, skipper of the little RCMP patrol boat. Danny had become a friend whom I could rely upon. Did he know what was going on? He knew.
“’Tis one of the big ones, Farl bye. Haven’t seen it meself. Might be a humpback, a finner, or a sulphur bottom [blue whale]. What’s left of it. The sports has been blasting it since Friday last.”
“Are they bloody well crazy? If it lives that whale could make Burgeo famous! What’s the Mountie doing about the shooting? It’s closed season now anyhow. Nobody’s supposed to be gunning.”
The answer to my question was “Nothing,” but Danny undertook to goad the policeman into action. Meantime I called Curt Bungy, owner of a small longliner, to see if he could take me to Aldridge’s. Twenty minutes later Claire and I were aboard and underway.
Claire’s journal continues the story:
It was blowing thirty miles an hour from the northwest and I hesitated to go along, but Farley said I would regret it all my life if I didn’t. It was rough and icy cold crossing the Short Reach but we got to Aldridge’s all right and sidled cautiously through the narrow channel. It was some hours to high tide so there was only a foot or two of water under us, which made Curt nervous for his boat.
When we slid into the pretty little pond in a dash of watery sunshine, there was nobody and nothing to be seen except a few gulls. We peered around for signs of a whale, half expecting one to come charging at us and send us scurrying for the exit. There was no sign of one so I concluded it must have left, and I was ready to go below and get warm when Curt shouted. There it was–like a long, black submarine breaking the surface a hundred yards from us, then sliding under again.
We stared speechless and unbelieving at this monstrous apparition. It was certainly a whale of a whale–the men estimated it was between sixty and seventy feet long. A fin whale, Farley said. We anchored in the middle of the pond and began a watch during which the hours went by like minutes as we observed the comings and goings of this huge creature. It was following a circular path around the pond and would surface every now and again to blow and breathe. At first it kept away from us but as time passed it circled nearer and nearer to the boat.
Twice its enormous head came lunging right out of the water. It seemed as big as a small house, black on top and satin-white below. Then down would go the nose and the blowhole would surface followed by a back so long it looked like the bottom of a ship. Finally the fin, at least four feet tall, would appear, then a boiling of water from the flukes and it would be gone again.
We could clearly see the marks made by bullets–white holes and slashes showing the blubber beneath the black skin. They were everywhere from the blowhole back to the fin. It was beyond me even to imagine the mentality of men who would amuse themselves filling such a majestic creature full of bullets. Why try to kill it? None of the people would eat it. But then I wondered
if the motive was any different from that of the mainland sportsmen who go out to slaughter groundhogs and other “vermin.” It was alive, so why not kill it! But it seemed so much more terrible to kill a whale.
We could trace its movements underwater by the twirls and eddies at the surface from its tail flukes. It came closer and closer to us until it was surfacing twenty feet from the boat. Then it passed right under us. The flippers, each as big as a dory, glowed green beneath us and the whole unbelievable length, bigger than a boxcar, flowed under us almost within touching distance, with the ease and smoothness of a salmon.
As dusk fell, we reluctantly left the pond and the whale (which we would eventually determine was female). Our time with her had left all of us half-hypnotized. Nobody spoke until we met the RCMP boat coming down Short Reach toward the pond, and the constable shouted that he would not allow any more shooting. I thanked him and, as we continued on toward Messers, knew I was more passionately committed to saving this whale than I had ever been to anything. During the rest of the run home, my mind seethed with possibilities, hopes, and fears. One thing was certain. If the whale was to survive, it would need more help than I alone could give.
We needed allies, she and I. Uncertain how to proceed, I called Jack McClelland on our unreliable telephone, and he contacted everyone either of us could think of who might be willing and able to help save the whale. Although most of the people he called were sympathetic, they had no practical assistance to offer. By midnight I concluded that the only way to muster effective aid was to go public.
I told Claire, “I’m going to call in the press. Give them the whole story. Perhaps that’ll raise enough of a fuss so someone in authority will act. I know Burgeo won’t like it and things could get unpleasant but…what do you think?”
Claire was very much in love with Burgeo. Her reply came from her heart.
“If you must…. Oh, Farley, I don’t want that whale to die, butyou’ll be hurting Burgeo. People won’t understand…I guess…I guess you have to do it.”
Monday morning I sent a telegram to the Canadian Press outlining the situation. I was not sanguine enough to expect my brief account would set the media on fire so I was astounded to realize before the day was out that the whale’s predicament was being treated as a matter of national interest. The telegraph and single wireless telephone circuit linking Burgeo to the outer world was soon choked with demands for information from newspapers and radio stations across Canada and down into the United States. It appeared I had unleashed a tornado, and Burgeo was at its roaring centre.
Some of the many stories broadcast or printed during the following days stressed the assault by gunners on the whale, making it almost seem that everyone in Burgeo had taken part in an orgy of bloodletting. To my shame I did nothing to counter these accusations, mainly because I was immersed in trying to keep the whale alive and in devising ways to free her from the pond.
The week following encompassed a kaleidoscopic confusion of events. They included not only a blizzard of media activity but also an actual hurricane that for a time shut down all communications between Burgeo and the outer world.
Within our narrow confines, we struggled to keep the whale alive but she was losing ground. By the following Saturday (eight days after she had become trapped), Onie Strickland and I found her moving sluggishly, with none of the fluid grace of earlier days. Moreover, she seemed unwilling to submerge and was blowing at distressingly frequent intervals. As she swam lethargically past our dory, we could plainly see that scores of bucket-sized swellings had erupted over most visible portions of her body. The stench of corruption wafted to us as she swam slowly past.
I was unwilling to believe what I saw and smelled. To get a closer look, we rowed the dory to intersect the circuitous path she was laboriously following. When she came abeam of us and was not much more than an oar’s length distant she slowly thrust her entire head out of water until it seemed to rear over us like a living cliff. As one cyclopean eye looked directly at us I heard the voice of the fin whale–a long, low, sonorous moan.
We sat unmoving until she submerged and passed beneath us, then Onie turned to me.
“That whale,” he said haltingly, “I t’inks she spoke to we.”
I nodded, believing as I will always believe that she had tried to span the chasm between our species.
The gravity of her condition was no longer in doubt. Many of the innumerable bullet wounds she had received had become infected and she was honeycombed by harbingers of death. On our way back to Messers, we put in at Firby’s Cove to collect the mail brought by the last coastal steamer. As I hurried down from the post office to rejoin Onie at the dory, I was confronted by a man I had known since first we arrived in Burgeo–a man who only a few days earlier had expressed sympathy for the whale and our desire to save her. Now when I greeted him, he responded by spitting at my feet.
“What’s that for, Matt?” I asked in bewilderment.
“’Tis for the likes of you! Strangers from away telling lies about we people. Makin’ trouble for we. You and that bloody whale! Well, bye, ’tis finished now. And you be the same. Finished in Burgeo. I tells you that without a lie!”
He turned on his heel and strode away.
I had had little sleep for several days so that evening I went early to bed…to be brought bolt upright soon afterwards by the jangle of the phone. When I put the receiver to my ear, I heard the mellow voice of the president of the Sou’westers’ Club.
“Farley? Just back from Aldridge’s. We been down there two hours and there’s no sign of the whale. Must have made a run for it last night. Gone right out of it, boy. Gone for certain.”
“Gone?” I echoed stupidly.
And then I knew. Knew with absolute certainty.
“She’s not gone…she’s dead.”
My caller was not slow to grasp the implications.
“It can’t be dead! It must have swum clear! There’ll be living hell to pay if the papers and the radio get the idea it died in the pond. They’ll murder us!”
I hardly heard him. “The whale is gone…the whale is dead…” The words seemed to reverberate through my mind–and to ignite a hard white flame.
“You’re right about that. They’ll murder the lot of you. Just like Burgeo murdered the whale. Wouldn’t you say that’s fair enough?”
“Can’t we keep it quiet?” he pleaded. “Suppose it is dead, it won’t float to the surface for days in this cold weather. Can’t we just say we think it’s gone free? Think about it, Farley. You’ve lived here five years. It’s your town too….”
“No!” I replied coldly. “Not my town any more. I guess it never was.”
He was still expostulating when I hung up.
I called a newspaper man in St. John’s who had become the whale’s unofficial agent. I asked him to contact the media and the scientists and others who were attempting to fly in to Burgeo to aid the whale.
“Tell them it’s all over. Tell them they can all go home.”
Word spreads fast in an outport. Even as I replaced the receiver, the kitchen door opened and Onie Strickland came quietly in.
“I t’ought as you might be wantin’ me dory,” he said softly.
As the dory puttered eastward, I thought the scattered, brightly painted little houses, the snow-and ice-encrusted islands, and the glittering tickles and runs between them had never looked more beautiful. I was seeing them again as I had not seen them for several years. Through the eyes of a stranger.
As we turned into Short Reach, we passed a longliner outbound for the fishing grounds. I knew all three of the men standing in the shelter of the wheelhouse, but none of them waved to me, and I did not wave at them. We were strangers all.
The police launch carrying Danny Green and the RCMP constable was already at the pond when we arrived. In tandem we searched the still waters, which were so calm and crystalline we could scan the bottom to a depth of four or five fathoms. The deeper reaches were too dark
for our eyes to penetrate.
Eventually we gave up and the two boats drifted together in the centre of the silent, empty pond.
“Any chance she might have got away?” asked the constable.
Knowing that he asked as much out of hope as out of ignorance, I held my tongue and shook my head. It was Danny who replied.
“Don’t be daft. She’s layin’ in nine fathom right under our feet. In three, four days she’ll blast and come on top again. And won’t that be something for the sports to crow about? Aye, eighty tons of rotting meat and blubber to remind them what heroes they is!”
Then Danny turned to me. His lean, sardonic face was expressionless, as always.
“Don’t know who was the foolishest. Them fellows and their gunning or you and your meddling. Way I sees it, you never done that whale no good. You done Burgeo no good. I don’t say as you done yourself no good.”
I had nothing to say.
The weather turned bad again that night and did not clear enough to allow Claire and me to pay a last visit to Aldridge’s Pond until three days later.
It was a frigid morning with frost smoke rising from the tickles and cat-ice crackling under the bow of Onie’s dory. A fine enough day for whale watching, but we saw none. There were no distant puffs of vapour hanging like exclamation points over the dark-skinned sea. The surviving members of the fin whale family were no longer with us among the Burgeo Islands.