Shark Dialogues

by Davenport, Kiana

  Sailing out into the North Atlantic, by the first week Mathys had a glimpse of the grueling life he had chosen, one of never-ending labor: repairing sails, ropes, rigging, standing regular ship-watch in four-hour shifts repeated round the clock. Meals became monotonous, the first day’s diet constantly repeated. Duty aloft the mast was the chief trial for him, his stomach rolling with the pitch and yaw of the ship, nausea magnified a hundred times by his position eighty feet up in the air. Sometimes he was so sick, not even beatings by the third mate could drive him up on deck. By the time they hit the Gulf Stream he had lost ten pounds. And in rough waters of whipping storms, he was dehydrated, unconscious for days.

  “The best is yet to come,” the third mate warned. “The Horn’ll make a man of ya. Or kill ya!”

  When Mathys revived, he thought he’d been dumped on another ship; they were headed for the coast of Africa. “But what about Cape Horn! The Pacific!” he cried.

  A kindly petty officer showed him a map, explaining the traditional sailing route which did not head directly south for the Horn, an in-and-out swerving course following the coastlines of the United States and Central America, that would cost them months. Instead, they headed far to the east to a point called Cape Verde, near the coast of Africa. When they finally turned south for the Horn, they would run in a straight line down the coast of South America, and on to Tierra del Fuego. But that part of the journey lay months ahead. Mathys never saw the islands of Cape Verde; they were enveloped for weeks in racking storms, and lost a man overboard.

  Finally, heading straight on to Cape Horn, a run of over six thousand miles, on the fifty-fifth day of the voyage, the Silver Coin crossed the equator, men cheering, dousing each other with seawater. By then, some of the “green hands,” emaciated from unrelenting seasickness and diarrhea, could only get about on hands and knees. Some died of dehydration, a few threw themselves into the sea.

  Provisions of salt meat began to spoil. Flour was filled with worms and insects, so bread could not be baked. Butter and fat turned rancid, and worst of all was the water. Nothing but wooden casks to hold it, all matter of bacteria reproduced there. The crew plugged up gutters, collecting fresh rainwater; pails and containers were filled, the taste as filthy as ever. Then, rats were found floating in the water.

  Disease, dysentery, and ever-present gales. More men washed overboard. At night Mathys lay on his stinking bunk, so homesick, he wished himself dead. Then unexpectedly the gales ceased. Somewhere off the coast of Uruguay, the ship hit an area of dead calm, no wind for days, then weeks. Only the blinding sea and burning sun. And thirst. Sailors cut the veins of a man newly dead, and sipped his blood.

  Down in the mess, the cook looked at the hardtack and vomitted. It no longer looked like bread: moldy, dancing with worms, soaked in urine of mice. The crew were reduced to chewing leather, eating sawdust, a freshly killed rat. Nineteen men delirious. They had been at sea five months. One night the ship heaved on its side, then stood end to end. The storm came from nowhere, ripping up hatchways, cataracting water into cabins. On deck, men tied themselves to rails, shouting deliriously, “The Horn has come to greet us! Come to say How-dee do!”

  They were wrapped in fog, warm waters of the South Atlantic clashing with the frigid waves of Antarctica, the sea rising over them, then crashing down, like great collapsing cathedrals. Mathys clung to a rail, praying he would live to round Cape Horn, then he was thrown to his backside, washed down into a cabin, where men lay with broken fingers and wrists from trying to hold on.

  For forty-five days and nights, the Silver Coin attempted to round the Horn. Hellish winds, sleet and snow beat down; waves heeled the ship far over on her beams. To the north, the treacherous coast of Tierra del Fuego measured their progress as they maneuvered a few miles with an easterly at their backs, then were thrown back a day’s progress by the fierce westerlies.

  They retreated for days, tried again, and retreated, finding caves where the sea was calm and the crew could finally rest. One day Mathys watched sailors row ashore and club a colony of nursing seals. Lust-crazed, they clutched mammalian breasts and mated with the bleeding, dying beasts before completely slaughtering them and their calves for meat and pelts. That night the petty officer found him squatting on deck, trembling violently, his eyes numb rivers, his lips working silently in horror.

  “Get used to it, son. Slaughter’s the only life we know.”

  Then one night, the storm eased, Captain Toby Newton found the right steering, and they maneuvered through the worst. Mathys woke from a half-sleep hearing men weeping and shouting. Defeating the devilish waters of Cape Horn, they had entered the Pacific. For weeks the waters were calm as though they had earned the rest. Porpoises leapt in schools, greeting them. Off the coast of Chile, thick shoals of sardines appeared, and tuna, flying fish.

  One day a man shouted, sighting a blue, largest mammal in the world. The crew were suddenly alert, the captain shouting, the third mate bullying “green hands.” They had entered the whaling grounds. Mathys watched as the beast, well over eighty feet long, dove to the depths and surfaced wrapped in the tentacles of a giant squid at least fifty feet from head to tips. Men gasped at the spectacle, as the creatures grappled, ramming the ship in their battle. They disappeared, were never seen again.

  Then one day, the ocean offered up a gift, so rare it was barely imaginable, a thing that would haunt Mathys all his days. Two giant blues, near seventy feet long each of them, raced toward each other, nearly colliding. Singing out plaintively, they circled, glided past each other, changing their song. Then one of them rolled over slightly, and a tentacle-like thing nine or ten feet long shot into the air, unsheathed from within deep abdominal folds. Erected, it collapsed, concealed again.

  The whales drew closer seeming to stroke each other with their pectoral fins. Then the other blue rolled over, giant pink genital-like lips rolled back just beneath the surface of the water. Then they dived, with such terrible force, Mathys imagined them crashing to the ocean floor, the earth cracking open, swallowing everything, whales, ship, perhaps all of the Pacific. Then unexpectedly, they exploded back up to the surface, poised vertically, face to face.

  The crew watched and the captain watched, and all the ship fell silent. The whales seemed to grow out of the sea until large portions of their abdomens, accordion pleats of their great grooved bellies, protruded above the water. Huge flippers wrapped round each other, they spun and they spun, face to face, and it was a dance, and great waves smacked the ship.

  “What are they doing?” Mathys cried.

  “They’re mating, lad. And what a wondrous thing.”

  Flukes grinding back and forth somewhere in the depths their song became a symphony vibrating across the ocean and ships in other latitudes vibrated and maybe continents vibrated and they suddenly pressed close so close they looked like giant godly Siamates and they drove themselves up and up rising out of the water all of them the massiveness the length of them high high into the blue above from blue below and they were blue and blue oceans sluicing down their sides and joined yes joined and everything all earthly things were small and they just stood there in the sky a young boy’s memory and then they dove back down into other atmospheres a deafening resounding roar that shook the timbers of the ship and shook the hearts of watching men and threw them to their knees.

  For two days the crew went about quietly, as if each man were trying to remember something he’d forgot.

  Then inevitably, the shout came from the mast. “Thar she blows!”

  A great sperm whale disappeared, then minutes later zoomed up from the deep, topping the waves like a building, falling back with a crash. This was a rare sighting, for sperm whales were usually found farther north in colder waters. Boats were lowered, the crew shouting, working themselves up for the chase. Because he had proven himself stouthearted, not a quitter, Mathys was the first “green hand” sent out as a rower. He would always date the rounding of Cape Horn as his rotation into po
sition for manhood, and the day of his first whale hunt as the beginning of sorrowful wisdom.

  Every nerve inside him screamed as the whaleboats—each with sail aloft, harpooner, helmsman and four rowers—swooped down upon the graceful leviathan. The lead boat crept up on it from the rear, so close the men stopped rowing with oars and took to paddles. Coming alongside this living thing as massive as their ship, yet placidly indifferent to little men in boats, Mathys felt a strong urge to stroke its side; something akin to touching the mind of God.

  As they maneuvered the prow directly into the whale’s long flank, the harpooner, poised with one leg planted securely in the bottom of the boat, the other braced against the gunwale, flung his harpoon with incredible power into the giant body just behind the fin. The beast soared out of the water, harpoon lines trailing.

  The mate gave quick commands, “Pull three!” maneuvering the boat as the whale took its first dive. Rope was paid out, for when it came up it would try to break free on the surface. Then began the famous “Nantucket Sleighride,” which dragged the crew for miles until the whale grew tired. As the line slackened it was taken in, and as the whale lay quietly, the boat approached again, keeping clear of the flukes, staying far enough back so the whale couldn’t see what was coming.

  Half insane, Mathys stood up in the boat screaming, “Stop! Stop!” The crew ignored him, thinking he was excited, calling for the whale to give up. A second boat rowed close, the mate raised his long lance, hurling it into the mammal’s side, penetrating three feet into the body. He gave the command to pull away, as the whale brought his huge flukes out of the water, rolling his body, trying to smash the boat. Maneuvering so that it missed, the mate drove home another lance.

  The creature tried to sound but, wounded, could not stand the pressure of deep water. It surfaced, coming at the boats head-on. The mate yelled, “Stern all!” and the big jaws closed on nothing, but not before the mate had had a chance to thrust his lance down deep into the lungs. Mathys heard blood gurgling like huge vats boiling, the sea blistered red all around them. Still the whale lashed out, losing its balance, first sign of final defeat.

  Now sharks gathered, staying just out of range. The mate lanced mercilessly, the whale rolling over and over. Other boats gathered, and as the lead boat was tied up to the corpse, it was waifed, a red flag thrust into its flesh, signaling the Silver Coin to pick up boat and crew. Laboriously, they lashed their prize lengthwise to the ship’s hull.

  The Silver Coin had been constructed as a floating factory so whale blubber could be “tried out,” boiled down for its oil, which was then stored in barrels in the hold. All hands were busy now. Under the tryout where blubber would be boiled, basins of water were set, preventing the ship’s catching fire. Cutting spades and other tools were brought, double set blocks hoisted aloft and a cutting platform rigged over the side, placed so men could stand leaning against the platform’s rail, facing the ship, the best position for “cutting in.”

  With the great body lashed the length of the ship, a first hole was cut through blubber at the neck down to the red flesh. A large hook was attached to the blubber through the hole and eight men, four on each handle of the windlass, started raising the hook as men on the cutting stage carved out a broad strip of blubber. As the strip rose like the wall of a house, another hole was cut for another hook and so on until blubber was stripped off from head to flukes, the whale’s body rolling over and over. Sharks gathered in the hundreds, tearing at exposed flesh.

  Alternating between heartbreak and fascination, Mathys witnessed the grimmest job of all. The head was cut off and secured to the ship, so its nose rested in the water, the exposed portion flush with the surface of the sea. Then the captain and third mate stepped out on the cutting stage and cut out a piece from the head about three feet in diameter, the chunk called the “case,” a mass of bubbles filled with oil thrown at once into the tryworks. Then one of the men stepped down into the head itself.

  The hole left by the case was an entrance to a complete oil tank, which gave the head of the sperm whale its characteristic shape and value. The man had to submerge himself in liquid, warm enough to remain fluid. A little colder and it would be like lard. The tank was divided vertically by a thick membrane, and the man had to dive down into the oil, knife in hand, and cut his way through the membrane. Holding a chain in his other hand, he dragged it through the hole, looping it onto itself. The dive itself was grim enough, but if the man slipped, as one did weeks later, he slid right out into the jaws of frenzied sharks. The precious sperm oil was then dipped out and stored directly in dozens of barrels called hogsheads.

  As the head was cast off, the “trying out” began, fires lit under big kettles, the blubber melting with some fresh water at the start. Denying he was part of a slaughter-ship, that the corpse of one of those great godlike mammals was hanging like a trophy skeleton, Mathys dreamed himself into a factory that refined rubber, as he was forced to join men cutting up blubber into small strips, throwing them into kettles. Rich brown crispy pieces of scrap floating to the surface were strained and used as fuel for fires. As kettles filled, hot oil was ladled out and cooled in iron tanks before being hand-pumped to barrels in the hold. Mathys’s whale netted them forty barrels of blubber.

  He had never injured a living thing, always leaving the barn when his father slaughtered pigs. Now he transported himself through whale hunts like a zombie, cursing the captain and crew, praying he and all of them would be struck dead in their sleep. He had never imagined anything as magnificent as these giant mammals, never felt safer than when rowing beside them. Warm-blooded, air-breathing, they belonged to families, and clans, and talked through code-songs sung for fifty million years. Like humans, they played, mated, tended their young.

  Once he sighted a whale calf riding its mother’s back as she sang out piping songs, the calf squeaking back at her. Then she lifted her newborn, rolled on her side, and shot milk into its mouth with muscles deep inside her breasts. Another day he saw a dead calf on its mother’s back. Mathys knew it was dead because of its stillness, and her mournful cries. A sailor said she would keep it there, support its meager weight for months, until it disintegrated.

  After the first few months of whale hunts, excitement died out on the Silver Coin. Grueling work, rotten food, lack of hygiene, turned the crew bestial. They were lax at their duties, stole supplies from the slopchest, stabbed each other for precious tobacco. At sea for ten months without rest, they craved land and other humans. Finally, putting in at Valparaiso, the captain logged and transshipped his barrels of blubber and sperm oil to ships bound for New England, while his crew went wild on fresh beef, rum and whores, wasting themselves for weeks.

  In port, Mathys immediately broke from them, seeking counsel with God. He stopped in à taverna asking directions to a church and woke three days later, reeking of rum, two whores crooning over his blond hair and naked, young body. When he woke again, a giantess with three breasts seemed to be swallowing his groin, and he knew he was irretrievably damned. He woke without clothes, or money, his wages, everything, gone, so sick, so weak, laughing crewmates carried him over their shoulders back to the ship. Before they were out of the harbor, Mathys swallowed a bottle of rat poison and flung himself overboard. The skipper fished him from the drink, and locked him in the galley.

  They whaled for another nine months, following schools as far north as the Galápagos, and along the coast of Peru, putting into port at Easter Island, where soft-spoken natives greeted them cautiously, until they were sure they weren’t “Blackbirders,” slave ships roving the Pacific, kidnapping natives in the hundreds of thousands, working them to death in the fetid guano deposits off Peru and on white men’s sugar plantations in the Americas and Australia.

  On Easter Island the men had fresh fruit, fresh water, music, women and rest. These native women were lovely, soft-spoken, different from the whores of Valparaiso. But Mathys avoided them, looking on from a distance. He still didn’t know
how to behave with women. What did one say? Besides, he was sure he was carrying a terrible disease that made him erect in his sleep so he woke with a handful of discharge. In a month they were back on the seas, following humpbacks.

  Now the Silver Coin was in its third year of whale hunts. Contracts were running out, and the skipper turned greedy, pushing the crew past their limits, anchoring in ports only to repair and reprovision, giving men no time to rest. A man caught organizing a mutiny was put on one square of hardtack and one cup of bad water a day. Mathys, who joined the mutineers, was sentenced to long hours aloft in the mast, in sun that broiled the skin from his body.

  One day, harpooning a maddened whale, men had to cut loose to keep from being crushed. The beast made for the mother ship, and rammed her repeatedly. Timbers cracked as water poured into the Silver Coin, and the whale struck again, stoving in the ship’s bows. The captain managed to keep her afloat while men provisioned the rowing boats then drew straws to see who would go in the best provisioned boat.

  They were just below the equator, somewhere between the Galápagos and the Marquesas, more than a thousand miles from land. The boats were lashed side by side in twos, and managed to stay close for several weeks. Then sharks slashed the ropes and they drifted apart. By the luck of the draw, Mathys had found himself in the boat with Captain Newton. Sixty-three days later, provisions long gone, Mathys’s boat was spotted by a brig out of Sydney, headed north toward the Sandwich Isles, the islands natives called Hawai‘i.