Killer Whale

by Justin D'Ath

  ‘Hurry!’ Frøya shouted.

  I tried again, but my muscles were like jelly. It was maddening. normally I’m strong. I do weights three times a week and can bench press forty kilos. But now, when the lives of the mother fin whale and her calf were on the line, I felt as weak as a lamb.

  Frøya shouted at me again. She could see I was having trouble and wanted me to take control of the Zodiac so she could have a go. I pretended not to hear her over the roar of the outboard. Avoiding eye contact, I clambered back over the tangled prop fouler and put my back to it. Straining my feet against one of the seats – using my leg muscles, not my jelly-arms – I pushed backwards and up. Slowly the big mound of rope and cable and floats inched up towards the transom.

  Then – splosh! – it was gone.

  Things happened fast. Lying on my back in the bottom of the Zodiac, I saw Frøya pull the outboard hard to the right. The Zodiac spun sideways, zooming out from beneath the bow of the Japanese ship. I heard the outboard scream as Frøya cranked it up to maximum revs.

  Twang!

  The Zodiac jolted to a sudden stop, sending Frøya crashing on top of me.

  The outboard made a whirring sound, then fell silent.

  I couldn’t see anything. Frøya’s shoulder was pressed against my cheek, pinning me down. I was too weak to push her clear.

  ‘Frøya?’ I said.

  There was an eerie silence. The Zodiac was dead on the water. We rocked over a wave.

  ‘Frøya?’ I said, louder this time. ‘Are you okay?’

  There was a groan. She lifted her shoulder and I caught a glimpse of the edge of the Zodiac and a slice of grey, cloudy sky. ‘I have bumped my head very bad,’ Frøya whispered.

  Suddenly there was another big jolt and she fell back on top of me.

  This time I found the strength to wriggle out from under her. Frøya seemed dazed. There was a red mark across her forehead where she had knocked it against the seat. I helped her sit up.

  ‘Oh no!’ she gasped, staring past my shoulder.

  I turned to see what she was looking at.

  Shishkebab! We were right behind the killer ship, almost under its stern.

  And it was getting closer every moment.

  ‘They’re going to reverse over us!’ I cried.

  ‘It is us who are going in the reverse,’ Frøya said softly.

  ‘But our motor’s stopped!’

  Frøya crawled up next to the silent outboard motor and peered down into the water. ‘Stinker!’ she muttered.

  I clambered up next to her. A rope was wrapped around our propeller in a big dark knot. The prop fouler had worked. But not quite the way we’d wanted. I must have pushed it over the rear transom too close to the outboard – it was tangled in our propeller!

  ‘But why are we going backwards?’ I asked.

  Frøya pointed. A line of floats crossed the stretch of dark water between us and the killer ship. Suddenly – plop! – the one closest to the ship disappeared.

  I realised what was going on. One end of the prop fouler was tangled in our propeller, the other end was tangled in theirs. But their propeller hadn’t stopped. One by one, the white plastic floats were being pulled under the Japanese vessel’s stern in a boil of frothing water. It was winding us in like a giant fishing reel.

  In roughly thirty seconds, we’d be dragged under. No way could we untangle our propeller in time. The knot was huge.

  ‘We have to ditch the outboard!’ I cried. It was attached to the transom by two strong steel clamps. ‘Is there a shifter on board?’

  Frøya gave me a dazed look. She was still groggy from the blow to her head. ‘Shifter … ?’ she said vaguely. ‘I do not know this word.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. Even if I found a shifter, there wasn’t enough time to adjust it and undo the clamps. Especially for someone whose fingers felt like blocks of ice.

  Another float disappeared. There were only four left. We were really close to the ship. Deep down in the water, the ship’s propeller flashed like a giant meat slicer as it reeled us in.

  I rose shakily to my feet and started yelling up at the ship: ‘HELP! HELP! HELP!’

  Even though we’d been giving the Japanese whalers a hard time, I knew they would rescue us if they saw what was happening.

  But nobody appeared at the rail above our heads. They didn’t know we were there.

  Another float disappeared under the water.

  Three to go. And then it would be us.

  I turned and looked for the Black pimpernel. It was still half a kilometre away. Too far.

  ‘HE-E-E-E-E-E-E-ELp!’ I screamed, in a final desperate effort to attract the Japanese sailors’ attention. But nobody heard me.

  We were right underneath the stern now. Only two floats remained on the surface. Two floats between us and a watery grave.

  I offered Frøya my hand. ‘We have to jump,’ I said.

  Her fingers closed around mine and I helped her up. Holding hands, we wobbled to the edge of the Zodiac. We both wore life jackets, but drowning wasn’t the problem.

  After two minutes in the icy water, hypothermia would set in. After five minutes, we’d be dead.

  ‘Good luck, Sam,’ Frøya said, and I felt her icy lips on my cheek.

  She was kissing me goodbye.

  ‘Good luck, Frøya,’ I said, and squeezed her hand.

  We turned and faced the water.

  The last float disappeared.

  ‘On the count of three,’ I said, tensing my legs to jump.

  Frøya and I counted together: ‘one … two …’

  Before we could say three, a huge black-and-white head burst out of the sea with its mouth wide-open. Frøya and I were knocked over backwards. We landed in a heap in the bottom of the Zodiac.

  ‘killer whale!’ I cried.

  ‘Orca!’ cried Frøya.

  It saved our lives. It stopped us from jumping overboard and becoming human iceblocks.

  At the very last moment, probably when Frøya gave me that goodbye kiss, the prop fouler did its job. It broke the Japanese ship’s propeller shaft and the huge blades stopped turning. But we only noticed after the killer whale had come and gone.

  ‘Lucky that killer whale tried to eat us when it did,’ I said shakily, as we stared down at the big dark tangle of rope and floats wrapped around the ship’s propeller three metres below the surface. ‘And not two seconds later.’

  ‘It did not try to eat us,’ said Frøya. ‘It stopped us from jumping because it knows we will die in the very cold water.’

  ‘But it wanted us to die!’ I argued. ‘They aren’t called killer whales for nothing.’

  Frøya shook her head. ‘They are not any more called killer whales. Now we are calling them orcas. They are

  part of the family of dolphins.’

  I told her about the one that nearly ate Harry and me for breakfast.

  ‘For sure, it was chasing the penguins and the leopard seal,’ Frøya said. ‘Not you and Harry.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d been there.’

  ‘I do not have to be there. I know about orcas. They are very smart.’

  ‘Humans are smart, too,’ I said. ‘I know what I saw.’ ‘I know what I saw two minutes ago,’ said Frøya. ‘The orca saved us.’

  ‘Only by accident. It was trying to eat us.’

  ‘You are wrong, Sam. Orcas are not dangerous to humans.’

  25

  WATER CANNON

  We were still arguing about it half an hour later on the crowded bridge of the Black pimpernel. Most of the crew had recovered from the food poisoning and stood watching some Japanese seamen in a lifeboat running a heavy cable from the Nisshin Maru’s slipway to the bow of the crippled killer ship.

  ‘They will have to tow it all the way back to Japan for repairs,’ said Billy.

  Captain Dan rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. ‘There’ll be no more whales killed in Antarctica this season.’

>   Almost as if they’d heard what Captain Dan was saying, two fin whales ‘ a mother and her calf’ appeared briefly on the surface about two hundred metres from the Black pimpernel.

  ‘No more whale meat for the Japanese fish markets,’ said Spiro the cook.

  Harry, who was sitting in Frøya’s lap on the captain’s chair, took a big slow breath. ‘Please don’t talk about food!’ he groaned.

  Captain Dan laughed. ‘That’s an order, folks. There’ll be no mention of food until we’ve finished what we came here for.’

  ‘I thought we were finished, said the first officer.

  ‘Not quite. There’s just one job left to do,’ Captain Dan said mysteriously. ‘Take us alongside the Nisshin Maru, Billy. Get as close as you can.’

  As the Black pimpernel chugged slowly towards the stationary factory ship, Captain Dan turned to the crew. ‘Tagging detail, go to your stations. You have some artwork to finish.’

  Now I realised what he meant by an unfinished job. Painted on the whaling ship’s side in big, dribbly orange letters was: . It was time to complete the word.

  ‘Not you,’ Captain Dan said to Frøya, who was lifting Harry from her lap and carefully standing up.

  ‘I can do it if someone helps me down the stairs,’ she said.

  The captain looked at her, then at me. ‘Don’t just stand there, mister. Give her a hand.’

  Two minutes later we were right alongside the Nisshin Maru. This time the massive factory ship couldn’t get away because it was tied to the crippled killer ship. I looked on as Frøya and her three helpers completed their message to the world. Where previously there had been the false claim that the Nisshin Maru was involved in research, now it would say .

  It was a condemnation of whaling that would be seen on television and in newspapers right around the planet.

  But before Frøya and her team could finish, we heard an approaching outboard motor. The Japanese lifeboat came buzzing alongside. There were six men in the lifeboat and one of them was whirling a grappling hook. They were going to board us and try to stop the tagging crew from completing their message.

  There was nobody else on deck – just me, Frøya and her three helpers, and they had a job to do.

  ‘What are you waiting for, mister?’ Captain Dan’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers. ‘Use the water cannon.’

  I gave a little salute, ‘Aye aye, Captain,’ and raced to the nearest cannon.

  As I swivelled it towards the port rail, where the first Japanese whaler was about to appear, I caught a glimpse of Harry’s face pressed against the window of the bridge above me. Even from twenty metres, I could read the word on his lips.

  ‘Wicked!’