by Scott O'Dell
After a time the line slackened. I pulled on it, putting a dozen coils and more back in the barrel again. Then a dozen more.
"We have lost him," said Mando.
"No, he is coming up. He is coming toward the boat."
The fish came on. The barrel was half full of line now. But there must have been three hundred feet out.
"Does he come still?" Mando asked.
"Still, but not fast."
"It is big," he said.
"Maybe a marlin?"
"Too early for the señor. I have never seen him here in June. Nor has anyone. He comes from the south only when the sea is warm."
"How big do you think he is?"
We had now been hooked up to him since soon after dawn and now the sun was on its way into the west.
"He must be immense, Zia."
"How immense?"
"As big as three big men. If he was not, he would not pull us all over the ocean."
Mando knew more about the pez espadas than any fisherman at the Mission. He could tell them just by their fins when they lay far off sunning themselves.
The heavy line quit coming. I braced my feet against the ribs of the boat and pulled. We pulled together. But the fish slowly took the line out of our hands and then out of the barrel again.
"There is no more line left and he now pulls us," I said. "There has been a strain on the barrel all day. It might collapse sometime."
"I selected a barrel I have used before and have faith in," Mando said. "It is made of oak that is an inch in thickness. And it has five iron bands around it. It will hold as long as the line holds and that will be a long time. Make yourself comfortable and have patience. He will tire before we do."
I was tired already. My hands were bleeding.
"Place them in the water," Mando said. "But one at a time. I have a heavy load up here." He was braced at the bow, with the line looped once around the bit. "The salt water makes them feel better. Worse for a while, then better."
"I do not feel them at all," I said. "They are numb. They are not mine. They belong to someone else."
"Not to me. I already have a pair that are numb."
We rounded the kelp bed at the south point of Santa Cruz, moving slowly. It was better now. The sun was on my back and not in my eyes, and the water was not so rough. But I was tired and very angry.
"Remember again we did not come to fish for espadas," I said. "I am going to cut the line. Then we will turn around and go ashore and in the morning start for the island once more."
"You will cut the line with what?" Mando asked. "I have the knife. I have it in my belt. Perhaps you can cut the line with your teeth. They are big like the fish's teeth and you have many of them."
The drag stopped and the line no longer slanted out.
"He is going down. That is a good sign," said Mando.
He unloosened the line looped on the bit and we both took it in hand over hand.
"He is under us now," Mando said. "And coming up. Slow. But he comes."
We peered over the side of the boat and watched for him in the water that was clear but a deep blue.
6
NIGHTFALL had come on gently. There was no wind and the sky was clear except for pink streaks in the west where the sun had been. I was trailing one hand in the cool water. Then I shifted across the thwart and trailed my other hand. They were still numb but they did not hurt so much and the blood had stopped.
Mando's cry must have been heard by those at the Mission, even by those who were asleep. I heard the cry before I saw the fish.
"Grande!" shouted Mando. "Un gran pez espada."
When I saw it first it was in the air about fifty yards off to our right. It seemed to be standing on its scythelike tail. The hook that Mando had made and polished in the workshop had gone into the bone of the fish's underjaw. His sword was longer than my arm and he thrashed it from side to side in an attempt to throw off the hook.
With a great splash he fell back in the water, into the same hole he had come from.
"Hold tight," Mando shouted. "But not too tight. Give him a chance to run."
The fish took out some line and jumped again and thrashed his sword. But he did not come in. He took out more line and we tied it to the bit and gave him the boat again to carry.
It was too dark to see now. By the evening star and then by the position of the Big Bear, the only constellation I knew, I thought we must be moving north and toward the coast. But I was not sure, though the compass pointed in the right direction. Even in the channel the night wind was sharp and full of spray.
"Do we have tortillas?" Mando asked.
"Four apiece," I said and handed them up to him.
"And water."
I gave him the jug, which was half empty. "Do not drink like a camel," I cautioned him.
"How does a camel drink?" he asked.
Mando felt very good. He was thinking of all the praise he would receive when he got back to the Mission.
"The camel drinks all the water he can hold," I said. "And then he goes without water for weeks. Sometimes he bursts himself wide open after he drinks so much at one time."
"The fish will not last for weeks," Mando said. "He will last through the night. He will go slow now and wait for daylight. Then he will thrash about and put on a big fiesta and it will be his last."
Mando ate the four tortillas, taking his time, and drank one long swig of water. Then he sat for a while. Then he talked and by the time the moon was overhead he was asleep, snoring. He was without a worry.
I was too tired to sleep and afraid that we would run ashore, either on Santa Cruz Island or the coast. I was not sure where we were. We seemed to be following along the kelp bed that rimmed the island, but I could be wrong. The sea is not a good place to be when you are tired and hungry and worried. At no time is it a place to do foolish things.
At the first false dawn, a pearly gray in the east, I was aware that we were no longer moving. We were, as I had thought, near the kelp beds. The line was slack as if it had been broken. At some time during the night I could have fallen asleep and the fish could have broken free.
I began to take in the line, cautiously at first, and then hand over hand. As it came in I coiled it carefully in the big barrel. Mando lay in the bow, one hand trailing in the water, asleep as if he had never slept before.
The sun was up by the time that I caught sight of the big fish. He was about five boat lengths away and scarcely moving. Only his tail moved and very slowly. The way the rising sun slanted he was in the shadow of the boat, but I could see that he was about three arm's lengths away. My hands still bled and I guided the fish up to us, not forcing him. I crouched in the bottom of the boat, keeping out of sight, and making as few movements as possible.
I had the line wrapped around my left wrist as I brought him up, a foot at a time, putting my knees on the line as each strip came in. The sun was in Mando's face, but he did not move. He had a wonderful look as if he were listening to some heavenly music. All I could hear was the surf beating against the shore and then the sounds of the waves washing back from the cliffs and caves.
The big fish was not a pez espada, as Mando had thought it to be. His bill was a round spear, very long, and curved upward a little. His back was a purple blue and light blue bands ran from his back to his undersides, which were silver. I had seen marlin before and this was a marlin, a big one, the size of three large men and almost as long as the boat.
The fish stopped and I held the line softly, not moving, trying not to breathe. The hook was there in his lower jaw and looked solid. He came forward so that his pointed bill was even with the bow of the boat. His tail was barely moving. The big fin on his back caught the sun and showed violet and blue spots.
I crouched, watching him. His eyes moved, looking up at the boat and then at me. They were immense and once they had found me they did not shift away. In the sun they looked golden, but they were of different colors, some of the colors that were on
his back.
His gaze did not move from me. It was strange to look into the eyes of a fish that looked back at you. It seemed to me, as I crouched there, that in his mind he knew that I was the cause of the hook in his mouth and the long fight through the day and the dark. And yet I saw no hatred in them. Only a sort of wonderment and surprise and besides all a look of submission.
Mando was sleeping, fighting off a cloud of gnats, but still in his sleep. I was close enough to him to touch his outstretched foot with mine. I thought of waking him, but feared that he would jump and arouse the fish into a last effort to free itself.
The harpoon and a gaff made of a long bamboo rod and iron lay within my reach. I could use either one. Or if I thought and planned carefully I would be able to use both on the great fish.
He was now even with the boat, leaning against it as if to rest. I could not see the marlin's eyes any longer. Only his purple back and the blue bands running down his sides. But I remembered his eyes and their look of surprise and submission. I could think of nothing else but his eyes looking at me.
Mando was asleep on his side. Leaning forward, I slipped his long knife from its sheath. I unloosed the line from my wrist and set it down squarely on the gunwale. The knife was sharp and it went through the line quickly.
The big fish had not moved. He did not know yet that he was free. I stood up and as I did the boat rocked against him. He started to move away. I tossed the severed line over the side. The fish saw the movement and began to edge away from the boat. He slanted downward, his fins barely moving. He became a long shadow and then a small shadow and was gone.
The iron hook in his jaw and the line would be eaten away in time by the sea, which ate everything. I sat back and for a while watched Mando sleeping. Then I picked up the oars and began to row.
The morning was clear and there was no wind. I headed back, up the coast toward the Mission of Santa Barbara. In one part of me I was glad the marlin had come between us and the ocean.
Mando was still asleep when we rounded Santa Cruz. It was midmorning. I gave him a kick in the shins and he came awake, staring about as if he had no idea where he was, on land or on the sea. But in one glance he saw that the big fish had gone.
He jumped to his feet. "What happened? Qué pasa? My pez espada. Where is he?"
The line I had cut lay at his feet beside his knife. Mando glanced at the line, at his knife, then at me.
"He is gone," I said. "He left while you were asleep."
Mando picked up the line I had cut and looked at it. "The line did not fray. It did not break from the fish's strength. The line was cut." He picked up his blade. "It was cut with a sharp knife. Like this one. I did not know that the pez espada carries a knife."
"They do not carry knives. Only people carry knives," I said. "When did we hook the fish?"
"Yesterday, in the morning."
"Then he was with us for almost a day," I said. "How would you like to be with a boat for almost a day at the end of a line—with an iron hook in your mouth? Would you like that, Señor fisherman? How would you like half a day? Or perhaps an hour would suit you better."
"I am not a fish."
"If you were, amigo, would you like an iron hook in your mouth?"
"You talk foolish talk," Mando said. "People are not fish."
"But fish also bleed. How would you like the blood for an afternoon and a night and a morning. How would the sangre taste, brother Mando?"
"No tiene nada en la cabeza," Mando said, put his knife back in its sheath, and stretched out to sleep again. "Next time I fish among fishermen," he said with great disgust.
"I have enough in my head," I answered, "to know that you are a poor sailor and when I go anywhere again it will be alone."
"I am still here," he said, looking at me through half-closed eyes. "I am still a sailor."
"About to fall asleep."
"I am still here," I repeat. "We have lost more than a day, but the weather is good. We have enough food. Let us continue what we have begun."
I nodded my head, yet I was afraid of the wind and the wild seas I had seen. I was afraid all over—in my stomach and in my head.
7
WE WERE now near the southern tip of Santa Cruz Island, not far from where we had started. Night was coming and I thought it best to wait and leave early in the morning before the wind came.
There was a small headland near us. I had noticed yesterday afternoon that there was a good anchorage beyond it. It was in a cove protected from waves and wind.
"Take an oar," I said to Mando. "Vámanos!"
"I thought I was the captain," he replied.
I shoved an oar into his hand and we began to row toward the cove. As we rounded the promontory, I saw close off our bow a large whaling ship. On each side of the ship floated a dead whale. Fires were going on deck and a cloud of oily smoke drifted toward us.
The smoke was so thick it was hard to see, but gradually I made out on the ship's stern, printed in gold letters, the name Boston Boy. We were now within shouting distance of the ship.
Quietly I said to Mando, "The ship is the one that lost its longboat in the storm. Do as I say and do not talk. Push with your oar while I pull with mine and we will circle back and go the way we came. Use your oar deliberately and slowly, while I do the same. If God is with us they will not see that the boat we are rowing is the boat they lost."
"I will speak a word to Mukat," my brother whispered, and began to mumble to himself.
"Push on your oar and be quiet. Nor look in their direction."
"Our boat has a new color and a new name," Mando said. "They will not recognize it."
"If they do we are in trouble," I answered. "Now that we have made our turn, I will row and you put out your fishing lines. They will think we are fishermen, maybe."
The smoke from the fires grew thin but we were less than half a league from the promontory. Once beyond it we could not be seen from the ship. I began to row faster, until I thought my lungs would burst. The boat was heavy and not meant for two oarsmen.
We reached the headland and pulled into the cove, out of sight of the ship. We had outwitted the Anglos. We were safe.
"Mukat heard me," Mando said.
As he spoke these words, a longboat rounded the headland. It was the same kind of boat as ours. Four men were at the oars and one sat in the bow. They rowed to where we were drifting. They rowed around us once in silence. They were black from the fire and whale smoke. Then they all shipped their oars except one who kept his oar in the water and steered.
One of the men had blue eyes. He stood up and spoke to me.
"Where did you get the boat?" he asked.
"At the Mission Santa Barbara," I said.
"How long have you had it? Since the storm?"
"Yes," I said, "since the storm."
"It washed ashore?"
"Yes."
Mando spoke up. "I painted it and worked on it and gave it a new name," he said.
"So I see," the man with the blue eyes said. "But the boat is ours. It is one we lost in the storm. We lost two men also."
"The boat belongs to us," I said. "Father Vicente says that there is a law. Because it washed ashore and we found it, it is ours."
"That is the law," Mando said. "Father Vicente vows it."
A man who sat in the bow of the longboat and had said nothing spoke up now. He had a face with many wrinkles, though he was a young man, and the tip of one of his ears was missing. In the other he wore a heavy gold earring with a pearl in it.
"Enough talk," he said. He had a deep voice and he bit the ends of his words off. "We have work to do. Put them ashore and be done with them."
"We can use another hand," the man with the blue eyes said. "John Tucker turned up sick this morning and last night Woods got his arm burned bad. The young one looks like he could do a little stoking. And the girl can help in the galley. Cook us up some of those Mexican tortillas and frijoles."
"Makes sense
to me," one of the whalers said. "We'll get in trouble with the Mission if we leave them on the island."
The young man in the bow said nothing for a while. He was looking us over carefully. Then he said, "Women on the ship bring bad luck. Usually, that is. But once on the Caleb Stone the captain had his wife along and we killed seven whales in one day. Killed five the next. We almost sank with oil. We split a good thirty thousand on that voyage. The best of the season."
He gave a signal and one of the whalers jumped aboard with a rope in his hand. He tied it to our bow and went back and took up his oar. The four men began to row, towing us after them.
My brother and I sat silent and fearful.
The young man with the blue eyes called back to us, "Give us a hand. This is no free boat ride."
Mando and I took up our oars and began to row. I did not row hard. Nor did Mando, who kept his eyes on the rope that was towing us, as if he had a mind to cut it.
I spoke to him in Indian dialect, so the Anglo whalers would not understand.
"Do not use your knife. On the rope or on the white men. They are many and there are two of us. They will kill us and not think twice about it. Be polite and do as you are told."
"I will use my knife tonight while they sleep."
"You will do nothing with your knife nor with your tongue."
"I will speak to Mukat," Mando said.
"Speak to Mukat all you wish. But to the white men say nothing."
We rounded the headland and set off in the direction of the whaling ship. It was still billowing smoke. Through the smoke I could see fires burning and men moving about on the deck and on the carcasses of the two dead whales. It looked like the scene Father Vicente described to us sometimes—like the smoke and fires of Hell.
When we reached the ship the blue-eyed man told us to climb a rope ladder that was dangling over the ship. "Step lively," he said, which we did, though the ladder swayed and the ship rolled. He came up after us and took me to a place in the bow where food was cooking on a brick stove. I was not there a second before the cook thrust a knife into my hand and pointed out a basket of potatoes. He said nothing but made motions, which meant that I was to peel them.