Gus Openshaw's Whale-Killing Journal (10 page)

If we slowed, the Tortolan navy, hot on our stern (or what was
left of it), would deliver us a death blow or two. There was no
choice but to press on, rudderless, into the region of the Sea
Witch’s Claws.
According to local lore, Thesaurus told us, sailors of a
South America-bound ship a couple centuries ago had tossed
a young woman overboard fearing she was a witch. You know
how that deal goes: If the suspect floats, she’s a witch. Well, this
girl drowned. But some liberal-minded sea gods empowered
her to exact revenge from her mucky, ocean-bottom grave on
all sailormen passing in the area. She does it, supposedly, with
furious clawlike waves thirty feet high that suddenly appear,
surround brigs, then pulverize them.
I looked to Nelson, who never misses a chance to crack
wise on the subject of spirituality (he prays only that, given
his track record, there is no God). I expected him to crack up
entirely at Thesaurus’s tale. The blood was gone from his face.
“Everyone in the Caribbean knows navigation of the
Witch’s Claws is hairy as it gets,” he said, “Not even the
battleship dudes would attempt passage.”
The looks on the rest of the crew expressed similar
sentiments. Bob, the rat, tried to climb the gunwale and jump
overboard. But he was flung back onto the deck by a sudden
bump in the water.
Then we heard her. Growling like a hundred hungry lions.
If it wasn’t ninety-some degrees out, fear would’ve likely turned
us all to ice.
Our one chance was to steer by alternately cutting the
engines. This would regain us the ability to turn left and right
and thus dodge the waves. Due perhaps to my luck being
involved, it didn’t work out.
And now the witch is upon us. A twenty-foot wave just
lashed our portside, knocking everyone off their feet. An even
bigger one thwacked us from starboard. It’s like we’re the ball
in a soccer game being played by giants. Worse, Flarq’s sighted
rocks sticking up out of the sea straight ahead—and straight is
our only course.
A mountain of water just swamped the bow. I’ve got to
turn the computer off now. With all due respect, if I’m going to
meet my end today, I’d rather that it come with me duking it out
with a vengeful sea spirit than electrocution by blog

Suddenly, like passing out of a car wash, we made it past the
Witch’s Claws. The crew and me were psyched not to be dead.
The brig was another story. She’d been tossed a ton of
times against sea rocks the size of buildings—her hull looked
like giant moths had gotten to it. Fortunately (or so I thought),
directly ahead was a large tropical island.
“It’s the Island of Conch,” Flarq said.
“Populated?” I asked.
“About a thousand or so people.”
“Civilized?”
“Very much so.”
“Wireless Internet and everything,” Nelson said.
“Well, that’s good news for once,” I said. We could go
ashore, have the brig patched up, grab a much-needed drink or
six, then get back on the whale hunt.
“The thing is that everyone on Conch worships the god
Bulbus,” said Thesaurus.
“So what?” I said. I was sick of wasting time on local god
crap.
“Bulbus is the whale god,” Thesaurus explained.
“All due respect, Cap,” Nelson added, “They’re not big
fans of your blog here.”
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The Lucky Sue was sinking. We had no choice but to go ashore
at the Island of Conch—populated by the devotees of Bulbus the
Whale God—and hope for the best.
We were greeted on the beach by a cheerful delegation of
twenty men. They were cheerful, it turned out, because they were
just about to capture us. Not incidentally, they all had rifles.
They marched us up a mountain coated with thick jungle.
All around and overhead, orange monkeys were swinging from
branch to branch. Hundreds of birds dodged the monkeys’ way
while jetting through the maze of boughs themselves. All of
them chirping. It was like being inside a giant steam pipe. Except
hotter. A quarter mile up the mountain it felt like I was going to
melt. We had three quarters of a mile more to go.
Finally, we came to a clearing at the peak. Perched there
was Conch Palace, with a forest’s worth of pink coral spires and
towers. Sort of place I didn’t think existed outside of fairytale
books. I’d be neglectful not to mention that the largest tower
was in the shape of a spout and the castle beneath it resembled a
sperm whale.
Four or five hundred assembled Conchians cheered
our arrival. Why? I’ll get to that in a sec. First, know these
folks weren’t what you’d expect from a little Caribbean island
you’d never heard of. They were light-skinned for the most
part, European-looking. The men all wore white blouses and
khaki pants. The womenfolk: simple light dresses. If not for the
cross trainers on their feet, you’d think you’d passed through a
wormhole in time to Colonial days.
“They fled from Europe a few centuries ago to escape
religious persecution,” Nelson told me. “Worshiping a fish
didn’t go over big, I guess. They settled on the Island of Conch
’cause the Witch’s Claws meant they wouldn’t get pestered.”
The crowd was excited because at the far end of the palace
square, workmen were hammering the last nails in place on a big
gallows made of fresh pine. From it dangled eight nooses—seven
regular ones for me and my crew, and a tiny one for Bob, our rat.
The delegation who’d met us at the beach marched us up a small
flight of steps and onto the thing. The crowd roared.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way we can negotiate?” I asked
the leader as he fitted a noose over my head. His comrades,
meanwhile, were noosing my comrades.
“Your lives can only be spared by Royal Decree,” he
replied. “However, our King reads your blog and you’re on his
Top Five list of worst villains in the history of the world.” Then
he turned to the guy at the base of the gallows and asked, “You
ready, Philip?”
“Aye,” said Philip, a big guy wearing, of note, one of those
black hangman hoods. Then he stepped up to the oar-sized lever
that would drop the floor out from beneath me and the crew’s
feet. He cracked his knuckles. The crowd
went bananas.

P.S. Here’s what may be Flarq’s final scrimshaw. It’s Philip. Whatever happens to me, please, somebody get this guy a shirt.

The hangman asked if the crew and me had any last words.
“Dancing the hempen jig is the way to go, mates!” Nelson
exclaimed. (“Dancing the hempen jig” is an old pirate term for
getting hung, cause the noose is made of hemp, and after you
drop, your body goes wacky cause your neck’s just been broken.
Not my favorite dance.)
Thesaurus rattled off entreaties to every god he knew of.
Moses asked if he could have something to eat. He’d been
breathing deeply of his noose, which was, as Nelson had noted,
made of hemp. The hangman said no.
Everyone else was quiet, faces reflecting the horror that
the next moment would be our last.
I asked if I could enter my last words onto my laptop
computer and post them to this blog.
“So that the world can get the latest from he who
offended Bulbus?” asked the hangman. Then, with a cackle, he
decreed, “Certainly.”
So now I’ve got the keyboard, but it’s hard to come up
with decent last words when you got a noose around your neck
and the floor is about to be yanked out from under your feet.
It’s hard to even describe my thoughts. It’s like someone opened
up my head and dumped in a Gatorade bucket full of ice cold
fear into me. In and around that is a jarring awareness that in a
few ticks I’ll likely have all of the sensory ability of the plastic C
key I just hit—and that I was never anything more than it, in the
grand scheme of things, to begin with. Partly, I’m thinking it’d
be a laugh if there really is some sort of afterlife with clouds and
harps and all that. Partly, I’m angry at myself for wasting even a
second thinking that sort of crap at a time like this. Partly, I’m
hoping that there really is any sort of afterlife and I can get to
be reunited with my wife and kid. Mostly, I’m hoping somebody
reading this will pick up where I left off and send a rocket into
the blubbery bastard’s blowhole.
Hold on for a minute…
Of all people, Sybil (who built the robot squid then gave
me the brush-off via a bogus phone number) has made her way
to the front of the crowd.

“Gus Openshaw, I’m going to forgive you,” Sybil said.
“For what?” I said. “I called the number you gave me. I got
a fish and chips joint.”
“Did you ask for me?”
“Well, no, why would I have?”
“That’s where I get my messages. You didn’t notice any phone lines at Dealer Dan’s, did you?”
“No.”
“Then I also forgive you for not calling me.”
“So what was the first thing you were forgiving me for?”
“This business,” she said, indicating the gallows. Then she
turned to the hangman and said, “Untie them.”
“Yes, your Highness,” he said.
According to the law of the land, we’ve just been
pardoned by Royal Decree.
Turns out Sybil is the daughter of the King and Queen of Conch.

The Conchians grumbled when their Princess Sybil had me and
the crew released from the gallows. “When I told you a whale ate
my mother and father,” Sybil said, “it was an understatement.
It’s like Bulbus has taken over their minds.”
Sybil is a rebellious daughter. This has manifested itself
in her building a whale-killing robot squid. It’s also manifested
itself in her rebelling—literally. Our hanging had occasioned her
return to the Island of Conch. It was her chance to stage a palace
coup.
“You and your two harpooners want to leave this island
alive?” she asked me.
“Sure, why not?” I said.
“Then the three of you have to help me defeat my father’s
army. I’ll also take your drug addict, and the sadist and the
stupid one—I’ve never seen guys capable of causing so much
mayhem.”
We didn’t have much choice. When the King got word of
what Sybil’d done, he’d order the army to kill us, and nothing
Sybil could do could countermand that. Except fight. According
to her estimates, the army will be on us in five minutes or so.
So I’ve got to go prepare for a battle. Some first date.
P.S. Here’s a new scrimshaw by Flarq of Sybil, or, as she’s known
here on the Island of Conch, the Princess of Whales.

Yo ho, shippies (especially the ladies among ye), Nelson “The
Golden Saber” Cooke, First Mate of (what’s left of) the Lucky
Sue here. I’ll be helming this bloggy at least till we figure out
whether our man, Gus, is still among the living.
The shit hit the typhoon beginning when the fair Sybil
ordered us blokes brung down from the gallows. It seemed cool
at the time. Soon though, we were in way worse straits (as you
might have savvied from the fact that El Capitan is no longer
with us), and wishing we’d gone out like men—dancing the
hempen jig—when we’d had the bloody chance.
Before I dish that action, shippies, you’ll be needing to
know about the beefs the little princess has with her ’rents, the
King and Queen of Conch.
Beef #1: Her pop promised her hand to Admiral Vurman of the
Tortolan navy (who I myself can tell you is a cologne-soaked sea-
dandy, and Sybil’s opinion of him’s no better to say the least—if I
posted a transcript of what came out of her mouth, it’d for sure
restore honor to the rotten reputation of pirates’ language).
Beef #2: She feels the ’rents have gone off the deep end in their
worship of Bulbus, the whale god. For instance, the sacrifice of
virgins. (I’ve got several way better uses for virgins.)
So old Syb cruised into Conch to oust her folks. She had
a plan for us to defeat Daddy’s army. Or so she said. Within no
time of getting de-noosed, the royal army was breathing up our
tailpipes—about seventy soldiers in unis no different than the
ones their Limey ancestors wore when they first showed up on
this spit back in 18-whatever. Dudes all had fixed bayonets. We
had nothing but our shoes, which we put to use under Sybil’s
direction to retreat to shore.
As we bolted down the mountain, she gave a number of
additional orders that’d have us making a stand where the Lucky
Sue was anchored. Sybil was poised and self-assured—terrible
qualities in a wench, for my money. But for some reason (read:
dude hasn’t gotten any in, like, forever), Gus not only agreed to
everything, but gazed at her all full of admiration. (If we hadn’t
been running for our lives, I would’ve for sure stopped and filled
the barf pail.)
We beat the army dudes down the mountain, then swam
a hundred yards or so out to the Lucky Sue. She’d been taking
in big-time water when we dropped anchor. Now her deck was
barely above the surface. The howitzers were totally in the drink.
The rest of our munitions were waterlogged at best, including
Gus’s remote control for that ridiculous bloody robot squid he
bought from Sybil (if you ask me, the squid’s key selling point
was the inventor’s short skirt). Giving a sign that she’s a total
nutbird, Sybil was unfazed by all this. “Take up the harpoons,”
she commanded.
By then the royal army’d reached the shore and they were
getting into one of their fancy firing formations. All we had to
keep them from turning us into Swiss cheese was the harpoons.
Sybil had us fish them out of the magazine and hand them to
Flarq and Thesaurus, who bravely (or maybe idiotically) took a
stand on the bow…
I’m going to take a break here. A juicy IM just came in.
Shippies, did you know that Gus Openshaw, all bloody day long,
gets instant messages and e-mails from extremely hot chicks
wanting to go out with him? Some even send him their pix. He
never posts them—dude’s still blubbering over his wife who’s
been dead for months already. Only time he even responds is if
they’ve sent info on the whale. To me, it’s unreal. I mean, Gus is
an okay bloke and all, but you’ve seen his scrimshaw—he’s sour,
pudgy and losing his hair. Plus he’s psycho-obsessed with a fish.
Also, you know how he was a cat food cannery worker, right?
That smell evidently takes a few years to go away.
Well, you are in luck now, ladies. I am cuter, alive, and
very responsive.
P.S. I gave Flarq a few notes on his last scrimshaw portrait of
me. As a result, here’s a way more accurate one. To those of you
ladies who want to see the lower half of the scrimshaw: If you
show me your scrimshaw...