Authors: Bryce Courtenay
The men know Nestbyte is reckless. Many in the fo'c'sle reckons he has taken one too many chances, that his luck has finally run out. It's five months since the last taking of a whale and it's just such circumstances that make a man careless.
Seb Rawlings has come from his cabin where he were confined with the tropical fever. It be his boat what's missing and he feels to blame for not going out with his crew. He's shaking with the fever and his eyes is bright as agates, lips cracked and teeth chattering, but he seems to have his senses about him. He asks that I be allowed to take the watch from aloft, where I can look out for Hawk's boat. He says that as the light grows dim in the west, my young eyes might prove better than those of an older whaleman.
There's great to-do on the ship. The cow is thought to be some twenty tons and a good catch after such a long time without a sighting. She's already chained to the starboard side ready for flensing, when the blubber will be cut from her for boiling down in the try-pots. Her oil will be enough with what's already been took to fill half the ship's barrels. This is a most important event, for the first half of our cargo will pay the costs of the voyage and the second half will pay the whalemen and the owners. Whale oil burns clean, without smoke, and is used for lamps throughout the civilised world. It be a precious commodity. Not a drop of oil from this cow must be wasted to the sharks or spoilt by the weather, and the sooner the trying out is underway the better.
There's been no talk among the mates of going to look for Hawk's whaleboat, and the men is clearly against it. Only Billy Lanney and meself wants a search party and we holds no sway at all. Billy calls for a whaleboat to go, with him and me as crew. 'Shut yer gob!' several shouts at him. 'Abo bastard!' someone else growls.
The other kanakas and the niggers don't want a search neither. The islanders hates the Maori, and the four black men, though from different parts themselves, don't sees Hawk as one o' them. Nestbyte is hated by one and all and his loss thought a good riddance. Four kanakas and a dumb nigger ain't worth keeping the flensing and the try-pots waiting for. 'Let the cutting in begin!' they cry. None wants to see a drop of their precious booty wasted.
Unchaining the cow from the ship and anchoring her at sea while we searches for the missing whaleboat would let a full night pass with a thousand sharks tearing at her carcass. Meanwhile, getting all ready for the flensing to be done by dawn's light tomorrow would save much of her bulk from being destroyed. Already the water around the boat is full of these mongrels of the sea. If a man fell overboard he wouldn't last ten seconds before his flesh-picked bones would sink to the ocean-floor.
Whale blubber spoils fast in the tropics. After less than a day and a half in the sun, it turns rancid and its oil loses value. There be little loyalty on a whaling vessel greater than the promise of coin at the voyage end, and still less if the lost crew be niggers and kanakas, even if it does include me brother. Me old feelings of love for Hawk are starting to return, like blood coming back into a limb what's been deprived, and with him lost, I'm at me wit's end. It's Captain O'Hara what must make the decision to search, and me only hope is that he be a true Quaker, what's a religion of conscience, so it's said. Nestbyte's also a Quaker and the brother of O'Hara's wife. Perhaps this family tie, if nothing else, will make the master order a search.
But in me heart, I knows that feelings of family ain't as strong as feelings of greed. O'Hara is a New Englander and they is notorious penny-pinchers. It's conscience against greed and I ain't yet seen care for one's fellow man hold out against rapacity. As Ikey says, 'It ain't religion what makes the world go round, 'tis everlasting avarice, my dear.'
My mind is filled with anxiety as I climb up the mainmast to the highest of the watch stays. I stand on the cross-stays, holding fast to the masthead hoop. The sun's heat is weakening though the sky is not yet turned to saffron to make visibility difficult. It's fortunate that the hunt took place in a nor'easterly direction so that I need not face direct into the setting sun. It's good fortune, too, that it took place downwind from the Nankin Maiden so the sailing conditions be good. Tonight is a full moon and the earlier clouds have cleared. A sighting in the moonlight is by no means impossible.
I want to pray, but I'm not sure how. I ain't had much practice since the age of seven at bedtime, and then it were only to repeat at Mary's knee the words she give us to say.
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild
look upon this little child . . .
I forget how the rest goes.
The only God I knows is the one what comes to sit at Mary's table of a Sunday to escape from the cold and the wind moaning in the organ pipes on Mount Wellington. But I doesn't think our White Tablecloth God of the warm brown gravy and the roast mutton is the sort of cove to find a whaleboat what's a thousand miles out to sea and bring my brother back safe to me.
'I wonder if you'd mind very much going out and finding me twin brother, God?'
'And where might he be, son?'
'Whaling, Sir. His whaleboat be lost or took by a whale.' Then I adds for good measure, 'The master be a Quaker and very pious.'
'Whales, eh? Sperm, is it?'
'Yes, Sir,' I nods me head.
'Sperm whale be my particular pride and joy, Tommo. Biggest creature of all 'cept for the blue whale, what's just a bit too big for my liking, not quite perfect-made like the sperm. There be no other creature in the heavens, on the earth or in the waters like the sperm whale. Did you know that I gave that creature a brain five times the size of man's? The largest brain of any creature on earth? Did you know that, Tommo?'
'Yes, Sir, Hawk told me.'
'Well then, why d'you suppose I done that?'
'Dunno, Sir.'
'Well you see, Tommo, every creature's got its mongrels and the sperm whale, what don't do no harm to no one, has got you lot, the terrible-est bunch o' mongrels of all! Sometimes, if you've got sufficient brains, it is possible to win against the mongrels.'
'Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir. It's just that I was hoping…'
'Pass the salt,' God asks and then adds, 'No day can be judged until night has fallen, Tommo.'
'Yes, Sir,' I says, not knowing what that last remark's supposed to mean. There is no arguing with the Almighty and I am more troubled than ever. I fears that God is on the side o' the whale and me brother forever lost. What God done for Jonah it don't seem likely he's gunna do for Hawk.
There is nothing to be seen out there 'cept an albatross what's been following us for two days, and the endless waves stretching to the horizon. A gold colour starts to spread in the sky and if a search don't begin before sundown it's unlikely to begin at all.
Old Tommo's on his own again, just when I were beginning to feel like a twin, knowing there be somebody else what's connected invisible-like to me. First I thinks Hawk a fool for wanting me back, wasting his life over yours truly. Then he become a nuisance, watching me, fetching me back home when I were drunk, looking sad-faced at me. Then, when he brung me aboard this ship, I think it better than staying with Mary, who made me feel so bad, like a naughty child. Later, I planned to jump ship as soon as we were in some port, piss off and leave Hawk to go home where he be needed by our mama. Yours truly would be alone again with his cards and a bottle, what suits me just fine! But now Hawk feels a part o' me again, creeping back into me heart and mind like when we was brats. Mind, I don't know how I'll feel when I gets me hands on a bottle again.
When I came down on deck this mornin' to find Hawk gone as crew in Seb Rawlings' whaleboat, with Crawlin Nestbyte in command, I were full o' fear. The feeling of the mongrels being near, what I had when I were aloft, come back so strong it took all me courage to stay on deck and not climb back up the mainmast, to hide up there, like the mast were a river gum and I back in the wilderness again.
All day I've felt Hawk be in danger and that's how I know our twinship is returning. It's like it were meself what's suffering. All day me hands hurt awful and I thinks at first they's becoming like Mary's. They is rough and battered from the years in the wilderness. But I know it's more than that, it's something bad to do with Hawk.
If by nightfall Hawk ain't returned, I'm gunna jump to me death from where I now stand. I ain't staying another day on this bloody ship without Hawk. If he dies I won't even have the black bottle to comfort me. Alone on this ship at sea, I'll be in a wilderness not much better than the last. Sooner or later I'll get in a row over the cards, or a brass bimbo will come for me in the dark and I'll use me axe on him, and that will be the end of yours truly too. It all be as certain as the sun coming up in the mornin'.
Suddenly I hear the rattling of chains and I look down to see men scrambling to the starboard. I can't believe me eyes! They's unchaining the cow from the side of the ship and two whaleboats has been lowered on the port side to tow her away and anchor her at sea. My heart thumps as I watch the men climb the rigging to unfurl the sails and the Nankin Maiden turns to catch the wind. The sun is setting in a blaze o' glory and the sky is afire as the search gets underway.
We sail for an hour and a half, and the moon is now well up. The sea is cast in bright moonlight and if I had with me one of Hawk's books I could read it as if it were daylight. It is then that I see the whale, a dark shape looming in the water to starboard.
'Whale-o! Whale-oooooo! To starboard!' I shouts. Me heart is beating so fast it must burst from me chest any moment and drop to the deck below. Then I see the whaleboat moored not fifty feet from the dead monster but I can't see nobody in it.
'Oh God! Please, God, Sir, let me brother be safe!' I looks upwards through the topmast to heaven. 'I promise I shall return to Mary if he's saved!' Then I think, 'Oh shit! Me and my big mouth, I should've waited until we got a bit closer!'
In the pouring silver of the night, I see a head raise up above the gunwale of the boat and then it stands up and I know it's me lovely twin brother and I begin to weep like a stupid little brat!
We lifts the whaleboat back on board and sets to towing the monster whale behind the ship. It's the biggest bloody whale killed in the history of the Nankin Maiden and Tom Stubbs reckons it be the biggest whale ever took by a single whaleboat. There is much cheering on deck, the whalemen having forgot that they was against the search. They's counting only their share of the oil, what now means profit for us all.
But I am only concerned to see me brother again. Hawk is the first to climb from the boat, and the Maori follow, carrying between them the limp weight o' Hammerhead Jack. It's clear they's been through a terrible ordeal. The boat is now empty, and we sees that Nestbyte is not among them.
Captain O'Hara ain't a happy man when he realises the first mate be missing. He's tall and frightening to behold, his eyes glowering from beneath midnight eyebrows, what meet across the bridge of his nose. As soon as they has lain Hammerhead Jack on the deck, he calls the four survivors to his cabin for an explanation. But o' course, none is possible. The four Maori got no English and, without Hammerhead Jack to talk for 'em, they is staying stum. Hawk, being dumb, can't say nothing without me. Finally O'Hara says he'll deal with the matter after we gets the cow, and gives orders to sail back to where she's waiting.
This is most lucky, for it gives me the chance to find out what happened. As we sails back, Hawk tells me the story of their hunt and I becomes afeared again.
'They won't believe ya, Hawk!' I says, after he explains how Nestbyte lost his balance and fell into the briny.
'Why?' Hawk says, moving his fingers slowly 'cause of the pain. 'It is nothing but the truth, Tommo.'
'It's a truth what will get you all hanged from the yard-arm!' I cry.
Hawk is wrung out. His hands is swollen to twice their size and is all red raw flesh. I've had me hands hurt from the pit dogs and the crosscut saw, and blistered once when Sam Slit's whisky still exploded, but never like this, never as terrible as this. He is nearly asleep as he speaks to me, his eyelids closing. Yet his great concern is not to tell me what happened nor that his hands be looked after, but that the skipper should give him medicine to care for Hammerhead Jack.
'He will die, Tommo,' he signals wearily to me. 'Then it will be my fault!'
'You will die!' I says. 'They will say you pushed Nestbyte if you tells it how it was. They won't believe you, Hawk!'
Hawk shakes his head. 'I am too weary to lie, Tommo. The truth will stand us in good stead.' He can't touch a finger to his palms without wincing with the pain and soon he gives up, too weary to use his hands or lift his arms to talk any longer.
I thinks to let him sleep awhile. I will hear him out again later, and talk a plan into him, once we is anchored alongside the cow.
*
It is nearly eight bells when we gets back to where we left her. In the bright moonlight there is so many sharks feeding on her that it be almost like watching a school of mackerel in the shallows of Salamanca beach. But the whalemen is much less worried now about losing bits of her bulk. The bull is good compensation, three-and-a-half times bigger in blubber than the cow. It's as though we has caught four whales.
We barely arrives when Captain O'Hara calls for Hawk and the three Maori. Seb Rawlings is also called from his sick bed, it being reckoned that they be his crew and perhaps he may get some sense from them. The fourth mate sends straight for me where I am working in the try-house to get ready for the flensing of the whales at first light. That I should be called upon be me deepest hope. With me translating for Hawk I reckon we has a chance to beat the mongrels.
'Evenin', Cap'n, sir,' I says, removing me cap as I stands at the door of his cabin waiting permission to enter.
O'Hara grunts. 'Come in, boy!' he barks.
Hawk and the three Maori is standing in the small cabin and the captain is seated behind a table with Tom Stubbs besides him. Seb Rawlings is also seated, being too weak, I suppose, to be on his feet. With all of us in the cabin there's scarce an inch to move and I find meself squashed against the oldest of the Maori.