Authors: Bryce Courtenay
The captain turns to Stubbs. 'Thou mayst go, Mr Stubbs, there is much to be done. Mr Rawlings will remain as witness.' We push aside to let Tom Stubbs pass.
O'Hara points to me without looking up from the ship's log which lies open before him. 'Thou wilt speak to thy brother, and he will tell thee what happened and thou us.'
'Sir, me brother has already told me the whole of it. It will be much the shorter if I speaks and then you asks questions what I shall put to him.'
Captain O'Hara looks up sharply, thinking me to be too forward, but I keeps me head down and me hands clasped humble-like. 'The sign language be most tedious slow, sir. This will be the quicker.'
'Is this the lad who saw the pod this morning?' O'Hara asks Rawlings.
'He is the one, Captain,' Rawlings says. 'He is reliable enough and not too stupid.' He points to Hawk. 'They claim to be twins, though how this can be I cannot imagine!'
'Most curious,' the captain says, but there is no curiosity in his voice and I reckon he don't care if Hawk and me be twins or the first two of the three blind mice. 'Speak, boy!' he commands.
I tell of the placing of the two harpoons and how Nestbyte passed the other boats and shouted for help and then how, after being towed by the bull, they approached the whale from the weather side. I says nothing of the fight 'tween him and Hammerhead Jack. I tell how Nestbyte wished them to fasten to the whale while there were still much life in him, so's they might more quickly open a major blood flow, as the first mate did not think they could otherwise wear the bull down sufficient to take him with one boat.
'Mr Nestbyte did confide all this to them?' O'Hara questions.
'No, Cap'n, but it were clear enough to me brother.'
'Clear enough, was it? Your brother is an expert on the whale and whaling, and what actions to take in every circumstance?'
'No, Cap'n, but he didn't think Mr Nestbyte were going up to bid the whale the time o' day!' It were a stupid thing to say and I'm sorry the moment it come out of me big mouth.
'Hold thy tongue, boy!' O'Hara growls. 'I'll not take lip from such as thee!'
I drop my head. 'Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,' I says. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Hawk is trying to talk to me. I ignore him, not wishing at this moment to meet his eye, but Rawlings sees his movements, 'What's he saying, Tommo, what's your brother saying?' he stammers, all a-chittering and a-chattering o' teeth from the fever.
What Hawk's saying is that I should tell the story like he told it to me. He thinks the captain just wants to write it down for the record. Ho! I thinks. Hawk may be the smart one, but he don't know a mongrel when he sees one! Captain O'Hara here ain't just keeping his log, he's holding a trial. He wants revenge for his brother-in-law! I know this for sure. Old Tommo's nose for mongrels is working well.
'What does he say?' the captain demands to know.
'Yes, sir! He says that he's sorry for presuming to know what Mr Nestbyte was thinking about what to do with the whale. He says I must say only what happened and should otherwise shut me big mouth.' I doesn't look at Hawk as I says this, and I can only hope he's got the nous to keep his hands to hisself.
'Continue!' O'Hara commands, a bit happier.
So I tells how the whale rolled to windward and capsized the boat. How only the Maori and Hawk come up again, with Hawk rescuing Hammerhead Jack from the briny after he had lost his arm.
'Did Mr Nestbyte do anything when the whale rolled to windward?' Captain O'Hara asks.
It's not a question I can answer. So I turns to Hawk, who gives me a most despairing look, like I've done them in. He has no way now to tell the truth and must go along with my tale. He signals that Nestbyte shouted they should ship oars.
'He said that they should ship oars, Cap'n,' I reply.
'Aye, aye!' O'Hara says impatient. 'But did he do something?'
'Do something?' I look to Hawk, who says he does not recall anything. Meanwhile the others' eyes are near closed as they tries to sleep standing up.
'Me brother don't recall, sir.'
'Do something with this!' O'Hara shouts, taking up a bowie knife from under the table and thrusting it, blade forward, at Hawk.
The three Maori jolt awake in surprise and pull back, falling over each other. I am pushed against the cabin door, where I bump me shoulder.
'Ha! I have thee!' the captain exclaims. 'This is Mr Nestbyte's knife and there is blood on it! Human blood!' He stands up and with the tip of his forefinger indicates a dark stain on the blade and points to Hawk, 'Thou didst murder him and then threw him to the sharks!'
I am took completely by surprise. Hawk ain't said nothing about Nestbyte's knife. I look at Hawk and see that he is smiling and shaking his head. He alone has not flinched when the captain thrust the knife at him.
'Well? Answer me, man!' O'Hara barks.
'You were right, Tommo, he wants a victim,' Hawk says with his hands. 'Tell him the truth. I used it to cut the mess which was Hammerhead Jack's eye. The blood on the blade is Hammerhead Jack's and that on the handle is from my hands.'
I says all this and Hawk holds up his hands to show their cruel state.
'How came he to be in possession of Mr Nestbyte's knife?' O'Hara demands. 'A man doesn't leave his own knife lying around, leastways Mr Nestbyte didn't.' He stabs down upon the table with the bowie knife so that it judders as he releases it. 'Thou takes me for a fool, boy! There is a boat-knife for the purpose of cutting! Why did not Hawk use that knife?'
'Tell him that when the whale rolled, Nestbyte took out his knife to cut the line but we were thrown out before he could do so. He must have dropped the knife in the boat where I later discovered it,' Hawk signals to me.
It ain't Hawk's fault he's so bad at lying - he ain't had much practice like me. Besides, he's weary. First he says he didn't see Nestbyte do nothing when the bull rolled, now he says Nestbyte were busy cutting the whaling line with his bowie knife and loses it from his grasp as the boat turns over. So, I asks you, how could that be? The boat capsizes, and by some miracle Nestbyte's bowie knife grows hands of its own to cling to the bottom of the boat so it don't fall out with everything else?
But the captain is waiting for me to translate what Hawk's just told me so I has to invent an explanation quick. Billy Lanney has recently shown us how to tie the short-warp to the harpoon rope and so I says desperate, 'He took it off from his lanyard and give it to Hawk to fix the short-warp to the harpoon rope, Cap'n, the boat-knife being tied to a marlin line in the stern of the boat and the warp to be fixed in the bow. Me brother then pushed the knife into his belt on account that they had to quickly man the oars. He thought to return it later to the first mate.'
'This happened just before the whale rolled?' the skipper asks. He must think me a fool to fall into such a silly trap.
I talks to Hawk as though I were asking him the question with our sign language, but what I am saying is that I'll tell the skipper that the knots were done just before the second harpoon were used. It were then that Nestbyte noticed the splice were not right on the short-warp. It's a feeble enough explanation what I gives to the captain but it can't be proved wrong, and it makes some sort o' sense. But O'Hara ain't yet willing to give up.
'Then why, I ask thee, did the kanakas grow most alarmed when I showed the bowie knife?' he demands, his eyes narrowed.
'I cannot say, Cap'n. They be savages and I doesn't speak their lingo.' Then I ask, 'Perhaps they thought you was going to do them in on the spot, like? Why, sir,' I rubs me shoulder, 'I meself jumped when you thrust the knife at me brother.'
Despite his fever and the sweat glistening on his brow, Seb Rawlings half-smiles at my reply, and I sees he has no love for the skipper.
Captain O'Hara pulls the knife from the table and lays it down, then takes up the quill again and dips it into the ink well. All is quiet as he writes in the ship's log and we can plainly hear his quill scratching upon the paper.
At last he looks up, scowling. He points the quill accusingly at Hawk.
'I feel there is more to this business than thou hast admitted, Solomon. I warn thee, nigger, I will sniff out dishonesty! I shall pray to the Lord for guidance and then we shall see what we shall see. Thou mayst go, and thy damned cannibals with thee.' Then he turns to me, 'As for thee, boy, thou mayst be sure I shall find something to cool thy ardour and quell thy impudent tongue!'
We turns to go, the Maori shuffling out first, when Hawk signals frantically to me.
'Cap'n, sir!' I pipes up from the door of the cabin. 'Me brother pleads that he be allowed medicines for the injuries the harpooner got while most bravely killing the whale.'
'Hmmph! A nigger who cares about a kanaka! Miracles will never cease!' The captain turns to Seb Rawlings. 'We have here a nigger who cleverly turns Mr Nestbyte's whale kill to the credit of that damned savage, and turns himself just as neatly into a ship's surgeon! What think thou of that, Mr Rawlings?' He does not wait for the fourth mate to reply before looking at Hawk. 'But of course, I forget, thou hast already proved thyself most handy with a bowie knife!' He indicates Seb Rawlings with a flick of his head. 'Thou mayst issue a chit for medicine, though I think it much better for all if the savage should perish.'
O'Hara seems a little calmer, having rid himself of his spleen. He is well pleased with his crack about Hawk being a surgeon and with his last jibe about Hawk's supposed use of the bowie knife to kill Nestbyte. He twirls the quill in his fingers and muses aloud. 'The Lord's ways are indeed mysterious. I have the greatest need of a first mate on this ship and He hath taken my dear brother from me and allowed the devil to replace him with a cannibal savage, a useless kedger with one arm and one eye, who will draw from ship's rations and return me no profitable labour!'
He looks up at Seb Rawlings, his right eyebrow raised. 'Thou wilt charge the cost of the medicines to the kanaka's share of the lay, and he will be placed on half rations until he perishes or otherwise proves to be of some further worth to us!'
*
The captain is as good as his word and has found me a special punishment. I am working in the blubber room, where I must pitch up the pieces of blubber to be cut ready for the try-pots. These pieces is four foot long, and weighs nearly as much as me. Working them is usually a task for the biggest of the men. Two blubber-room workers in bare feet cuts the blubber with dangerous sharp spades and as a consequence of the deck pitching and rolling, one has had three toes sliced off and the other four, this being the badge of their trade. They is fierce men and don't like seeing the blubber they cut stack up. 'Git movin',' they snarls each time I forks another slab of blubber, 'we ain't got all bloody day!' I am soon knackered but there is no let-up. The deck is slippery with oil and whale blood and sometimes I near collapses under the weight of me blubber fork. 'Garn, move yer arse!' be the constant cry from the cutters.
Not one comes to me aid and some push me over when they see me loaded up so that I crash to the floor, falling on me face. Yours truly is a cause of great merriment to all in the try-works as I staggers to me feet covered in blood and oil. But it ain't the worst what's happened to me and I will not give in. No poxy bunch o' whalemen gets the better of Tommo X Solomon!
There be two hours to go and every forkful of whale blubber is stained with blood from me bleedin' nose. I feels a hand on my shoulder and I stops, expecting another shove. But it's Hawk, come to find me!
'I have been asleep and did not know of this,' he signals with his hands. They still be swollen to twice their size, yet he takes up me fork and begins to spear and lift the slabs o' blubber. Though the pain in his hands must be awful, it is as though he is shovelling straw into a hay-rick, such is his strength. One of the whalemen what has been amusing hisself at my expense now scoffs at me. Without turning, Hawk strikes him with the back of his huge hand, so that he flies across the try-deck and lands skidding in the whale oil.
It's the first time I've seen Hawk strike a man and it were like he was brushing away a fly. Then Hawk walks over to the whaleman, who is nursing a bloody nose, and with the fork pierces the greasy duck of his Norfolk breeches so that the tines fit under the man's belt. Hawk lifts him up and carries him across the room, depositing him on the blubber table in front o' the mincer. The mincer is a large man himself, dressed in a cassock made from the skin of a whale's penis, and he holds the blubber-room man down as though he's about to slice him to size for the try-pots, before letting him go again.
There is howls of laughter from the men watching. Hawk smiles his big white smile at the others in the blubber room and they ain't so stupid that they can't see that it carries a warning never to mock me again.
I am most shamed that me brother needs to defend me, though I be too tired to fight it. I tells meself that if it should ever come to an open fight, I'd even the score with me axe. But I know that Hawk's now a part o' me and that old Tommo is no longer alone in this world. And so I finishes me first watch in the blubber room.
The men is working 'round the clock to get the blubber into the try-pots so that it may be made into good oil, a most difficult task. The whale's tied by chains from its tail and head to the starboard side of the ship and the cutting platforms, hung from the ship's topside, is lowered to meet it. The cutting tackle is secured to the mainmast and also lowered so that the mates can begins the cutting in. With Crawlin Nestbyte dead and Seb Rawlings ill, two of the older, more experienced whalemen handles the cutting spades along with Tom Stubbs and Timbin Hollowtree, the third mate.
The men attaches the cutting tackle to the whale, using the blubber hook at its end. They cuts a long scarfing line about nine inches in width on either side o' the blubber hook. Then the hook is pulled upwards by the block-and-tackle and the mates frantically cuts the blubber to loosen it from the whale flesh. It's as though they is peeling a giant Spanish orange, though the blubber, if you can imagine it as orange skin, be about fifteen inches thick.