Barney and the Secret of the Whales (6 page)

Shadows grew into darkness, and still the boats had not reached the ship. Lamps were lit all along the deck, guiding the boats to us. I leaned over the gunwale,
watching them lurch closer, slowly, so slowly. No matter how they pulled at the oars, the wind and waves would always be more powerful than them, and they had the massive bulk of the whale to shift as well.

But the waves had not swallowed them yet, nor did anyone on board seem to think they would. Behind me, men lashed barrels to the mast to stop them rolling overboard with the waves that washed the deck. The carpenter and his young assistant were fixing something on the great brick platform. They were all busy, except for me, and the whale, who was dead.

I cried a little then. I cried for the whale and for myself. I think I cried for all upon that ship too, and in the boats, who saw only money, and the challenge of the chase, but were blind to the beauty they had captured.

Finally the boats drew close to the ship. A few cheers erupted from around the deck, swallowed by the wind.

Captain Melvill dropped lanterns over the bulwarks and the sailors below caught them. By their light and that from those on the ship, I could see the whale more clearly, the giant head, the tiny eyes, but only compared to its size. The carcass swayed and wandered with the waves, so unlike the steady course I had seen from my masthead.

‘Good capture!' called Captain Melvill. ‘Look sharp. The storm is rising!'

‘Aye, Captain.' Sailors grabbed the dangling chains. As I watched, their scrambling figures wrapped the chains around the vast head, tying it to the stern of the ship, then putting more chains around the tail till it was tethered to the bows, the whole great corpse bobbing next to us.

‘You! Boy! Go aloft again!'

It was Captain Melvill. ‘And well sighted,' he added.

‘Thank you, sir. Sir . . .' I hesitated to speak to him now. ‘What should I look for?'

To my relief he didn't cuff me for impertinence. ‘Watch that the chains stay tight about the carcass. Apart from that, use your common sense. Call if you see the lights on another ship, or white spray that might be rocks or islands. This coast has been charted, but not this far from land. If aught changes, you yell down. Understood?'

‘Understood, sir.'

He nodded.

And so I clambered up again, and buckled myself to the mast. What had been a paradise that morning was fearsome now. Each time the ship lurched the mast swayed down with it. The wind bit at me with teeth of ice. Another squall of rain passed, soaking me. The wind
whipped higher. Spray lashed me, even so high. But the vast dead whale stayed secure at our side.

My toes and fingers had lost all feeling. All I could do was huddle up there, and hope the buckles held and that the night might finally end.

I gazed up at the sky, but there were no stars to tell me how much night had passed, just blackness even darker than the sea. If one night creeps like a snail, I thought, how long will three years take?

At last another bell sounded. In the swaying lamplight I could see a sailor beckoning below. I fumbled at the buckles. My arms and legs were so stiff they felt like broomsticks that I had to push to move.

I grabbed the mast, glad to find my fingers worked, that I could even feel the mast a little. I grasped hard, with my knees, as Birrung had taught me, hoping they could do the work that my fingers couldn't.

Halfway down the ship swayed again, awkward with the vast whale at her side. I grabbed the mast tighter, finding strength I didn't know I had, and slid faster, so fast the heat chafed my legs. I stood on the deck, still clutching the mast, my breath heaving.

To my surprise the sailor who'd beckoned me down grinned at me this time. ‘You wear oilskins next time you
go aloft, matey, or you'll be losing your toes to frostbite. There's plenty below.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘Call me Bob. You know why?'

I shook my head, shivering.

He bent and whispered above the wind. ‘'Cause it's my name.' He made it sound like a great joke.

I managed a smile. He wasn't much older than me, sixteen perhaps. But already the wind and sun had leathered his skin. He clambered up the mast almost as fast as I had.

I made my way carefully across the deck. It was slippery with spray now, and tilting this way and that, and my feet were so cold I could hardly feel the wood under them.

Someone had left a pile of blankets on the empty hammock. They were still warm when I crawled into them, so I reckoned Call-Me-Bob had been sleeping there before me. That warmth was good.

I hadn't eaten all day, I realised. My stomach hurt from hunger. My hands and feet stung now the feeling was back in them. But I slept, from exhaustion, and knew nothing till someone shook me awake.

Call-Me-Bob grinned, holding up a lamp. ‘You goin' to sleep all day?'

I blinked. It was still dark down there, but I could see dim light in the hatch above me, which meant that outside it was beginning to grow light.

‘Better haul yourself up or you'll get no breakfast.'

Breakfast! That got me up like a cat off a bull ants' nest. I clambered onto the deck, then stared.

The brick platform was now a fire, with the ship's carpenter feeding it chips and blocks of wood, left over from repairs to the masts I supposed, and firewood brought on board from the colony. And there by the fire, Peg-Leg Tom held out a great steel harpoon with vast steaks dangling from it. The deck was full of the smell of smoke and charring meat.

I stepped forwards cautiously. I was so hungry my tummy felt like it was caving in, hungrier than I'd been since Ma died and Elsie and I had to share my rations. But I knew what those steaks were. Whale.

The whale was dead. It wouldn't help it to refuse to eat now.

Peg-Leg Tom saw me staring. He frowned. ‘Away out of it, boy!' he yelled above the wind. ‘You think these are for you? When you can wield a harpoon or wrestle an oar, then you might get a steak of whale. Your breakfast's down in the galley.'

I nodded and ran for it, down the hatch again. No fire in the galley, but plenty of the cold stew we'd had on my first night on the ship, and a pile of twice-cooked biscuit, hard as a rock so I had to gnaw away at it like a mouse. All better than whale steaks, and at least I still had my teeth. I'd seen the other men soak their biscuits in the stew to soften before they could swallow them.

No one seemed to notice how much I ate. They didn't even notice me at all, busy gulping their food too, then heading off to jobs I knew nothing of. I filled myself up well. I had a feeling I mightn't get another chance to eat for a while. Then I ventured back up.

Again the deck looked like a mob of ants rushing back and forth, but here each ant knew its job. A cluster of sailors at the masthead hauled along a giant bundle of machinery with massive red rusted chains and a hook that looked big enough to hang a ship from. Others rolled more barrels up the ladder from the hatch and lashed them to the mast or gunwales, while the cooper checked each one to see if it needed a plank replacing and whether the bungs were put in tight.

Captain Melvill gazed at it all from the quarterdeck, now and then barking an order I didn't understand.

‘Set the grumblebumble! Splice the fimblebee! To work, you sluggards! At it now!'

I understood that last bit. I made my way to the sailors by the mast, but the one called Two-Tooth Harry waved me back. Suddenly they all stood aside in a line, and I realised that they had a chain in their hands. At last, something I understood how to do. I ran to hold it too.

It was strange, holding that big chain, the deck heaving and rolling under us. For the first time since the gale began to blow I was held steady by the chain and the men, though the deck swayed under my feet.

And then I saw what we were doing. The chain was attached to a series of wheels and somehow our pulling lifted up the mass of machinery the men had been working on. It looked like a giant harness, and had the enormous hook dangling from it.

Slowly, slowly, swaying all the time so I was afraid it might swing back and hit us, the harness was lowered onto planks suspended just above the vastness of the dead whale. The first and second mate let go, while the rest of us kept hold. When I looked again, the two mates
had grabbed great spade-like tools. The blades looked axe-sharp, and were attached to poles a good twenty feet long at the other end.

They ran to the gunwale, their balance unaffected by the heaving of the deck, and leaped over it, almost too fast to see, their sword-like tools still in their hands.

‘Ye can let go of the chain now!' shouted Call-Me-Bob over the noise of wind and waves and cracking sails. I ran to the ship's side and looked over. Half the crew was there too, so many that the ship listed over and the deck half lurched towards the whale.

There stood the two mates on the platform, stabbing their tools like daggers into the carcass, while the harness hovered and swung above them, and the great hook too. First a small hole, and then bigger, and bigger yet, then slashes across its body. At last one of the mates waved to the crew above.

Two of the crew ran to the chain again. They grabbed a long iron handle and cranked it. The harness lowered with a jolt and the big hook with it. I was afraid it would knock the two men off the platform and into the water, but instead it dropped neatly onto the whale's great back, almost at their feet.

They grabbed the hook and began to push. And then I saw what they were doing. That vast hook plunged deep into the hole they had dug.

The second mate signalled again. The whole crew except Captain Melvill and the mates on the platform heaved at the windlass, drawing the chain tight between the ship and the whale.

I cried out as the ship shuddered and rolled towards the giant corpse. It was bigger than we were, and heavier! Would it sink us? But even as I thought this, I realised that these men had caught whales just as big a hundred, maybe even a thousand times before.

Further and further we toppled. I could see the sea churning almost at my feet. I held fast to the chain to stop sliding into the waves below.

Whump!
The ship rolled back faster than she had gone over.

‘Hurrah!' The cheer came from all around. The whaling hook now held an enormous strip of blubber about six feet wide and twenty feet long, peeled from the whale's body like Mr Johnson peeled a tangerine.

We hauled again. Up it came, slithering over the gunwale, across the deck. Two men grabbed it. One of them wielded a huge sword-like knife. He slashed at the
blubber so it fell in giant slices, then pushed its bloody vastness down the hatch, below deck.

‘Where are they taking it?' I yelled to Call-Me-Bob.

‘Down to the blubber room to cut the big blankets into smaller bits. You'll see.' We heaved the chain again till yet another enormous strip oozed aboard. Then another and another.

We hauled up more vast blankets of blubber, and still more. Call-Me-Bob nudged me then, and pointed at the sea.

I had seen them too. Shark fins!

I ran to the gunwale. The sea about the vast red corpse was churned by sharks and waves.

As I watched, a great shark leaped, grabbed some of the whale flesh and fell back down.

The men on the giant whale corpse took no notice. I supposed they were as safe as we were from the sharks, though they had no solid side to stop them falling off if they slipped. I saw though that they had cut footholds in the whale flesh and were using their blubber knives too, to anchor themselves.

The blubber hook was lowered again so the two mates below could fix it to another portion of the skin. The blubber on deck was as thick as Mr Johnson's biggest
Bible, a bit like a vast cut of white beef, except for the black skin.

I touched it cautiously. It still felt warm, despite the freezing wind, and firmer than beef.

Call-Me-Bob came over to me and prodded it with his foot. He grinned. ‘Grand, ain't it?'

I nodded cautiously. I thought it was sad, not grand, but I was sure I was the only one on the ship to think so.

‘Them's called blanket pieces. There's a hundred barrels of oil in that whale.'

We headed back to the chain to haul again . . . and again . . . and again . . .

The whale was so big I supposed it would take days to strip its skin. But it was only hours, maybe, before Captain Melvill shouted the order to roll back the chain.

I let myself collapse onto the deck, exhausted, then scrambled up again as I began to slide across the deck.

Plop!
A bloody quilt landed at my feet. I stepped back.

Plop! Plop!

More, and more. I gazed at the hatch as a giant fork appeared briefly, hoisting yet another of the slices of blubber back onto the deck. They were much smaller now: easily lifted by one man. Even as I watched,
another crewman picked them up, piling them next to what looked a bit like a wooden washing line.