Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [44]
Dan pushed in between. “Let’s go and catch a big fish,” he said.
We set the whaleboat down as gently as a baby on the waves, with Comeragh in the stern and Simon in the bow, then we slid down the falls each to his place, me and Tim and Dan and Sam. The boat bobbed lightly like a feather. I looked up and saw the ship keepers, Wilson Pride’s wide, black face impassive, sulky Joe Harper, Abel Roper slouching to the helm as if a burden was on his wiry shoulders. Joe and Abel were jealous. They’d have loved to have been going out with us. I’d not have swopped with either, but at that moment there was a great longing for the solid deck beneath my feet and a safe height from which to look down. The boat was nothing, an old matchbox waiting to be capsized by a black island of whale flesh, turned to matchwood floating on the water by the careless flick of a massive tail. Show fear? Not a bit. I looked over my shoulder at Simon sitting in the bow. If I was scared, he must be terrified. It was his first time with the harpoon. He’d been practising. Take aim. Throw. Take aim. Throw. If he arsed it up and made the creature angry—ha, well. He didn’t look scared though. He was inspecting the tip of his harpoon with a frown, his cheeks very flushed.
The captain’s and Rainey’s crews floated nearby. There were voices, laughter. Comeragh was the only one of us in our boat could see where we were going. I was next to him, facing him. He smiled at me. “We’re going to pull like fucking hell, lads,” he said, and his long fingers closed round the steering oar. “We’ll beat those bastards.”
And the race began. Because that’s what it was, a race to win. We pulled, we pulled like fucking hell towards an unseen quarry. Comeragh stared over our heads with flaring nostrils, never blinking, calling which way to pull. We flew. I saw another boat from the corner of my eye, the captain’s bulky form astern, the blond head of Dag like a beacon, the crew bent-backed, straining. A mile or more and my shoulders burned. Jesus. Comeragh laughed. “Get ready,” he said, and made a sign for silence. I looked up. His eyes were fixed on something beyond. He had a way of calling a whisper, loud enough for us all to hear, but not loud enough to gally the whales. He leaned forward at the steering oar and called us to pull two, pull three in his whisper command, eyes still fixed on what we could not see. My back and shoulders were on fire. When at last he called “avast” and we rested, I was drenched and all a-tremble and my palms were scorched.
I blinked sweat from my eyes. My nose streamed. Lysander, three great masts and white sails, my home, was far away.
“Simon,” said Comeragh.
And then I looked.
A whale. Black, gleaming in the sun. Block-shaped head out of the water, high as a cliff. Too close.
“There she is, a beauty,” Comeragh said.
I sensed the other boats, other whales farther away, the sea churning and living, but all I saw was our whale. Her ridged tail, a lovely shimmering thing like a moth, flourished, slapped down and went under. She was gone. The sea heaved, the wash lifted us high.
Simon stood up with his harpoon. One leg was bent and his knee was shaking.
“Any minute, any second,” Comeragh murmured, “she’ll be up and—here, here, here, where are you, my love? Up you come now for Daddy—get steady, Simon, she’ll take you by surprise, she will, she’s a little teaser she is, she’s a little—where are you, darling? It’s a lovely day, come up and talk to me, don’t be shy, come up and—”
She exploded through the surface in a cascade of silver, farther away, thank God. She was the length of two of our boats.
Simon relaxed slightly. “Pull two,” said Comeragh, and we slid along the water, creeping like a beetle towards an elephant. Down she went again, sudden as before. We crept. She resurfaced,