Eco Warrior (20 page)

And they did, because the next thing we knew, a powerful burst of water pounded down on us, gushed inside the portal, and started to flood the sub. I heard Merwin yell. I shouted as loudly as I could over the noise. “Water cannon! Merwin, get inside! Shut the hatch! Shut the hatch!”

“I can’t! The water’s too strong!”

Whoever was aiming the water cannon knew exactly what they were doing. They were trying to sink us. The force of the water was so strong it was rocking the sub back and forth. We banged into one ship, then the other. This was insane. I hit the engine switch and cranked it up full blast. We started to move forward between the two ships. The water cannon followed us, but not as accurately as before.

“I’ve got it!” Merwin yelled as he shut the hatch. I switched from engine power to batteries. As we cleared the bow of the whaler, I hit the dive switch, and we went under.

“Are you all right?” I said, as the sub grew suddenly quiet.

“Yah, I’m okay, Captain.”

But he wasn’t. When he climbed down the ladder, there was blood all over his face.

Chapter Twenty-six

MERWIN SUFFERED A broken nose when the water cannon threw him against the hatch. He also had a small but deep gash on one cheek. I brought out the first aid kit, and attended to his wounds. His nose wasn’t broken badly, in that it wasn’t deformed, but it started swelling immediately, and grew into the size of a tennis ball on his face. I cleaned his cut with hydrogen peroxide, and wrapped ice in a towel for him to hold against his nose, then refilled the ice tray and put it back in the freezer. Merwin didn’t want to sit still for all of this treatment; he wanted to have another run at the tanker and whalers. He was one of the gentlest people I had ever met, until he got riled up over environmental issues. Then he became like a bulldog. No wonder he had gone to jail back in the 1970s.

“We have to go after them again!” His voice had changed because his nose was plugged with blood.

I shook my head. “If I thought we could change anything here, believe me, I would. But all we’ll do is get killed. We’ll be more effective in the future if we stay alive.”

He dropped his head and nodded. He knew I was right. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Does it hurt a lot?”

He nodded again.

“I’ll give you some painkillers, and you’ll have to make yourself as comfortable as you can. Keep your nose higher than your heart, and hold ice against it to try and keep the swelling down.”

“But what are we going to do now, Captain? We’ve got to stop the tanker from refuelling the
Nisshin Maru
.”

“What’s that?”

“The big whaling factory ship. The whalers bring their whales to her, and she cuts them up and prepares them for the market right on the ship. Without her, the whalers have to go back to Japan with only the whales they can carry, which is a lot fewer. We can’t let the tanker refuel the
Nisshin Maru
, we just can’t. Please tell me we’re not returning to Tasmania.” Merwin pleaded as though it were life and death. For the whales, it was.

“We’re not going back yet. We’re either going to follow those whalers south, or stay and watch the tanker. I’m not sure which.”

Merwin smiled with relief behind the ice pack. “I knew you had it in you, Captain. And I know you’ll make the right decision.”

I wished I felt as confident as he did. I didn’t see how we could make any difference here at all. But I wasn’t ready to leave yet either.

Once the whalers finished refuelling—which took several hours—they headed out on the hunt again. It was light now. As I watched them turn around and face south, I had to fight down feelings of hatred towards them. They were on their way to kill whales. I wanted so much to stop them. Should we follow them, or stay with the tanker? What was the smartest thing to do? I looked at Merwin. He had fallen asleep again. His head was propped up on pillows, his nose completely plugged, and his snoring sounded like a clogged drain. I had to decide. The tanker hadn’t refuelled the
Nisshin Maru
yet, and if she didn’t refuel, she would have to return to Japan without more whales, and the smaller ships would have to return, too.

I decided to stay with the tanker, just hoping we might find a way to keep it from refuelling the
Nisshin Maru
. Besides, the whalers were smaller and faster, and we probably couldn’t keep up with them.

All of the time that Merwin slept, the tanker slowly sailed slightly south of west, getting closer to the Southern Ocean all the time, and perhaps she had crossed the 60th parallel already, I wasn’t sure. We stayed half a mile away, on the surface, and I spent a lot of time watching her through the binoculars for any sign of activity. There was none. Then, after five hours or so, we had visitors. Welcome ones. Through the open portal I heard a blast of air. Our whales had returned.

It amazed me they could find us so easily. It amazed me even more they would want to. They must have become fond of us, too, mother and calf. It was too bad Merwin was sleeping, because it would have picked up his spirits to see them. But I really didn’t want to wake him. He would need rest to recover from his wounds. In his absence, I did my best to sing to the whales. I put on the harness, climbed onto the hull, and sang “Frères Jacques” until I couldn’t stand hearing it anymore. Then I tried “Scarborough Fair,” and a few other songs that I knew. At first, I felt silly, and was afraid I’d just scare them away. But when I saw the mother whale look more closely at me, I realized she was really listening. I could tell. She seemed to like “Scarborough Fair” the most. There was a sparkle in her eye when I sang it, and she slapped her tail, so I sang it over and over again. I wondered if she realized there were ships down here that wanted to kill her and her baby. I think she did. Yet she never swam away. I wondered why she never did.

Everything that happened after that happened as if in a dream, where nothing anyone did could have stopped it or made any difference. It sure felt that way, perhaps because it was so violent, and perhaps because it happened so fast.

I heard a beep on the radar—a single vessel in the water, coming north towards us—and I knew in my heart that it was the
Nisshin Maru
even before I could see her through the binoculars. I spotted her at five miles because she was so big, and sat high in the water. I went back inside and looked at Merwin. He was still sleeping. His face was black and blue; he was exhausted. He might not forgive me later, but I decided not to wake him.

I went back outside and watched as the hulking factory ship approached. There was nothing I could do to prevent her from refuelling. She was as long as the tanker but sat higher in the water. There was blood on her bow. I didn’t realize she did more than slaughter the whales that other ships caught for her. She caught them, too. Had I known that, I would have sailed away as fast as possible, and led the mother and calf away. But it didn’t occur to me. Now, it was too late.

The sailors on the
Nisshin Maru
saw the mother whale snorting, and decided to catch her before refuelling. It didn’t take them long. Their weapon was a powerful gun that shot an exploding harpoon. The harpoon was tied to a rope. Once a whale was shot with the harpoon, there was no escape. By the time I realized what they were doing, and tried to put the sub in their way, they had turned around and positioned themselves for a strike. Their ship was amazingly agile for her size, nothing like the tanker. To my horror I heard a loud bang, and right before my eyes the harpoon shot out from the bow of the ship, and I heard it strike and explode inside the head of the mother. She attempted to dive, but couldn’t. She was dying. I heard her cry, and my heart broke. A wave of pain flooded through me, and suddenly I knew that what Sheba had foretold, had come to be.

Desperately, the mother whale turned towards me, and I saw her enormous eye, and the pain in it, and the worry that she had for her baby. How I wanted to tell her that it would be okay; that I would protect her baby. But I knew I couldn’t promise it. I could only promise that I would try.

I felt such anguish in my heart. Every muscle in my body was tight. Every molecule inside of me knew I had to protect the baby whale, and I begged that the whalers would pass her by because she was so young. But they didn’t.

“No!” I screamed, and tried again to put the sub between the ship and the whale, but the baby would not leave her mother, and the sailors on the
Nisshin Maru
could easily spot and target her. As they readied for a second strike, I grabbed the flare gun, aimed it as well as I could, and shot it. “Bang!” went the gun, and then “Bang!” went the harpoon once more. But the flare struck the bow just below the harpoon gun, and the harpoon shot out high, with its rope snaking after it, and missed the baby whale by ten feet. I didn’t wait for them to reload; I shot the flare gun again. This time the flare went over the railing and onto the deck. I heard another bang, but this time I think it was the fire of a rifle. I ducked my head below the hatch. Were they firing at me, or just trying to warn me? I couldn’t tell. I fired one more flare, then jumped inside and motored closer to the baby. I heard pinging on the hull, and knew now that they were firing rifles at the sub. I was not afraid of that, their bullets could not hurt the sub, but I was afraid they might shoot the harpoon at us. If it hit, and the tip exploded, it might puncture the hull, and prevent us from diving. If it hit us below water level, we would sink.

We had to get out of here, now. I could only hope that the baby whale would follow us. I hit the dive switch, and we began to descend. In the last few seconds before the hatch shut, I poked my head out and shot four flares at the harpoon gun in rapid succession. I didn’t wait to see if any of them were on target. I just hoped they were.

Chapter Twenty-seven

MERWIN WOKE A SHORT while later, raised his head without opening his eyes, and asked what was happening. I thought he was still asleep. Nothing, I said. Go back to sleep. So he did. He was exhausted by his injuries, and the work of being at sea. I surfaced a couple of hundred feet from the
Nisshin Maru
, and went back outside.

The factory ship was positioning herself next to the tanker. The mother whale was pulled onto the stern of the ship by her tail. The beautiful life in her, her sweet personality and sweet songs were gone. She was a lifeless carcass now. Her blood had turned the water red. The
Nisshin Maru
had done what it was designed to do, and was now preparing to refuel. I didn’t see the baby whale on the ramp, and so had to assume it had escaped.

As I leaned against the hatch with my head on my arms, I wished I could have traded Sheba’s prophesy for another wound to my arm, instead of the death of the mother whale. It all seemed so hopeless to me now—the struggle to save the planet—when there were so very many people who just didn’t care, who were so destructive, and willing to do anything to make a dollar. I understood now that what Margaret had said was probably true, that it was too late to save the Earth. It wasn’t because we didn’t have the technology to do it—we did. It was because we were so destructive. Now I knew who the enemy was: it was us. As I watched the mother whale being dragged up the ramp, I felt a cloud of despair come down over my eyes, and a searing pain settle in my heart.

Only then did I hear the radar. It had been beeping all this time, but I had been too upset to hear it. I rushed inside to look. Two vessels were just three miles away, and were coming fast. I hurried outside again with the binoculars, and scanned the horizon. It was the
Steve Irwin
and
Bob Barker
.

I motored closer, and watched as the crew of the
Nisshin Maru
tried frantically to gather the hoses from the tanker and begin fuelling. But the sea was not cooperating. The swells were growing bigger every hour. The sky had darkened. The wind was strong now. I could tell by how frantic their movements were that they needed the oil desperately. The last thing they wanted to see was the Sea Shepherd Society.

The Shepherd ships came onto the scene like two wild hounds. They circled the two larger ships with an agility and closeness that astonished me. They were clearly not afraid of colliding with the
Nisshin Maru
, but were more careful around the tanker. The
Bob Barker
took a position in front of the bow of the giant whaler, while the
Steve Irwin
boldly proceeded to sail between the two ships. I saw Captain Watson on the bow, holding a bullhorn. He looked furious. I motored as close as I dared, and heard him issue a dire warning.