Ice Whale (9 page)
Authors: Jean Craighead George
heard
and swam back to him. He saw that Siku's bleeding fluke would force him to rest. This would slow the group's progress. They must go on and leave Siku behind. He swam back to the group and led the group hurriedly west and then south. It was important to reach the waters of the Bering Sea before the ocean ice froze too thick for them to easily break breathing holes in it.
swam slowly southâ although the orca teeth wound throbbed.
He went on into the Bering Straitâ passing by the two Diomede Islands.
Sandhill cranes were flying across the straitâ heading south from their nesting grounds in the Siberian wilderness. They were going to Florida and Texas for the winter. Female gray whales swam by him on their way to Baja Californiaâ to both give birth and mate. Days later he came to Toozak's old village. Siku was in the Bering Seaâ and there he rested.
“
â” he whistled joyously. He had found his mother near Saint Lawrence Island.
Also near the island was the whaling ship
Thunder.
The whalers aboard this ship were whaling late in the season. They saw Siku's mother surface and blowâ launched a whaleboatâ and rowed silently toward her. She was nursing her new daughter and did not hear them. The harpooner sent a harpoon into her body with a line and kegs attached. Then a large exploding bullet was shot from a gun. It slipped through her blubber and into her body cavity. The bomb exploded.
Though woundedâ she made no soundâ no urgent wailâ no shriek of pain.
swam to her. Her daughter shrilled pitifully as the mother doveâ trying to rid herself of the harpoon. It held. The harpooner ran out the line. The kegs attached to it dragged on her. The mother turned and sped directly at the whaleboat. When more whaleboats came to the sceneâ they attacked her with more harpoons.
She turned away. But the wound in her body was great. More whaleboats appeared above her. Oars dipped from them. The mother swam on. She skimmed the ocean bottom as she rushed toward a rock outcropping to snap the lines. She could not reach it. The lines held her back and she began to drown.
A few minutes later her body rose to the surface. Her breath-plume was red with blood.
Thrashing her flukes in a last spurt of lifeâ she lifted herself out of the water thirty feetâ fell backâ and drenched the whalers. They hardly noticed. Here was a seventy-ton prize.
The ocean surface quieted down. The waves died into slicks of oil and blood. Jaegers circled overhead. Murres flew around the whalers and guillemots sailed off the sea surface where they had been fishing. The mother was floating.
An ivory gull cried once “
Keeer
,” and soared away.
Milling close to herâsaw the lines grow taught as his mother was towed by six whaleboats to the
Thunder.
He moaned. His grief was heard through the ocean.
The whalers sang an old whaling song. They stopped singing only long enough to cheer.
The crew rendered the blubber of their last bowhead of the season and poured the oil into barrels. They stored baleen from Siku's mother alongside valuable polar-bear skins in the hold.
swam in circles around the killing waters. That night he went under an ice floeâ made a breathing crackâ and hung there. Dawn found him still there.
Feeling the misery of lonelinessâ he dropped down among the crabs and brittlestars on the ocean floor.
An Arctic octopusâ living in a wrecked ship's hullâ came out of the captain's quarters and snatched a small fish with the suction cups on her arms. She wrapped it up in them and carried it back to the captain's watery rooms. There she consumed it.
“Ummmmm ummmmmm . . .”cried. Although he had been weaned from his mother long agoâ he grieved that she was gone. In bowhead yearsâ he was still young. His sisterâ not yet able to get her own foodâ was adopted by another female. The female suckled herâ and after a while milk flowed.
The
Thunder
sailed to a Hawaiian port for the winter. Although the bowhead harvest was decliningâ these whalers would still be wealthy men.
T
he Arctic Ocean wreaked its vengeance on the
whalers in September of 1871. Forty whaling ships had earlier sailed through the Bering Strait and up the coast of Alaska. Only seven returned. Word had it that the few remaining whales in the Arctic would be coming past Point Barrow in September and they had risked all to get them.
One of those shipsâ the
Trident
â was captained once again by Thomas Boyd. He was back in the Arcticâ this time he had brought his only sonâ Tom IIâ with him.
Not far from the ship that dayâ wasand a small group of ice whales.
The sea was rough and ships were tossing dangerously. Captain Boyd and the other whaling captains pulled their boats into the calm water between the pack ice and land-fast ice between Icy Cape and Point Franklin. Point Franklin had been named after the British explorer who, years later, would be lost attempting to find the Northwest Passage. The crew would wait there for the whales to come south on migration.
As Captain Boyd sailed for Point Franklinâ he noticed a whale breaching nearby. It had a mark like an Eskimo dancer on its chin.
“Tomâ” he called. “It's a whale.” Tom II came running.
“Where?” the boy shoutedâ but there were only whale footprintsâ an oval swirl of water created by the pumping flukes of a moving whaleâ and then even those disappeared.
Disappointedâ Captain Boyd steered his ship toward the shore.
“We'll wait hereâ” he said. “That wind that's blowing is an easterly one. It will blow the ice pack out to seaâ and we can anchor in the deep entrance to the lagoon.”
“But the ice seems to be coming closerâ” Tom II observed.
“Captain Roys taught me about these Arctic windsâ” said his father. He knew that Arctic winds can be fickle. They will blow north and then switch southwestâ toward shoreâ without warningâ pushing any pack ice before it.
An advancing mass of pack ice was to windward and an unforgiving coast was to their lee. At that momentâ some lucky ships turned and ran between the great sheet of ice and shoreâ and sailed southwest toward ice-free waters. Others stayed hoping for the east wind or a sea current to take the pack ice away.
“Father, the ice is closing in!” Tom II cried in alarm.
Captain Boyd ran for the wheel. No sooner had he taken hold of it than he heard the sound of wood splintering. He looked fore and aft. Heavy ice had closed around them.
“The ship!” he cried. “Her stern is stove!”
Glancing toward the other thirty-nine ships strung out in a lineâ he saw to his horror that many of them were being crushed between shore and the pack ice.
“Abandon shipâ” Captain Boyd ordered. He turned to Tom II. “Get in the nearest whaleboat. Water is coming in the aft cabin.” He departed.
Tom II scrambled to the cabin with the timbers crackling, put on his winter parkaâ grabbed his mittensâ and ran to a whaleboat. The ship was listing severely to one side.
Tom II swung into the whaleboat. Rowers dropped onto their seats.
“Lower awayâ” he yelled to the men at the stanchion. The whaleboat was lowered onto ice.
“Pull her over the ice to open water!” barked Captain Boyd from the deck. The whalers got out of the whaleboatâ stepped onto the iceâ grabbed her linesâ and pulled with all their might.
The
Trident
listed to one side even more.
“Abandon ship!” Captain Boyd now shouted again. They lowered the four whaleboatsâ climbed down the ropes and rope laddersâ and jumped into them. When every last soul was off the shipâ Captain Boyd slid down a rope into the last whaleboat.
The
Trident
was rolling onto her beam ends and splintering under the vise-like grip of the ice. Tom II looked back at her and gasped. In the short time since they had abandoned shipâ the
Trident
had been completely crushed by ice. Her sails had collapsedâ her beams were splintered. Whale oil was spilling onto the ice, the hold, and into the water.
All the men were straining to pull the whaleboats over the rough ice.
“To seawaterâ” the captain rasped. Suddenly an ice block as big as a house was plowing toward the whaleboat. Tom II grabbed the bench he was sitting on with both hands. His knuckles whitened. The seamen strained and hauled the whaleboat as fast as they could. They finally dragged the boat away from the encroaching ice block and reached ice-free waters. They set the whaleboat afloatâ jumped inâ and began rowing away from the ice pack.
Other crews from other ships were desperately hauling their whaleboats as well. Seven ships had slipped free of the ice and were out at seaâ including the
Daniel Webster
. The crew of the
Trident
drew up alongside her and was welcomed aboard. All seagoing whaling ships rescue other whalers in distress. In factâ helping fellow sailors is the first law of the sea. Packed like sardinesâ the sailors stood on the
Daniel Webster
's deck and in the distance watched the
Trident
and other ships splinter into shreds.
Thirty-two ships were abandoned in the ice near Point Belcherâ west of Barrow; amazingly no lives were lost, which was not often the case. The Eskimos saw it as the ocean's revenge for killing whales for money instead of for food. Laterâ the Yankee whalers would refer to it as the Disaster of 1871.
On the
Daniel Webster
Captain Boyd sought out her captain. “This might be the end of whalingâ” he said to him. “Too few whalesâ too many wrecks.”
“This
is
the end of whalingâ” the captain answered. “Black oil has been struck in Pennsylvania. It will be cheaper and it keeps on flowing.”
Captain Tom Boyd stood on the deck with Tom II and looked out on the windyâ gray Arctic Ocean. A lone whale blew. On his chin was a mark shaped like an Eskimo dancerâ his hand upâ his knees bent.
Despite everythingâ Tom II smiled. The whale would be safe for now.
The ship turned south to again face the terrible storms of the Bering Sea.
A blustery six weeks laterâ Captain Boyd and his crew arrived in Hawaii.
Nothing remained of the
Trident.
