At the Midway Read online

  "What's that?" Gilroy had asked.

  "Heroin," said the stranger, who then walked away.

  Too drunk to care, Gilroy had resumed his futile attempt to stare down his nemesis.

  "All right, Slayton, my final offer‑‑nine dollars! Believe me, I won't be making a nickel off it!"

  Gilroy watched the ensign chase the marine across the upper gundeck. When they were gone, he whistled a few bars from 'It's a Grand Old Flag'.

  Then he returned below.

  XI

  March, 1908 California Current

  It was the greatest surprise of Chandry's life--short of waking up a criminal in Victoria--when they came across an enormous bull sperm whale four hundred nautical miles west of Cape Mendocino. And there was William Pegg, boatsteersman of the larboard boat. The first mate's boat. The lead boat.

  It was as much a surprise to William, who never thought the captain would let him keep his promotion if a real prospect came along. If the other boatsteerers had not hummed something close to mutiny the day they smoked the rats, it was likely Chandry would have indeed reversed his decision.

  "Think you can handle 'er, boatsteersman?" Chandry leered as William raced to port. He added a broad wink to his first mate, officer of the larboard boat. If the new boatsteersman botched the strike, it would be his job to recoup the situation. To kill the whale himself. Chandry's wink was intended to confirm the joke. The humiliation inflicted upon the boy if and when he failed would be meaningless if they lost a good profit in the process.

  "Boatsteersman!" Chandry clapped William on the shoulder. "What do you say? You'll make us rich, won't you?"

  "Aye, sir."

  "Aye!"

  William had taken his promotion to heart. He'd cleaned the irons, sharpened all points and barbs, made certain the pin on the harpoon would toggle properly once the whale was struck, and tightened loose stitches on the beckets. He checked the grenades, saw they were dry and primed, then measured the rope and gauged its clearance. He went over to the becket box and inspected its contents: the 'drug'--a drag pole--a six-inch doweled plank fastened to a two-foot post; the boat spade; and the waifs. When the lookout spotted the short, telltale spout of the sperm whale, the larboard boat was as ready as any on the ship.

  The boatsteerer's condition was another matter. William's heart swooped and churned as he leapt into the whaleboat. His arms felt weak. He had to pee, but there was no time for it. He wanted to pray, but by then the oar was in his hands.

  Until they reached the whale, a boatsteerer was just another oarsman. It was the officer of the boat who maintained the steering oars and watched where they were going. After his first distant glimpse, William would not see his target until they were upon it.

  He felt so weak... he was sure he was not pulling his share at the sweeps. His two harpoons were in the becket at his crotch, and the bomb gun was in a niche next to his seat--everything sharpened or primed. He only wished his heart could also be oiled and whetstoned.

  Throughout the long chase, the Lydia Bailey lay directly in William's line of sight. The black shadow of Captain Chandry's head showed like a pustule above the poop railing.

  Someone hit him in the leg.

  "Breathe!" Lead Foot commanded.

  No wonder he was ready to pass out! He was so tight in the chest he had to make himself conscious of his lungs and force them to work. But it was difficult now that reality was pressing in. This whale was not meant to be a gift from heaven, but a gratuity from hell. How he handled the next few moments would determine his future.

  The first mate signaled and William stood, took a harpoon in hand, then turned. The sperm whale greeted him with an explosion of air from its spout-hole surprising William with the hotness of its breath. They were to leeward, close up, and the spout was moist and explicit. Rising only four feet, the atomized water fell forward and to the left, like a mist of snow drifting off a bush. It seemed to William to be punctuating the fact that it was alive.

  Steadying his right foot on the peak, he hefted the iron. He was struck by a sudden sense of... knowledge. Until that moment, he had not realized he'd been born knowing what every other Nantucket boy knew before taking a breath: where the heart of a sperm whale was located. Raising the harpoon, he struck. Automatically, he slid the second iron from the becket and lanced it into the whale next to the first. Then he reached for the bomb gun.

  A familiar hand restrained him.

  "No," said Lead Foot. "You got him. Let him flurry." He glanced back at the first mate. "The Lydia's too far off. If we kill him too soon, he might sink."

  The mate nodded agreement.

  "You got him, William. He's spouting blood. Let him face the sun before he dies. We've got time."

  William stared at the whale, stunned. Indeed, the rainbow mist from its spout-hole had turned red. With mere rods of iron, he'd slain a giant. The boat rocked violently as the whale thrashed in the water.

  "Slack your lines," the first mate ordered.

  More than anything else, those words planted the compliment for all to see. William had thrown his darts so hard the barbs had hooked deep within the animal. The head pins broke properly and the hafts lay down on the whale like bizarre leeches as the harpoons toggled. As William paid out the lines, the distance between the whale and the boat increased. The sperm whale began its peculiar death dance, known to whalers as the 'flurry.' It swam out as far as the rope allowed. Then, instead of taking them on a Nantucket sleigh ride, as a whale not mortally wounded would have done, the animal struck a circle nearly a quarter mile from them.

  "They know," said Lead Foot, taking his pipe out from under his oilskin. "That's the damnedest thing about this business. They know."

  The rest of the whaleboats came up. The other boatsteerers withheld their plaudits. With reappraising glances, they realized William was one hell of a big bastard. And only a growing boy, at that.

  The Lydia Bailey steamed towards them. In retrospect, the chase seemed quite brief. Yet the mother ship was miles away. William had lost all sense of time.

  The whale circled. The larboard boat turned gently.

  "There's the finish," said Lead Foot softly.

  The whale had turned to face the sun.

  It was a doleful, familiar and intensely dramatic scenario in the lore of the leviathans. So often as to be a fact, sperm whales faced the sun before they died.

  But as the steamer drew close and they began to haul the whale in, the animal abruptly showed signs of life. William was toppled and hit the thwarts with a hard thud. Chandry's curses rained down from above.

  Lead Foot dropped his pipe and rushed to the cleats to secure the lines. For an instant he seemed as callow as William. It was obvious a romantic notion important to him had been chopped from under his feet. More critical, his advice to let the whale flurry was butchered under a harsh light. "That whale was fooled, too," he murmured to William. "He thought he was dying."

  William said nothing, but struggled painfully to his knees and helped secure the lines.

  In the end, they were compelled to use the bomb gun. William was a little afraid of the gun. The loud report and the violent recoil were not as easy to brace for as the hard thrust of the irons. When the bomb exploded in the whale's vitals, he covered his eyes, fearful of fragments. A pungent stink filled the air as the whale lost control of its bowels. In its death throes it lobtailed, whipping its tremendous tail flukes down and soaking the men in the larboard boat with shit and blood-stained water.

  The other boatsteerers unleashed laudatory songs for William. He was no superhuman, after all. Like the rest of them, he had to resort to bombing. This made him a fine fellow in their eyes and they reached across the gunnels to slap him on the back. Chagrined, William accepted their compliments as consolation.

  The whaler drew alongside and a large chain was lowered. William looked on as it was wrapped around the small of the tail. Loud metallic clanking pounded his ears as the chain was drawn through the fo
rward hawse-pipes. It seemed like a dirge for both the whale and Lead Foot, who sat glowering like a man just kicked by his lover.

  It was the larboard boat's privilege to be raised first, if practicable. Rowing to the Lydia Bailey's port side, the first mate called up for the falls to be lowered.

  William was bracing an oar against the steamer's hull when the duff sauce came down. Otherwise, it might have dropped straight into his eyes. Lead Foot saved him from falling over the gunwale by grabbing the waist of his pants and pulling backwards. It was a near thing. Had he gone overboard, his head might have been crushed between the whaleboat and the iron-tough Australian greenheart that sheathed the Lydia Bailey's hull.

  The liquid bomb from above was remarkably accurate. The other men in the boat caught only a few splatters. Pegg's hair became a sticky gumbo. His clothes reeked of foul sauce. His neck burned fiercely as the heated sauce ran under his slicker.

  Here was another kind of baptism. The high priests of vindictiveness showed their chins overhead. The bucket from which the duff sauce had been emptied was waved in triumph.

  "Down lad, down..." Lead Foot cautioned, making feeble attempts to hide his own mirth.

  William's hands were now too slick with sauce to maneuver the davit hooks. Lead Foot made him sit, then assumed the boatsteerer's position and took hold of the grapples. Coordinating his efforts with the first mate, bow and stern were made secure and the boat was raised.

  "Down lad, down...."

  "Whew!" Chandry clowned as the boatmen jumped on deck. But there was no time to rub the sauce in Pegg's wounds of embarrassment. Tradition demanded the presence of the ship's captain when first cutting into a whale. The cutting stage had been lowered and the flensers were awaiting his arrival to start. Above them, the steam winch putt-putt-putted louder and louder as the strain on it increased. This was caused by the weight of the sperm whale against the five-and-a-quarter-inch rope it lay on. The lines rose to large snatch blocks high over the shrouds in the foremast, then came back down to the winch. As the whale settled into the cradle, the steam engine driving the winch had a harder time keeping it from sinking. Soon, though, the weight would be turned to the whalers' advantage.

  Chandry clambered down the Jacob's ladder to the cutting stage. The platform extended ten feet from the side of the ship and was connected by a twenty-two-foot long walking plank. The plank was wide enough for a man to work on without too much trouble, so long as he was sober--a state rarely observed in the skipper.

  He took several ritualistic belts from his mug before stepping out upon the middle of the stage. Wobbling up and down the platform with a long-handled cutting spade over his shoulder, he looked for all the world like a rummy Father Time with his sickle.

  Blessed with the knack for parading his mistrust, Chandry always ordered his flensers to perform tasks long since done. The second and third mates were the flensers that day, but out on the cutting stage they had no more status than common deckhands. Chandry sanctified the proceedings with few choleric shouts. The flensers punched a hole through the rubbery fin and linked it to the tackles overhead. The other end of the chain was attached to a windlass at the back of the flensing deck. Using a stevedore's hook to gouge handholds, the third mate lifted himself to the fin and struck it a few times, extending it so tightly it barely shuddered. He looked down at the captain, as if to say, "See that, you old fool?"

  A useless, even harmful, waste of time. There was no telling how much unnecessary strain had been put on the tackles and masts over the years because of the captain's penchant for doing things twice‑‑in all likelihood, because he'd forgot doing them the first time. Leaning back against the pole that was lashed to the iron rods supporting the platform, Chandry nodded sagely.

  Pushing off from the post, he hefted his cutting spade and faced the whale and ship. "Ready above!" he slurred. The men on deck barely heard him over the steam winch and the roar of the boilers under the flensing deck, but they knew the routine. Taking up handspikes, those assigned to the job inserted them into the windlass and started to turn.

  It was not their task to rotate the whale. The weight of the carcass opposed to the pull of the steam winch accomplished that as soon as the flensers cut in. Making their incisions at six-foot intervals, they separated the fin from the shoulder blade, using that portion as a lead, then rolled the blubber off the body. It was like peeling an apple, the whale's meat and musculature exposed as its fat was lifted by the men at the windlass like a banner of flesh.

  William concentrated on maintaining his grip on the handspike he was pushing against. The duff sauce had begun to harden into a glossy shell. But where his hands met the spike, the friction melted the sauce and made things slippery. The men at the windlass with him plied him with complaints.

  "You smell like a turd someone slipped on."

  "Trade places with me, mate. I'll puke, one more minute next to this dead fish."

  Seeing that William's presence was affecting work at the windlass, the first mate relieved him, drafting a hapless cook to take his place. Eyes downcast, the boy stood to the side, glazed and useless.

  "What's this oakum boatsteerer about?" Captain Chandry stormed across the flensing deck. Smoke from the boilers and rendered blubber swam around him so he no longer looked like Father Time, but Satan himself.

  He had not lasted long on the cutting stage. He never did. There was always an extra man at the cradle to take his place whenever the strain overtook him. Treating each whale like a new building, he broke the ground, then let the contractors take over. Once back aboard, he took three more sips from his mug and glanced about. He saw his newest boatsteerer idling next to the donkey engine.

  At first, it seemed he was going to lay hold of the boy. One whiff warded him off. "Stay to looward, boy. You're a fat chip off a whale turd, you are."

  Staring openly at Chandry, with his gray hair slicked back and his walrus-brush moustache soggy with booze, William was tempted to take a handspike to his bloated face. He sensed a cautionary aura at his elbow, but Lead Foot's silent warning only boosted his wrath. Philosophers! Old men! He was sick of them. They were all either drunk or resigned to incomprehensible speculations. Why should they be listened to? Why should they be in charge?

  "You're a bastard, Chandry," Pegg said. "You near killed me in the forecastle. And now... this." The martyr pose he stuck was marred by clenched fists.

  The captain's eyes nearly popped with delight. The boy's previous restraint had perplexed and bored him. This was more like it. Cupping a hand over his ear, he leaned closer. "What's that ye say? You'll be hard of hearin' too, when you been boxed enough times."

  "I said you're a--"

  If he'd known the captain could move with any semblance of coordination, William would have dodged the blow. As it was, he'd barely time to blink before Chandry's huge fist caught him on the side of the head and sent him sprawling. Strong-jawed and stronger-willed, Pegg was up on his feet in an instant.

  But the captain was down. His metal mug was rattling on the deck. His face twisted in confusion.

  Lead Foot massaged his knuckles. "Well... there it is...."

  "Yeah...." Chandry sat up and made a cutting motion across his throat. "There it is, Mr. Manahan."

  Manahan? William glanced at the old man. Lead Foot had a real name? Hard to believe. It was like slapping a cheap label on the Sphinx.

  A shout from starboard. Fearful something was awry with his precious catch, Chandry leapt up and started to run for the railing.

  There was a loud explosion of jolted wood and the ship lurched violently to port. A huge fan of water blew in from the starboard beam. Every man was knocked off his feet. William just missed falling into one of the vat openings on the flensing deck. Through the hatch he heard screams as the men below were burned by super-heated blubber and he slammed into the starboard rail and held on for dear life. There were shouts as several men went overboard, then something dropped with a sickening "whap!" amidships. It
was the lookout falling from the crow's nest. The drop must have broken every one of his bones. His body rolled like a sack when the ship lurched again.

  The movement stopped. Raising his head, Pegg saw Lead Foot clinging to the side of a hatch cover.

  Everything pointed to a broadside collision, yet there was no other ship in sight. The deck was awash in salt water and whale blood.

  Leaning over the starboard rail, they saw nearly half the sperm whale was missing. The section attached to the derrick had fallen and lay crosswise over the carcass, while the portion still attached to the whale stretched out ten feet or so into the water. A fleet of wood fragments told them the cutting stage had disintegrated.

  "Where's Billings? Pitts?"

  These were two of the flensers who'd been out on the platform. The purser pointed at some heads bobbing in the water. Billings, Pitts, and those who had tumbled overboard were swimming frantically towards the ship.

  "What the hell was it?" Chandry shouted at them.

  "Something's out here!" the second mate yelled.

  Abruptly, the huge carcass began jumping, thrashing, and leapt half out of the cradle of the steam winch cables. The remains of the platform, the brackets that had connected the ship to the walking plank, boomed against the hull. The whale's internal organs looked as if they were boiling.

  "There's something inside it!" William cried hoarsely.

  They leaned out. Something was beginning to appear under the exposed ribs. The gluey, purplish mass seemed to be dissolving. Suddenly, in the thrash of blood and water, two black eyes appeared.

  "Sweet Jesus!"

  William was not the only one to jump away from the rail.