MONSTERS OF THE SEA
On a sea ruffled to purple in the wind, Mother White bear, busy
catching fish, glimpsed three large black fins.
Three piratical black fins, farther out at sea, approached like the
sails of so many fishing dories, all in a row. That, she knew, meant
orcas--killer whales! With a loud whoof she summoned Sitka to turn back
and make for shore. He responded with that swift obedience she had
taught him. But though he was swift, the orcas were swifter. But he was
not far from a high rock that jutted up out of shoal water. When he had
scrambled up beside his mother, his legs were trembling and his breath
quite gone.
When the disappointed orcas had swum away again, their great black
fins rising from the curve of their backs, and the two white streaks
on their sides shouting a warning to those that could read it, Mother
White Bear was reminded of a battle she had once seen between an orca
and a cachalot, one of the giant sperm whales. Of course Sitka wanted
the story.
“Fortunately,” said Mother White Bear, “cachalots never come as far
North as this. It was the time I drifted so far South on the ice that
I saw this battle. A cachalot mother had come to a quiet inlet off
the coast of Southern Alaska to rear her baby. It must have been an
exceptional case, for though I have heard of orcas going far South, I
never knew of but the one cachalot to come so far North. But a traveler
such as myself sees many an unusual happening.”
“I’m going to be a traveler, too,” vowed Sitka.
“You certainly will, if you grow up into a regular bear,” she agreed.
“But first you know that whales are mammals, like bears and dogs, and
nurse their babies.”
“Honestly?” marvelled Sitka.
“Yes. And the orca mother has a way of carrying her calf tucked behind
her left flipper, or as it were, in her left arm, and nursing it as
she lies floating on a quiet sea. Both she and her calf are cream
colored on their under sides, so that the fish below cannot see them so
plainly. For of course they live largely on fish.
“She herself is content to eat the great, sluggish fish that live in
shallow seas, though she is also fond of seals, and I have seen her
devour one whole. The one I saw and I suppose they are all alike, was
lean and quick, and could dive and swim with marvelous agility. The
Eskimos would have found very little blubber on her. And unlike the
great, stupid, lubberly creatures you saw the Eskimos hunting, this
particular whale is a good fighter, as you shall see, and cunning too.
But with all this, she loves her calf.”
“What happened?” begged Sitka impatiently.
“I was watching from a cliff,” continued Mother White Bear. “First I
saw this cachalot mother nursing her calf under her left flipper, and
I was amazed that such a huge creature could be so gentle. For this
giant creature had a head nearly a third of her entire size, and she
could open her jaws till you and I could have found room to den up for
the winter right in her mouth. And that huge mouth was armed with teeth
that could have crunched you in one bite.” Sitka shuddered.
“Then I saw a band of orcas coming. She saw them, too, and started out
to meet them, but it meant leaving her calf behind, and she turned back
to the little fellow, perhaps afraid that something might come by and
eat him while her back was turned. But if she stayed, the orcas would
get him. So she turned once more to meet their advancing front. Picture
that row of black fins coming all in a row!
“Well, that cachalot just simply opened that huge mouth of hers and
snapped her jaws on the first orca she could reach, and the water
turned red around them!--The other orcas,--there were five of them in
that pack,--tried to swim around either side of her, at a good safe
distance, but she was so afraid they would reach her calf that she
chased them ferociously, without a thought for her own safety, and you
would have laughed to see these same orcas, these dread killer whales,
turning tail and admitting their defeat, five to one that they were!
But they would have stood not a chance with those great jaws of hers,
swift and fierce as the orcas were.”
“Everything is afraid of something else, isn’t it, Mother?” said Sitka.
“There is nothing I fear for myself save wolves,” said Mother White
Bear.
“I am afraid of that Eskimo boy,” Sitka admitted.
“And perhaps he is afraid of you.”
“And of orcas?” the little bear surmised.
Note--The Eskimos around Bering Sea believe that the killer whales are
wolves in sea form. They tell it that when the world was young the
wolves of the land used to enter the sea, changing their form as they
did so and becoming orcas. When they returned to land, they changed
back to wolves. To this day the little brown men fear the orca as the
wolf of the sea.
A sweep of her paw and Mother White Bear had landed a shining fish,
which she proceeded to eat, bidding Sitka go catch one for himself. For
he needed practice.
After they had both dined and slept, and felt ready to go on, they swam
about thirty miles fairly close to shore. A polar bear can swim forty
miles at a stretch if she has to. Sitka tired, and his mother allowed
him to tow himself along by her tail once in a while to rest him. And
again they caught fish and climbed aboard a floating ice pan to sleep
the lengthening night away.
That was their program for many days,--swimming so close to shore that
they could see the ragged outline of the pointed green-black firs when
it was not too foggy. The thunder of the surf was in their ears, and
the taste of the bitter brine was in their nostrils, for the wind blew
the sea into foam.
Then one day, their first sunny day in weeks, they came to the edge of
the pack ice.