Through the broad, indolent, green-purple swells, ruffled and crisped
along their tops by a mild breeze, the cow-orca went wallowing
contentedly, her calf swimming close at her side. From time to time it
rubbed against her, as if apprehensive in face of the vast and perilous
spaces of the ocean, and seeking covert behind her short powerful
flipper. And from time to time, being one of the most devoted and
assiduous of all the mothers of the wild, she would gather it caressingly
to her side with that great flipper, or, whirling half around, touch it
inquiringly with her enormous rounded snout.
She was a good nineteen or twenty feet in length, the great orca—or
“killer whale,” as she would have been dubbed by any sailor or fisherman
who might have chanced to cast eyes upon her. She would have been
recognized at once, from all the other members of her whale-and-porpoise
tribe, by the immense dorsal fin, not far from five feet high, rising
erect from the broad and massive black curve of her back, by the two
conspicuous white streaks on her black flank, and by the sharply defined
line of her cream-white belly as she rolled lazily on the slope of a
swell. All these were danger signals, which the knowing would have taken
care to heed.
Little cause for apprehension had the calf of the orca, as long as it
kept near its mother. For this most swift and savage of all the cetaceans
feared nothing that swam, except her giant cousin, the cachalot or
sperm-whale. Though but twenty feet long, she would attack and kill,
through the sheer ferocity of her fury, the great whalebone or “right”
whale, of fully four times her length and many times her bulk. Man she
might have feared, had she ever learned his power; but, being poor in
blubber, her tribe had never tempted man to so difficult and perilous a
hunting. There were sharks, to be sure, that might equal or surpass her
in size, but none to even approach her in savagery, speed, or cunning. It
was in care-free content, therefore, that she lazed onward through the
bland, untroubled sea, heedless alike of the surf on the yellow cliffs to
her right, and of the empty spaces of ocean to her left. Such attention
as she could spare from the baby charms of her calf was given to
searching the transparent deeps below her, where lurked the big squid and
sluggish, bottom-feeding fish on which she habitually preyed.
Suddenly, with no sound but a vast sucking gurgle as the waters closed
above her, she dived. Far down in the obscurity she had caught sight of a
pallid, sprawling form. It was an octopus, which had been so ill-advised
as to leave its customary home among the rocks of the bottom and seek new
feeding-grounds. Before it had time even to attempt escape, the great
jaws of the “killer” engulfed it. For one moment its eight long tentacles
writhed desperately, clutching at its captor’s lips. Then they vanished,
sucked in and swallowed at a gulp. Thereupon the orca sailed leisurely
back to the sunlit surface, met on her way up by her anxious calf, which
had not been quite quick enough to follow its mother’s lightning descent.
She had not been two minutes absent, and never for an instant out of
sight, but the youngster’s instinct warned it well that the mild blue
element in which it dwelt was full of dangers.
The octopus, though a large one, had been but a mouthful for the great
killer, a stimulus, merely, to her vast appetite. She journeyed now with
a keener eye upon the depths. Presently the deep blue-green of the water
began to change to a lighter, beryl hue, where a line of making reef came
up to within some thirty feet of the surface, and caught the sun. Here,
basking, lay a broad, flat, bat-like creature, with wing-fins a dozen
feet across, and a long whip-like tail. Its cold moveless eyes, staring
upward, caught sight of the killer’s body, slowly cleaving the surface.
With an almost imperceptible movement of the black wings, it slid from
the reef and plunged for refuge in the depths.
But the giant ray had not been quick or stealthy enough to evade its
enemy’s eye. Again the orca dived, this time without heed of silence, and
so swiftly that her broad flukes, rising straight into the air, came down
upon the water with a report that resounded all the way in to shore. Her
descent was straight as a plummet. The ray, seeing it, was seized with
panic. It darted to one side, and shot upward again, at a terrific pace,
on a magnificent sweeping curve. With the force of that uprush it hurled
its whole black, shuddering bulk clear into the air, where it turned, and
for one instant hung flapping darkly, as if the very madness of its
terror had driven it to the conquest of a new element. To the nervous
calf it was a prodigy of horror, blotting out the sun. But this violent
excursion into the air was of only a second or two’s duration, and futile
as it was brief. As the flat black wings came down again, with an
enormous splash, the pursuing orca arose almost beneath them, seized
them, and dragged them under. There was no fight, the ray being powerless
against its mighty adversary—only a moment’s blind, frantic struggle in
the foaming swirls, and then a spreading stain of red on the green sea.
This, now, was a fully sufficing meal, even for such an appetite as the
orca’s; and many neglected fragments of it went spreading and sinking
away to feed the innumerable scavenging crabs that lurked in the weeds
and hollows of the sunken reef. The orca, for the next half hour or so,
remained where she was, rolling contentedly in the bright water above the
reef, nursing and caressing her calf, and digesting her meal. Then she
slowly continued her journey, but slanting in toward shore till she was
not more than half a mile from the chain of precipitous islets and broken
promontories which fringed this dangerous coast.
It was now full noon, and the unclouded sunlight, striking almost
straight downward upon the surface of the sea, revealed the bottom at an
amazing depth. Poised about half-way down the glimmering transparency, a
large squid, or cuttle-fish, was swimming at leisure. His narrow,
tapering body was about six feet in length, and perhaps twelve or
fourteen inches in diameter at the broadest part, which was the head.
From this formless head, seeming to sprout from it as leaf-stalks from a
carrot, grew a bunch of tentacles, ten in number, and of about the same
length as the body. Body and tentacles alike were of a pallid, dirty
yellow-gray, with brownish spots—a color that made its wearer almost
invisible in that sun-penetrated sea. The progress of the squid was
backward; and he achieved it, not by moving his tentacles, but by sucking
a volume of water into a great muscular sac beneath the tentacles and
forcibly expelling it again. It looked as if he were breathing water and
using it to blow himself along.
The orca was by no means hungry so soon after the feast which she had
made on the giant ray, but the succulent morsel of the squid was a
temptation not to be resisted. Tipping smoothly, her huge but finely
modelled black-and-white form shot straight downward through the
shimmering flood. But before she could reach him, the squid looked up and
saw her. On the instant his ten loose tentacles tightened to a rigid
bundle which offered no obstruction to his progress; his pale sides
contracted with a mighty convulsion, expelling a volume of water which
shot him along with the speed of a torpedo from its tube; and at the same
time, from a gland within the propulsion sac, he squirted forth a jet of
inky fluid which spread at once into a great cloud of black, veiling his
flight. Behind that concealment he changed his direction, and fled
downward toward a deep crevice in the rocky bottom, where he knew that
the jaws of his enemy would not be able to reach him.
The orca, undeterred, plunged straight onward into the inky cloud. But
once well within that gloom she lost all track of her intended prey. She
also, for the moment, lost herself. This way and that she darted,
snapping her vast jaws ravenously, but in vain. They closed on nothing
but the empty and tainted water. At last, and quite unexpectedly, she
emerged from the blackness into the transparent green, and, glancing
upward, saw a sight which caused her to hurl herself madly to the surface
with a Titanic sweep of her great flanks. That furious stroke made the
depths boil like the thrust of a liner’s propellers.
The calf, having started to follow its mother into the depths, had been
frightened by that inky cloud into which it had seen her vanish.
Returning in a flurry to the surface, it was swimming around aimlessly
and anxiously, when it caught the eye of a wandering shark.
The shark, knowing very well what it was, looked around for the mother.
He had no desire to be uncivil to a mother orca; but there was no mother
in sight. He did not understand it; but he was ragingly hungry, and such
an opportunity was quite irresistible. He rose at the calf with a rush,
and turned over on his side, exposing his livid-white belly, to seize the
prize. The calf, appalled at the black, triangular, many-toothed cavern
which gaped so suddenly before it, writhed away just in time, and began
swimming in a big circle around the spot where its mother had dived.
Again the shark rushed; but he had to turn on his side to bring his
curious underset jaws into play, and the calf of the orca had already the
nimbleness of its tribe. Again the attack failed. Before he could repeat
it, he caught sight of the mother shooting up from the green depths.
Though he was some twenty-five feet in length—a good five feet longer
than the orca—he turned and fled for his life.
One glance assured the mother that her little one was unhurt. Then she
darted after the aggressor at a pace which made his flight quite futile.
He had not gone fifty yards when she was upon him, open-jawed. Hurling
himself convulsively aside, he just succeeded in evading that first
resistless charge. With the courage of desperation he twisted himself
about, turned half over, glided beneath his adversary’s belly, and caught
at her with his triangular jaws. But she had already swerved, and he
failed to get a fair hold. He did, indeed, rend out a mass of hide and
blubber, but he reached no vital point, and the raging killer hardly felt
the wound. Whirling with a violence that sent the foam and spray spurting
into the air, she caught the base of the shark’s tail between her immense
jaws.
As far as anything like a fight was concerned, this was the end of it.
For several minutes the gigantic struggle went on, dashing the discolored
water yards high; but it was all on one side, as the orca shook and
crushed and tore the life out of her beaten opponent. At last she drew
off, leaving a mangled mass to sink slowly into the depths. Then, having
snuggled the excited calf under her fin, and given him to nurse, she swam
slowly inland toward the deep channel which here ran between the islands
and the shore, where she thought she might find some more of those
succulent squid to compensate her for the one which had so
inconsiderately evaded her approaches.
The breeze, which hitherto had been little but a succession of
cat’s-paws, now settled into a steady draft, though not strong enough to
do more than darken the surface of the sea to a heavy purple. Running
free before it, up along the coast, between the cliffs and the islands,
came a small cat-boat, its one sail sparkling white in the clear
sunshine.
The tiny craft contained two passengers—the man at the helm, smoking a
big brier pipe, and a silky brown retriever curled up at the foot of the
mast. It was a stern coast and a dangerous water for such a cockle-shell
to traverse; but the man was a good amateur navigator of small craft, and
he knew that, between the port which he had left, some fifteen miles back
down the coast, and the harbor which he was making for, a dozen miles to
the north, there were plenty of refuges wherein he could take shelter in
case a sudden storm should blow up out of the east. These waters were
unfamiliar to him, but he had a good chart; and this was his special
delight—the coasting of unknown shores, with no companionship but that of
his faithful and accommodating dog, who always agreed with him as to the
most interesting places to visit.
But though Gardner was an expert yachtsman, with an eye wise to all signs
of the weather, and an instinct that could feel the pulse of the wind
through tiller or taut sheet, he knew something less of natural history
than was desirable for one who made his playground on the peopled seas.
His notions of all the whale tribe and their varying characters were
based on what he had read of the great timorous whalebone whale, and what
he had seen of the merry and harmless porpoise. When, therefore, he
caught sight of the arched black back and formidable head of the orca,
lazily ploughing the swells, it never occurred to him that now was the
time for discretion. Had he been an _habitué_ of these waters, he would
have turned his prow promptly in another direction, lest the orca should
think he wanted to intrude upon her privacy. As it was, however, he
sailed nearer, to see what manner of fish or beast it might be, this
black-and-white creature that treated his approach with such
indifference.
Passing at a distance of eighty or a hundred yards, Gardner was seized
with a fool idea. This was a good chance for a shot. The unknown beast
would form an interesting trophy. He did not stop to consider what he
should do with it if he bagged it. He did not stop to consider that with
his light rifle he could not hope to do more than inflict a painful wound
through the layers of blubber which would protect the vitals of this
sea-monster. He did not know, either, that a dead whale sinks to the
bottom, and that therefore the most successful shot could bring him no
reward. It was enough that the instinct to kill something was upon him.
He flung a knee over the tiller to keep his course steady, snatched up
the rifle, and fired at a spot just behind the orca’s big
flipper—somewhere about where he judged the heart would lie. As he did
so, the dog, realizing that there was some excitement afoot, sprang up,
put his forepaws on the gunwale, and barked furiously at the strange
black shape there rolling in the swell.
To Gardner’s astonishment, the monster itself made no immediate response
to the shot, but instantly, just under its flank, there began a wild
commotion. Something there fell to threshing the water frantically, and
the monster, swinging about, gazed at that something with great and
anxious concern. She stroked it with her flipper, as if trying to calm
it; and then Gardner saw that it was the young of the monster that he had
struck. At this he felt full of remorse. Had he seen the calf, he would
not have fired at either parent or little one. He was not wantonly cruel,
but only thoughtless. For a few seconds he stared irresolutely. Then,
judging from its actions that the calf had received a mortal wound, he
decided that he ought to put it out of its misery. Taking very careful
aim, he fired again. The report echoed sharply from the cliff-face of an
island not a hundred feet away.
Gardner had made a good shot this time. Before the echoes of the report
had died out, the calf lay still, and then very slowly began to sink.
There was stillness for a few seconds, broken only by the excited barking
of the brown retriever. The orca swam slowly half around the body of her
young, and apparently assured herself that it was dead. Then she turned
her small eyes upon the boat. It was only for an instant, but in that
instant Gardner realized that he had made a hideous mistake.
Instinctively he headed the boat for the rocky islet.
As he jammed the tiller over, at the same time hurriedly freeing his
sheet, he saw the water boil about the orca’s black form. She was a good
hundred feet away, but so appalling was her rush that she seemed to be
upon him in the same instant. With a yelp the dog sprang far up into the
bow. As the boat was at that moment broadside on to the terrific attack,
Gardner kept his seat, and fired another desperate shot full in the face
of the oncoming doom. He might as well have fired a pea-shooter.
The gun dropped to his feet. In the same moment it was as if an express
train had struck the boat. She was lifted bodily from the water, and all
one side crushed in, while Gardner felt himself hurled clean over the
boom. As he came down, he heard a yelp from the brown retriever.
In order to escape entanglement in the sail, which slapped sousing over
on top of him, Gardner dived, and came up some fifteen feet beyond. To
this dive, and to the momentary concealment afforded by the sail, he
doubtless owed his life. He was a crack swimmer, and instantly started
for the island at sprinting speed, doing the “crawl” stroke, with head
most of the time under water. The orca at first did not observe his
escape. The unhappy dog, by his barking, had caught her eye, and him she
had seized and crushed the instant he was thrown into the water. Then,
turning her fury upon the wreck of the boat, she had torn it and smashed
it to kindling-wood, seizing it in her huge jaws and shaking it as a
terrier shakes a rat. This done, she had turned toward the island, and
her deadly eyes had fallen upon the form of the swimming man as he cleft
his way shoreward.
Her rush was like the rush of a torpedo; but Gardner was already laying
his frantic hands upon the ledge. The ledge—a shelf not a dozen inches in
width—was just awash. He felt that it was no refuge. But at about his own
height above him was a niche in the rock, whimsically gouged out as if to
hold a statue. With desperate agility he drew himself up into the tiny
retreat, whipping up his legs behind him, and shrinking as flat as
possible into the niche. At the same moment he was deluged with foam and
spray, as with a dull crash the body of his pursuer struck the rock just
below his feet.
Gardner shuddered, and struggled gaspingly to catch back his breath into
his laboring lungs. He had swum many races, but never one like that.
Turning cautiously, and keeping himself still flattened like a limpet to
the back of the niche, he stared down, trembling lest the avenger should
essay another such mad leap, and with better effect.
But the orca did not seem disposed to try it again. The shock of her
impact had been terrific, and must have more or less driven the breath
from her body. She was now swimming slowly to and fro before the rock, a
grim and dreadful jailer. Gardner looked down into her cold little eyes,
and shivered at the intelligent and implacable hate that flamed in them.
When he found himself sufficiently recovered to consider his situation,
he was forced to acknowledge it a rather desperate one. Reaching outward
and upward as far as he could, his hands found no protuberance of the
rock by the aid of which he might hope to climb out of his niche and so
make his way to the top of the cliff. He had no way of judging how long
his vengeful jailer might remain on duty; but from the magnitude of the
wrong he had done her, the business-like method of her patrol, and the
effective fury which she had shown in her attack, he had little reason to
hope that she would soon tire of her office. In those teeming seas, as he
knew, she could find plenty to eat without forsaking her post. But if
those seas were teeming with sea-life, he reflected ruefully that they
were at the same time rather barren of ships. The coasting schooners were
apt to give that part of the coast a wide berth, owing to its sunken
reefs and awkward currents. His island, to be sure, was little more than
half a mile from shore—an easy enough swim for him under ordinary
circumstances. But, even with his jailer out of the way, he had no relish
for running the gantlet of the giant sharks which haunted the island
channels. Exposed as he was to the full glare of the sun—the rock around
him was uncomfortably hot beneath his hands,—he wondered how long it
would be before heat and thirst would so overcome him that his legs would
crumple under his weight, and he would topple forward into the jaws of
his waiting foe. On this point, however, he was presently somewhat
reassured, as he noted that the sun would very soon pass over the
shoulder of the cliff and leave him in the shade. As far as the heat was
concerned, he would be fairly secure until the next morning. But then, if
the weather should continue fine, how would he endure the long
intolerable blaze of the forenoon, before the sun should again go over
the cliff? He began to pray for storm and shrouded skies. But here he
stopped himself, realizing his dilemma. If storm should come, it was
likely at that season to come out of the southeast; and in such event the
first rising seas would lick him from his perch. He decided hastily that
it was best to make his prayer a general one, and hazard no dangerous
suggestions to Providence.
Fumbling instinctively in his pocket, he drew forth his soaked and
sopping tobacco-pouch and a box of wet matches. The latter included some
wax vestas, and he had a dim hope that these, if carefully dried and
properly coaxed, might perhaps be induced to light. He spread them out,
with the tobacco, on the hot rock between his feet. He had lost his pipe
in the catastrophe, but he had letters in his pocket, and with these,
when dried, he planned to roll cigarettes. The enterprise gave him
something to do, helping him to pass the weary afternoon. But in the end
he found that none of the matches would afford him so much as a sputter.
Angrily he threw their futile remnants into the sea.
Night fell suddenly, as always in those latitudes, and the moonlight
enchanted the long swells to the smoothness of glass. All night the orca
swam backward and forward before the rock, till the changeless monotony
of her movements began to hypnotize her prisoner, and he turned his eyes
to the cliff-face to escape its influence. He was in deadly fear of
dropping to sleep in his weariness, and falling out of the niche. His
legs were giving way beneath him, and there was not room in the niche for
him to sit down, or even to crouch with any comfort. At last, in
desperation, he decided to take the risk of letting his legs hang over
the edge, where his enemy could reach them if she should dare another of
her wild leaps into the air. The moment he seated himself in this
position she swam nearer and eyed him with unutterable malignancy. But
she did not attempt to repeat her flying rush. It was plain to Gardner
that she had no relish for such another violent concussion with the rock.
At last the interminable night wore itself away. The moon had long
disappeared over the cliff, when the velvet purple of the sky began to
thin and chill, the stars to pale and fade. Then the measureless splendor
of an unclouded tropic dawn broke over the sea, and the shining plane of
the waters seemed to tilt downward to meet the sun. Gardner gathered all
his weary strength to face the fiery ordeal that he felt to be before
him.
The better to fortify himself against it, he took off his light coat,
and, by the aid of some pieces of cord which he found in his pockets, he
lowered the garment and drenched it well in the sea. The orca darted in
to see what he was doing, but he drew up the dripping coat before she
could seize it. He felt that this idea was nothing less than an
inspiration, for, by keeping his head and body well drenched, he would be
able to endure almost any heat, and might at the same time, by
absorption, hope to ward off for a time the extreme torments of his
thirst.
As the relenting Fates decreed, however, his trial was presently to be
ended. Along about nine o’clock in the morning, from somewhere behind the
island came throbbing on the still air a harsh, staccato
_chug_—_chug_—_chug_—_chug_, which was to Gardner’s ears the divinest of
melodies. In an instant he had stripped his light shirt over his head and
was holding it in eager hands. A moment more, and a powerful forty-foot
motor-launch came into view. She was about a hundred and fifty yards
away, and making a lot of racket. But Gardner, yelling wildly and
flapping his shirt in the air, succeeded in catching her attention. She
turned in toward the rock; but in the next instant the noise of the motor
stopped, and she swerved off again. The pilot had caught sight of
Gardner’s jailer.
There were three men in the launch. One of them hailed the prisoner.
“What’s up?” he demanded concisely.
“I shot that brute’s calf yesterday,” answered Gardner, “and she smashed
up my boat and chased me up here on to this rock.”
There was silence for a moment on the launch. Then the captain answered.
“Any fellow that’s looking for trouble can generally find it by starting
in to fool with a ‘killer,’” said he.
“I’ve thought since that I had made a mistake,” said Gardner dryly. “But
that was yesterday morning, and I’m pretty near all in. Come and take me
off.”
There was a brief consultation on the launch. The orca, meanwhile,
continued her patrol before the rock, as if such things as forty-foot
motor-boats were not worth noticing.
“You’ll have to hang on a bit longer,” shouted the captain, “while we run
back to port and get a whale gun. We’ve got a heavy rifle here, but it’s
not safe to tackle her with that, for, if we didn’t fix her first shot,
she’d make matchwood of this launch in about ten seconds. We’ll be back
inside of an hour, so don’t fret.”
“Thanks!” said Gardner; and, sweeping off in a wide curve, the launch
disappeared behind the island.
It seemed to the imprisoned man a terribly long hour, and he had occasion
to bless the cool dripping jacket before he again heard the
_chug_—_chug_—_chug_—_chug_ of the motor clamoring behind his prison.
This time, as soon as it came in sight, it bore straight down upon the
orca. In its bow, as it slid gracefully dipping over the smooth swell,
Gardner remarked a strange gun, a sort of short big-bore rifle on a
swivel. The orca now took note of the fact that the launch was heading
straight for her. She paused in her tireless patrolling, and eyed it
defiantly, hesitating as to whether she should attack it or not.
The launch reversed propellers till her progress came to a stop, while
her captain sighted the weapon in her bow. There was a mighty report. The
monster flung herself half-way out of the water, and fell back with a
gigantic splash. For a moment she rushed madly around in a half circle,
then crashed headlong into the cliff, gave one violent shudder, and
slowly sank to a fringing reef about two fathoms down.
“Have you plenty of water right up to your ledge?” demanded the captain,
as the launch drew slowly in.
“Plenty,” said Gardner, swinging down stiffly from his niche and standing
ready to crawl aboard.