Towards the end of the last war an exhausted and perhaps sick whale ran aground on the beach of a small German town, I don’t know which. Like the whale, Germany too was exhausted and sick, the town had been destroyed and the people were hungry. The inhabitants of the little town went to the beach to see this giant visitor who lay there in forced and unnatural immobility and breathed. A few days went by, but the whale didn’t die. Every day the people went to look at the whale. No one in the town knew how to kill an animal which wasn’t an animal but a huge dark, polished cylinder they had previously seen only in illustrations. Until one day someone took a big knife, went up to the whale, carved out a cone of oily flesh and hurried home with it. The whole population began to carve away pieces of the whale. They went at night, in secret, because they were ashamed to be seen, even though they knew everybody was doing the same thing. The whale went on living for many days, despite being riddled with horrific wounds.
My friend Christopher Meckel told me this story some time ago. I thought I had got it out of my mind, but it came back to me all at once when I got off the boat on the island of Pico and there was a dead whale floating near the rocks.
When whales float in the middle of the ocean they look like drifting submarines struck by torpedoes. And in their bellies one imagines a crew of lots of little Jonahs whose radar is out of operation and who have given up trying to contact other Jonahs and are awaiting their deaths with resignation.
I read in a scientific review that whales use ultrasound to communicate with each other. They have extremely fine hearing and can pick up each other’s calls hundreds of kilometres away. Once, herds would communicate with each other from the most distant parts of the globe. Usually they were mating calls or other kinds of messages whose meaning we don’t understand. Now that the seas are full of mechanical noises and artificial ultrasound, the whale’s messages suffer such interference that other whales can no longer pick them up and decipher them. In vain they go on transmitting calls and signals which wander about lost in the depths of the sea.
There is a position whales assume which fishermen describe as the “dead whale” pose. It is almost always the adult and isolated whale which does this. When “dead,” the whale appears to have abandoned itself completely to the surface of the sea, rising and falling without any apparent effort, as though in the grip of a deep sleep. Fishermen claim that this phenomenon occurs only on days of intense heat or with dead-calm seas, but the real reasons for the cetaceous catalepsy are unknown.
Whalemen maintain that whales are entirely indifferent to a human presence even when they are copulating, and that they will let people get so close as to be able to touch them. The sex act takes place by pressing belly to belly, as in the human species. Whalemen say that while mating the heads of the pair come out of the water, but naturalists maintain that whales assume a horizontal position and that the vertical position is just a product of the fishermen’s imagination.
Our knowledge of the birth of whales and the first moments of their lives is likewise fairly limited. In any event something different from what we know goes on with other marine mammals must happen to prevent the young whale from being drowned or suffocated when the umbilical cord linking it to the mother’s vascular system breaks. As it is well known, birth and copulation are the only moments in the lives of other marine mammals when they seem to remember their terrestrial origins. Thus they come ashore only to mate and give birth, staying just long enough for the young to survive the first phases of their life. Of all terrestrial acts, this then should be the last to fade from the physiological memory of the whale, which of all aquatic mammals is the furthest from its terrestrial origins.
No relationship exists between this gentle race of mammals, who like ourselves have red blood and milk, and the monsters of the previous age, horrible abortions of the primordial slime. Far more recent, the whale found cleansed water, an open sea and a peaceful earth. The milk of the sea and its oil abounded; its warm fat, animalized, seethed with extraordinary strength; it wanted to live. These elements fermented together and formed themselves into great giants, enfants gâtés of a nature which endowed them with incomparable strength and, more precious yet, fine fire-red blood. For the first time blood appeared on the scene. Here was the true flower of this world. All the creatures with pale, mean, languid, vegetating blood seem utterly without heart when compared to the generous life that boils up in this porpoise whether in anger or in love. The strength of the higher world, its charm, its beauty, is blood . . . But with this magnificent gift nervous sensibility is likewise infinitely increased. One is far more vulnerable, has far more capacity to suffer and to enjoy. Since the whale has absolutely no sense of the hunt, and its sense of smell and hearing are not very highly developed, everything is entrusted to touch. The fat which defends the whale from the cold does not protect it from knocks at all. Finely arranged in six separate tissues, the skin trembles and quivers at every contact. The tender papillae which cover the whale are the instruments of a most delicate sense of touch. And all this is animated, brought to life by a gush of red blood, which given the massive size of the animal is not even remotely comparable in terms of abundance to the blood of terrestrial mammals. A wounded whale floods the sea in a moment, dyes it red across a huge distance. The blood which we have in drops has been poured into the whale in torrents.
The female carries her young for nine months. Her tasty rather sugary milk has the warm sweetness of a woman’s. But since the whale must always forge through the waves, if the udders were located on the breast, the young whale would be constantly exposed to the brunt of the sea; hence they are to be found a little further down, in a more sheltered place, on the belly, whence the young whale was born. And the baby hides away there and takes pleasure in the wave that his mother breaks for him.
Michelet, La Mer, page 238
They say that ambergris is formed from the remains of the keratin shells of shellfish that the whale is unable to digest and which accumulate in certain segments of the intestine. But others maintain that it forms as the result of a pathological process, a sort of limited intestinal calculus. Today ambergris is used almost exclusively in the production of luxury perfumes, but in the past it had as many applications as human fantasy could dream up for it: it was used as a propitiatory balsam in religious rites, as an aphrodisiac lotion, and as a sign of religious dedication for Muslim pilgrims visiting the Qa’aba in Mecca. It is said to have been an indispensable aperitif at the banquets of the Mandarins. Milton talks about ambergris in Paradise Lost. Shakespeare mentions it too, I don’t remember where.
L’amour, chez eux, soumis à des conditions difficiles, veut un lieu de profonde paix. Ainsi que le noble elephant, qui craint les yeux profanes, la baleine n’aime qu’au desert. Le rendez-vous est vers les poles, aux anses solitaires du Groënland, aux brouillards de Behring, sans doute aussi dans la mer tiède qu’on a trouvée près du pole même.
La solitude est grande. C’est un théâtre étrange de mort et de silence pour cette fête de l’ardente vie. Un ours blanc, un phoque, un renard bleu peut-être, témoins respectueux, prudents, observant à distance. Les lustres et girandoles, les miroirs fantastiques, ne manquent pas. Cristaux bleuâtres, pics, aigrettes de glace éblouissante, neiges vierges, ce sont les témoins qui siègent tout autour et regardent.
Ce qui rend cet hymen touchant et grave, c’est qu’il y faut l’expresse volonté. Ils n’ont pas l’arme tyrannique du requin, ces attaches qui maîtrisent le plus faible. Au contraire, leurs fourreaux glissants les séparent, les éloignent. Ils se fuient malgré eux, échappent, par ce désespérant obstacle. Dans un si grand accord, on dirait un combat. Des baleiniers prétendent avoir vu ce spectacle unique. Les amants, d’un brûlant transport, par instants, dresses et debout, comme les deux tours de Notre-Dame, gémissant de leurs bras trop courts, entreprenaient de s’embrasser. Ils retombaient d’un poids immense . . . L’ours et l’homme fuyaient épouvantés de leurs soupirs.
Michelet, La Mer, pages 240–42
So intense and poetic is this passage from Michelet it would be wrong to tone it down with a translation.
Those days of intense sunshine and oppressive stillness when a thick sultry heat weighs on the ocean – it occurred to me these might be the rare moments when whales return in their physiological memory to their terrestrial origins. To do this they have to concentrate so intensely and completely that they fall into a deep sleep which gives an appearance of death: and thus floating on the surface, like blind, polished stumps, they somehow remember, as though in a dream, a distant, distant past when their clumsy fins were dry limbs capable of gestures, greetings, caresses, races through the grass amid tall flowers and ferns, on an earth that was a magma of elements still in search of a combination, an idea.
The whalemen of the Azores will tell you that when an adult whale is harpooned at a distance of five or six miles from another, the latter, even if in this state of apparent death, will wake with a start and flee in fear. The whales hunted in the Azores are mainly sperm whales.
Sperm Whale. This whale, among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa Whale, and the Physeter Whale and the Anvil Headed Whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottfisch of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce; he being the only creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged upon. It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically considered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm Whale was almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the one then known in England as Greenland or Right Whale. It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable of the word literally expresses. In those times, also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only as an ointment and medicament. It was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the course of time, the true nature of spermaceti became known its original name was still retained by the dealers; no doubt to enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity.
Melville, Moby-Dick, chapter XXXII
Sperm whales are great whales which live in areas of both hemispheres where the water temperature is fairly high. There are important differences between their physiology and that of other whales: the whalebones, which fortify the mouth of the latter and which are used to grind up small elements of food, are replaced in the sperm whale by sturdy teeth firmly inserted in the lower jaw and capable of snapping a large prey; the head, an enormous mass which ends vertically like the prow of a ship, accounts for a third of the whole body. These anatomical differences between the two groups of whales assign them to distinct territories: other whales find the thick banks of microscopic organisms they feed on mainly in the cold waters of the polar regions, where they absorb this food with the same naturalness with which we breathe; the sperm whale, on the other hand, mainly feeds on cephalopods which flourish in temperate waters. There are also important differences in the way these giant whales behave, differences which whalemen have learnt to recognize to perfection in the interests of their own safety. While other whales are peaceful animals, the older male sperm whale, like the boar, lives alone and will both defend and avenge himself. Having wounded the creature with their harpoons, many whaleboats have been snatched between the jaws of these giants and then crushed to pieces; and many crews have perished in the hunt.
Albert I, Prince of Monaco, La Carrière d’un navigateur, pages 277–78
No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores . . . How it is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen.
Melville, Moby Dick, chapter XXVII
The island of Pico is a volcanic cone which rises sheer from the ocean: it is no more and no less than a high rocky mountain resting on the water. There are three villages: Madalena, São Roque and Lajes; the rest is lava rock on which are dotted meagre vineyards and a few wild pineapples. The small ferry ties up at the landing stage in Madalena. It’s Sunday and many families are taking trips to the nearby islands with baskets and bundles. The baskets are overflowing with pineapples, bananas, bottles of wine, fish. In Lajes there is a small whale museum I want to see. But since it’s not a workday the bus isn’t running very often and Lajes is forty kilometres away at the other end of the island. I sit patiently on a bench under a palm in front of the strange church that stands in the little praça. I planned to take a swim, it’s a fine day and the temperature is pleasant. But on the ferry they told me to be careful, there’s a dead whale near the rocks and the sea is full of sharks.
After a long wait in the midday heat I see a taxi which, having set down a passenger by the harbor, is turning back. The driver offers me a free ride to Lajes, because he has just made the trip and is going home, and the price his passenger paid included the return trip and he doesn’t want any money he doesn’t deserve. There are only two taxis in Lajes, he tells me with a satisfied look, his and his cousin’s. Pico’s only road runs along the cliffs with bends and potholes above a foaming sea. It’s a narrow, bumpy road crossing a grim stony landscape, with just the occasional isolated village, dominated by an incongruously large eighteenth-century monastery and an imposing padrão – the stone monument that Portuguese sailors used to set up wherever they landed as a sign of their king’s sovereignty.
The whale museum is in the main street on the first floor of a handsome renovated townhouse. My guide is a youngster with a vaguely half-witted air and a hackneyed, formal way of talking. What interests me most are the pieces of whale ivory which the whalemen used to carve, and then the ship’s logs and some archaic tools of bizarre design. Along one wall are some old photographs. One bears the caption: Lajes, 25 de Dezembro 1919. Heaven knows how they managed to drag the sperm whale as far as the church. It must have taken quite a few pairs of oxen. It’s a frighteningly huge sperm whale, it seems incredible. Six or seven young boys have climbed up onto its head: they’ve placed a ladder against the front of the head and are waving caps and handkerchiefs on top. The whalemen are lined up in the foreground with a proud, satisfied air. Three of them are wearing woolen bobble caps, one has an oilskin hat shaped like a fireman’s. They are all barefoot, only one has boots, he must be the master. I imagine they then left the photograph, took off their caps and went into church, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to leave a whale in the square outside. Thus they spent Christmas day on Pico in 1919.
As I come out of the museum, a surprise awaits me. From the end of the street, still deserted, appears a band. They are old men and boys dressed in white with sailor’s caps, their brass buttons brightly polished and winking in the sun. They’re playing a melancholy air, a waltz it seems, and they play it beautifully. In front of them walks a little girl holding a staff on the end of which two bread rolls and a dove made of sugar have been skewered. I follow the little procession in their lonely parade along the main street as far as a house with blue windows. The band arranges itself in a semicircle and strikes up a dashing march. A window opens and an old man with a distinguished look to him greets them, leaning out, smiling. He disappears, then reappears a moment later on the doorstep. He is met with a short burst of applause, a handshake from the bandleader, a kiss from the little girl. Obviously this is a homage, though to whom or what I don’t know, and there wouldn’t be much sense in asking. The very short ceremony is over, the band rearranges itself into two lines, but instead of turning back they set off toward the sea which is right there at the bottom of the street. They start playing again and I follow them. When they reach the sea they sit on the rocks, put their instruments down on the ground and light up cigarettes. They chat and look at the sea. They’re enjoying their Sunday. The girl has left her staff leaning against a lamppost and is playing with a friend her own age. From the other end of the village the bus honks its horn, because at six it will be making its only trip to Madalena, and right now it’s five to.
There are two sorts of whalemen in the Azores. The first come from the United States on small schooners of around a hundred tons. They look like pirate crews, because of the motley of races they include: negroes, Malays, Chinese, and indefinable cosmopolitan crosses of this or that, are all mixed up with deserters and rascals using the ocean as a means of escape from the justice of men. An enormous boiler takes up the centre of the schooner; it is here that the chunks of lubber cut from the captured sperm whale, which is tied to scaffolding beside the ship’s hull, are transformed into oil using an infernal cooking process constantly disturbed by the pitch and roll of the boat: meanwhile coils of sickening smoke wreath all about. And when the sea is rough what a wild spectacle it becomes! Rather than give up the fruits of prey heroically snatched from the belly of the Ocean, these men prefer to put their lives in jeopardy. To double the ropes holding the whale to the scaffolding, a number of men will risk their lives climbing out on that enormous oily mass awash with rushing water, its great bulk tossed about by the waves and threatening to smash the hull of the schooner to pieces. Having doubled the ropes they will hang on, prolonging the risk to the point where it is no longer tolerable. Then they cut the hawsers and the whole crew shouts violent, angry imprecations at the carcass as it drifts off on the waves, leaving only a terrible stench where before it had inspired dreams of riches.
The other group of whalemen is made up of people more similar to common mortals. They are the fishermen of the islands, or even adventurous farmers, and sometimes simple emigrants who have come back to their own country, their souls tempered by other storms in the Americas. Ten of them will get together to make the crews for two whaling boats belonging to a tiny company with a capital of around thirty thousand francs. A third of the profits go to the shareholders, the other two thirds are divided equally between members of the crews. The whaling sloops are admirably built for speed and fitted with sails, oars, paddles, an ordinary rudder and an oar rudder. The hunting tools include several harpoons (their points carefully protected in cases), a number of fairly sharp steel lances, and five or six hundred metres of rope arranged in spirals inside baskets from which it runs forward through an upright fork on the prow of the boat.
These small boats lie in wait, concealed on small beaches or in the rocky bays of these inhospitable little islands. From a highpoint on the island a look-out constantly scans the sea the way a topman does on a ship; and when that column of watery stream the sperm whale blows out from his spiracle is sighted, the look-out musters the whalemen with an agreed signal. In a few minutes the boats have taken to the sea and are heading towards the place where the drama will be consummated.
Albert I, Prince of Monaco, La Carrière d’un navigateur, pages 280–83
Art. 1. These regulations are valid for the hunting of those whales indicated below when hunting is carried out in the territorial waters of Portugal and of the islands over which Portugal holds sovereignty:
Sperm whale, Physeter catodon (Linnaeus)
Common Whale, Baloenoptera physalus (Linnaeus)
Blue Whale, Baloenoptera musculus (Linnaeus)
Dwarf Whale, Baloenoptera acustorostrata (Linnaeus)
Hump-backed Whale or “Ampebeque,” Megaptera nodosa (Linnaeus)
Art. 2. The craft used in the hunt shall be as follows:
a) Whaling sloops. Boats without decks, propelled by oar or sail, used in the hunt, that is to harpoon or kill the whales.
b) Launches. Mechanically propelled boats used to assist the whaling sloops by towing them and the whales killed. When necessary and within the terms of these regulations, such boats may be used in the hunt itself to surround and harpoon the whales.
Art. 44. The dimensions of whaling sloops are fixed by law as follows: length, from 10 to 11.5 metres; width, from 1.8 to 1.95 metres.
Art. 45. The launches must have a weight of at least 4 tons and a speed of at least 8 knots.
Art. 51. In addition to such tools and equipment as are necessary for the hunt, all whaling boats must carry the following items on board: an axe to cut the harpoon rope if this should be necessary; three flags, one white, one blue, one red; a box of biscuits; a container with fresh water; three Holmes luminous torches.
Art. 54. It is expressly forbidden to hunt whales with less than two boats.
Art. 55. It is forbidden to throw the harpoon when the boats are at such a distance from each other as not to be able to offer mutual assistance in the event of an accident.
Art. 56. In the event of an accident, all boats in the vicinity must assist those in difficulty, even if this means breaking off the hunt.
Art. 57. If a member of the crew should fall overboard during the hunt, the master of the boat involved will break off all hunting activity, cutting the harpoon rope if necessary, and will attend to the recovery of the man overboard to the exclusion of all else.
Art. 57a. If a boat captained by another master is present at the place where the accident occurs, this boat cannot refuse the necessary assistance.
Art. 57b. If the man overboard is the master, command will pass to the harpooneer, who must then follow the regulation described at Art. 57.
Art. 61. The direction of the hunt will be decided by the senior of the two masters, except where prior agreement to the contrary has been declared.
Art. 64. In the event of dead or dying whales being found out at sea or along the coast, those who find them must immediately inform the maritime authorities who will have the responsibility of proceeding to verify the report and to remove any harpoons. The finder of the whale will have the right to remuneration which will be paid under the terms of Art. 685 of the Commercial Code.
Art. 66. It is expressly forbidden to throw loose harpoons (that is, not secured to the boat with a rope) at a whale, whatever the circumstances. Anyone who does so does not establish any right over the whale harpooned.
Art. 68. No boat shall, without authorization, cut the ropes of other boats, unless forced to do so to preserve their own safety.
Art. 69. Harpoons, ropes, registration numbers, etc., found on a whale by other boats shall be returned to their rightful owners, nor does returning such items give any right to remuneration or indemnity.
Art. 70. It is forbidden to harpoon or kill whales of the Balaena species, commonly known as French whales.
Art. 71. It is forbidden to harpoon or kill female whales surprised while suckling their young, or young whales still at suckling age.
Art. 72. In order to preserve the species and better exploit hunting activities, it will be the responsibility of the Minister for the Sea to establish the sizes of the whales which may be caught and the periods of close season, to set quotas for the number of whales which may be hunted, and to introduce any other restrictive measures considered necessary.
Art. 73. The capture of whales for scientific purposes may be undertaken only after obtaining ministerial authorization.
Art. 74. It is expressly forbidden to hunt whales for sport.
“Regulations Governing the Hunting of Whales,” published in the Diário do Governo, 19.5.54 and still in force
On the first Sunday in August the whalemen hold their annual festival in Horta. They line up their freshly painted boats in Porto Pim bay, the bell briefly rings out two hoarse clangs, the priest forms and climbs up to the promontory dominating the bay, where stands the chapel of Nossa Senhora da Guia. Behind the priest walk the women and children, with the whalemen bringing up the rear, each with his harpoon on his shoulder. They are very contrite and dressed in black. They all go into the chapel to hear Mass, leaving their harpoons standing against the wall outside, one next to the other, the way people elsewhere park their bicycles.
The harbor office is closed, but Senhor Chaves invites me in just the same. He is a distinguished, polite man with an open, slightly ironic smile and the blue eyes of some Flemish ancestor. There are hardly any left, he tells me, I don’t think it’ll be easy to find a boat. I ask if he means sperm whales and he laughs, amused. No, whalemen, he specifies, they’ve all emigrated to America, everybody in the Azores emigrates to America, the Azores are deserted, haven’t you noticed? Yes, of course I have, I say, I’m sorry. Why? he asks. It’s an embarrassing question. Because I like the Azores, I reply without much logic. So you’ll like them even more deserted, he objects. And then he smiles as if to apologize for having been brusque. In any event, you see about getting yourself some life insurance, he concludes, otherwise I can’t give you a permit. As for getting you on board, I’ll sort that out, I’ll speak to António José, who may be going out tomorrow, it seems there’s a herd on the way. But I can’t promise you a permit for more than two days.
It’s a herd of six or seven, Carlos Eugénio tells me, his satisfied smile showing off such a brilliant set of false teeth it occurs to me he might have carved them himself from whale ivory. Carlos Eugénio is seventy, agile and still youthful, and he is mestre baleeiro, which, literally translated, means “master whaler,” though in reality he is captain of this little crew and has absolute authority over every aspect of the hunt. The motor launch leading the expedition is his own, an old boat about ten metres long, which he maneuvers with deftness and nonchalance, and without any hurry either. In any event, he tells me, the whales are splashing about, they won’t run away. The radio is on so as to keep in contact with the lookout based on a lighthouse on the island; a monotonous and it seems to me slightly ironic voice thus guides us on our way. “A little to the right, Maria Manuela,” says the grating voice, “you’re going all over the place.” Maria Manuela is the name of the boat. Carlos Eugénio makes a gesture of annoyance, but still laughing, then he turns to the sailor who is riding with us, a lean, alert man, a boy almost, with constantly moving eyes and a dark complexion. We’ll manage on our own, he decides, and turns the radio off. The sailor climbs nimbly up the boat’s only mast and perches on the crosspiece at the top, wrapping his legs around. He too points to the right. For a moment I think he’s sighted them, but I don’t know the whaleman’s sign language. Carlos Eugénio explains that an open hand with the index finger pointing upward means “whales in sight,” and that wasn’t the gesture our lookout made.
I turn to glance at the sloop we are towing. The whalemen are relaxed, laughing and talking together, though I can’t make out what they’re saying. They look as though they’re out on a pleasure cruise. There are six of them and they’re sitting on planks laid across the boat. The harpooner is standing up, though, and appears to be following our lookout’s gestures with attention: he has a huge paunch and a thick beard, young, he can’t be more than thirty. I’ve heard they call him Chá Preto, Black Tea, and that he works as a docker in the port in Horta. He belongs to the whaling cooperative in Faial, and they tell me he’s an exceptionally skilled harpooner.
I don’t notice the whale until we’re barely three hundred metres: a column of water rises against the blue as when some pipe springs a leak in the road of a big city. Carlos Eugénio has turned off the engine and only our momentum takes us drifting on towards that black shape lying like an enormous bowler hat on the water. In the sloop the whalemen are silently preparing for the attack: they are calm, quick, resolute, they know the motions they have to go through by heart. They row with powerful, well-spaced strokes, and in a flash they are far away. They go round in a wide circle, approaching the whale from the front so as to avoid the tail, and because if they approached from the sides they would be in sight of its eyes. When they are a hundred metres off they draw their oars into the boat and raise a small triangular sail. Everybody adjusts sail and ropes: only the harpooner is immobile on the point of the prow: standing, one leg bent forward, the harpoon lying in his hand as if he were measuring its weight. He concentrates, hanging on for the right moment, the moment when the boat will be near enough for him to strike a vital point, but far enough away not to be caught by a lash of the wounded whale’s tail. Everything happens with amazing speed in just a few seconds. The boat makes a sudden turn while the harpoon is still curving through the air. The instrument of death isn’t flung from above downwards, as I had expected, but upwards, like a javelin, and it is the sheer weight of the iron and the speed of the thing as it falls that transforms it into a deadly missile. When the enormous tail rises to whip first the air then the water, the sloop is already far away. The oarsmen are rowing again, furiously, and a strange play of ropes, which until now was going on underwater so that I hadn’t seen it, suddenly becomes visible and I realize that our launch is connected to the harpoon too, while the whaling sloop has jettisoned its own rope. From a straw basket placed in a well in the middle of the launch, a thick rope begins to unwind, sizzling as it rushes through a fork on the bow; the young deckhand pours a bucket of water over it to cool it and prevent it snapping from the friction. Then the rope tightens and we set off with a jerk, a leap, following the wounded whale as it flees. Carlos Eugénio holds the helm and chews the stub of a cigarette; the sailor with the boyish face watches the sperm whale’s movements with a worried expression. In his hand he holds a small sharp axe ready to cut the rope if the whale should go down, since it would drag us with it underwater. But the breathless rush doesn’t last long. We’ve hardly gone a kilometre when the whale stops dead, apparently exhausted, and Carlos Eugénio has to put the launch into reverse to stop the momentum from taking us on top of the immobile animal. He struck well, he says with satisfaction, showing off his brilliant false teeth. As if in confirmation of his comment, the whale, whistling, raises his head right out of the water and breathes; and the jet that hisses up into the air is red with blood. A pool of vermilion spreads across the sea and the breeze carries a spray of red drops as far as our boat, spotting faces and clothes. The whaling sloop has drawn up against the launch: Chá Petro throws his tools up on deck and climbs up himself with an agility truly surprising for a man of his build. I gather that he wants to go on to the next stage of the attack, the lance, but the mestre seems not to agree. There follows some excited confabulation, which the sailor with the boyish face keeps out of. Then Chá Petro obviously gets his way; he stands on the prow and assumes his javelin-throwing stance, having swapped the harpoon for a weapon of the same size but with an extremely sharp head in an elongated heart shape, like a halberd. Carlos Eugénio moves forward with the engine on minimum, and the boat starts over to where the whale is breathing, immobile in a pool of blood, restless tail spasmodically slapping the water. This time the deadly weapon is thrown downwards; hurled on a slant, it penetrates the soft flesh as if it were butter. A dive: the great mass disappears, writhing underwater. Then the tail appears again, powerless, pitiful, like a black sail. And finally the huge head emerges and I hear the deathcry, a sharp wail, almost a whistle, shrill, agonizing, unbearable.
The whale is dead and lies motionless on the water. The coagulated blood forms a bank that looks like coral. I hadn’t realized the day was almost over, and dusk surprises me. The whole crew are busy organizing the towing. Working quickly, they punch a hole in the tail fin and thread through a rope with a stick to lock it. We are more than eighteen miles out to sea, Carlos Eugénio tells me; it will take all night to get back, the sperm whale weighs around thirty tons and the launch will have to go very slowly. In a strange marine rope party led by the launch and with the whale bringing up the rear, we head towards the island of Pico and the factory of São Roque. In the middle is the sloop with the whalemen, and Carlos Eugénio suggests I join them so as to be able to get a little rest: under enormous strain, the launch’s engine is making an infernal racket and sleep would be impossible. The two boats draw alongside each other and Carlos Eugénio leaves the launch with me, handing over the helm to the young sailor and two oarsmen who take our place. The whalemen set up a makeshift bed for me near the tiller; night has fallen and two oil lanterns have been lit on the sloop. The fishermen are exhausted, their faces strained and serious, tinted yellow in the light from the lanterns. They hoist the sail so as not to be a dead weight increasing the strain on the launch, then lie any-old-how across the planks and fall into a deep sleep. Chá Preto sleeps on his back, paunch up, and snores loudly. Carlos Eugénio offers me a cigarette and talks to me about his two children, who have emigrated to America and whom he hasn’t seen for six years. They came back just once, he tells me, maybe they’ll come again next summer. They’d like me to go to them, but I want to die here, at home. He smokes slowly and watches the sky, the stars. What about you, though, why did you want to come with us today, he asks me, out of simple curiosity? I hesitate, thinking how to answer: I’d like to tell him the truth, but am held back by the fear that this might offend. I let a hand dangle in the water. If I stretched out my arm I could almost touch the enormous fin of the animal we’re towing. Perhaps you’re both a dying breed, I finally say softly, you people and the whales, I think that’s why I came. Probably he’s already asleep, he doesn’t answer; though the coal of his cigarette still burns between his fingers. The sail slaps sombrely; motionless in sleep, the bodies of the whalemen are small dark heaps and the sloop slides over the water like a ghost.