The rogue whaling ship Mjollnir was almost exactly three hundred kilometers due west of Vancouver Island when the pint-sized sailor in the ship’s crow’s nest spotted the watery plume of a humpback whale. Grabbing the radio phone, he barked out the required course change to the helmsman. Seconds later the Mjollnir swung hard about, accelerating fast to intercept the unlucky humpback. A general alert was sounded and within four minutes the deck of the ship was swarming with sailors ready for action. A large bear of a man, with shoulders near a yard across, mounted the huge whaling gun on the bow of the ship and readied it for operation.
The Pacific waters were as smooth as a mirror and the whaling ship skimmed across them at twenty-two knots. The sailor in the crow’s nest looked down with a smug smile lifting his sharp little features. His 5’4” form and crafty little face prematurely aged by sun and cigarettes had earned him the nickname “Elf.” Elf lit a cigarette and held the binoculars up to his eyes again. Fifteen minutes later, the humpback whale broke the still surface of the water. Elf smiled in satisfaction. The bearing he had called was dead-on. Once again, he spoke sharply into the radio-phone, updating the first mate with the course and heading. As the humpback slipped beneath the surface of the sea, Elf smiled. The next time the beast surfaced, they’d have him.
Suddenly the whole ship lurched. It was as though Neptune himself had grabbed it from behind and was dragging it down into the depths. The men on the deck were scattered like bowling pins. Experienced seamen all, they grabbed onto whatever they could and held on for dear life.
Whatever had grabbed onto them was not done yet. The twenty-ton whaling boat was spun out of its path and knocked onto a new course almost exactly perpendicular to the path it had been traveling. The captain of the ship stormed out of his quarters and made a bee-line to the helm.
“What the hell is going on!” he screamed.
The helmsman was slow to answer. He was too busy trying to right their course.
“I said, what the hell is going on,” he screamed in the ear of the helmsman.
“We’ve lost power, sir. I think we’ve got a bent rudder post and a broken prop.”
A half hour later the ship’s crew confirmed the helmsman’s assessment. The most able swimmer had plunged into the waters behind the ship to check things out.
“It’s like the rudder post and the prop were sheared off by a giant bolt cutter,” said the crewman, dripping wet and shivering from his swim.
The captain’s normally handsome features were distorted by rage and frustration. Here they were, adrift, three hundred kilometers from land. He hoped they would be towed by one of their own ships before the American Coast Guard spotted him.
José Lacerda parked his Jeep in a clearing and walked a short ways into the rainforest, followed by his crew of five men. Each of them carried a chain saw and a five gallon can of gasoline. If all went well, they would start a controlled burn on the four hundred acre corner of the Martinez estate, cleared for grass and cattle. José Lacerda held up his hand to stop his crew. He was a solid, middle-aged man with a thick head of black hair and eight children at home. One—the fifteen-year-old—was a member of his crew. He took off his wide-brimmed hat and wiped the sweat from his broad forehead.
It was a perfect day for a burn. The humidity was high and there was virtually no wind. They would make their careful cuts to segregate the area to be burned from the deeper rainforest. Once they started the burn, the four hundred acres of rainforest that abutted the Martinez estate would be reduced to ashes and thus excellent grazing land. All the grazing land on the estate had been fashioned this way.
Putting his hat back on, José lit a cigarette and carefully surveyed the path ahead. When he spotted a good place to begin, an area slightly less dense than the surrounding tropical rainforest, he barked out a terse set of orders to his crew.
The five workers put down the gasoline cans and moved into the area José had indicated. They spread out in a line, each one approximately forty yards distant from his nearest neighbor. Almost in unison, they started up their chainsaws and approached the first trees to be cut.
José watched his crew with casual interest. It was a familiar scene, and he expected the men, including his son, to do their usual first-rate job. After all, they were all lucky to be employed by a generous man like Señor Martinez.
José blinked in disbelief at the sight of a swarm of black flies, appearing out of nowhere. Looking up and down the line of his crew, he saw that these black flies surrounded each of the men. Within seconds, the high-pitched whine of the chainsaws died, one by one, before so much as a single tree trunk had been touched.
José didn’t have to speak up. The men all knew their jobs and immediately knelt to restart the chain saws. He could hear them grunt and strain as they pulled the starter cords again and again. But the machines were dead, every damned one of them.
He was completely baffled. How could five chainsaws all die at exactly the same time? He stood there gaping, at a complete loss.
He was suddenly gripped by anxiety and apprehension. Señor Martinez could be very generous when things went his way, but he was not one to forgive failure. José sorted through his options and came to a decision. The chainsaws allowed the burn to be made surgically, from one designated point to another. If he just used the gasoline, perhaps a few hundred more acres would be burned, but they were all destined to burn sooner or later.
In a harsh voice, he shouted orders to the men. They jumped quickly when they heard the edge in his voice. They too knew the price of failure.
The men spilled the gasoline out on the ground just beyond the thinly wooded area where they had tried to cut a fire-break. Almost as a man, they turned toward José after the gasoline had been dumped.
José brought his hand down in a sharp chopping motion as a signal to proceed. Matches in hand, the men ventured forth. Forty yards distant from them, José could see their matches flare. A grim smile of satisfaction came to his face, but it was quickly replaced by a frown when he saw that, once tossed to the ground, the matches had no effect.
He ran forward to the nearest man and angrily pushed him aside. He reached into his pocket and took out a small stainless steel cigarette lighter. As he knelt to the ground, he saw that it was swarming with minute bugs he didn’t recognize. He paid no attention. The jungle was full of bugs, more kinds than he could name.
When he spun the wheel on his lighter, nothing happened, not even a spark. He tried again and again but his lighter refused to do its job. This puzzled him, because he had used it to light a cigarette minutes before.
“Give me your matches,” he said to the man standing next to him. He grabbed them roughly from the man’s hand and turned back to the gasoline-soaked underbrush. There were twenty matches in the pack and he went through them one by one. The flame on each one winked out as soon as it touched the underbrush.
Cursing under his breath, he rose to his feet. The thought of facing Señor Martinez with his failure terrified him. There had to be something more he could do. Suddenly it came to him. He remembered it from his army survival training.
José Lacerda walked back to his Jeep, picked up the clipboard sitting on the passenger side, and removed the long yellow pencil placed above the clip. For the first time he allowed himself to smile. Señor Martinez would definitely be impressed when he told him how he had solved the problem.
He cut two deep grooves in the wood of the pencil, one at either end, to expose the graphite center. Next, he gathered dry wood and twigs and tore a pad of paper into strips for kindling.
Returning to the Jeep, he lifted a set of jumper cables from the back. A few of his men had gathered around, watching what he was doing with great interest. He saw his son and hoped he would learn something from his father’s ingenuity.
He attached the positive and negative leads to the two deep grooves on the pencil and placed the pencil in the middle of the kindling. Taking the other set of leads, he connected them to the battery in the Jeep.
Less than a minute later he sighed with relief as the kindling burst into flame. Smoke rose up and the larger pieces of wood began to catch fire.
“Hurra! Hurra! Hurra!” the work crew shouted.
From out of nowhere a cloud of black flies appeared. They surrounded the fire and extinguished it in seconds. José watched in horror as they moved on to the Jeep. Two seconds later the car battery exploded with a flash and the Jeep burst into flames. More black flies gathered about it and the fire disappeared. A plume of oily smoke hung in the air above the engine block and a horrible stench of burnt rubber filled the air.
José Lacerda groaned in despair. Now he had three problems. He and his men had a five mile walk back to the estate, where he would then have to explain his failure to start a fire to Señor Martinez. And he would also have to explain how he had managed to destroy a Jeep.
As they began their silent trek, he searched for ways to spare his son whatever fate awaited the rest of them.