Chapter Twenty-two

EVERY MILE SOUTH REALLY was a mile colder and more dangerous, and the change came quickly sailing near top speed, and not stopping, because the tanker never stopped. If we let her go out of radar range, we’d never find her again.

That meant we had to take turns sleeping, and keeping an eye on the ship. I decided to take first watch, and let Merwin sleep. Fortunately I didn’t have to argue with him about it because he fell asleep during supper. He was drinking soup out of a metal bowl, and crunching four-day-old bread when I heard the bowl rattle against the observation window. He must have been deeply exhausted because he fell asleep in the middle of a sentence, too. I put his pillow under his head, lifted his sleeping bag over him, and checked to see that his mouth was free of bread. That was easy to do because he slept with his mouth wide open. If he slept like that in the woods, he must have swallowed a lot of flies.

Over the next ten hours, with the current behind us, we travelled almost two hundred miles, and narrowed the distance between the tanker and us to two miles. She wasn’t very big, as tankers go, but was carrying plenty of oil to refuel the Japanese whaling fleet. The sun went down, and then, just a couple of hours later, it came right back up. As at the North Pole, the South Pole had twenty-four hours of sunlight on a summer’s day, and twenty-four hours of darkness on a winter’s day. We were still outside the Antarctic Circle, but close enough to experience short nights, and very cold air and water. I wondered if we would run into growlers, those treacherous chunks of ice that break off from icebergs and float just beneath the surface, invisible and deadly. We had hit several of them in the Arctic, and although the sub was designed to bounce when it struck something, rather than dent or crack, we all received bruises from being thrown around inside. I banged my mouth against the periscope one time, and put my teeth through my lip.

But we hadn’t sailed far enough south yet to run into growlers. We came upon something else though, or, I should say, it came upon us. It was travelling beside us and I didn’t even know it.

I was leaning against the hatch, watching the moon and stars, when there was a blast of air, and ocean spray in my face. I knew right away what it was. When the sun came up and turned the sea into a blazing carpet of orange, I saw a large blue whale swimming along beside us. Then I noticed that there were two: mother and baby. The baby was almost twice the size of the sub, so it wasn’t a newborn. The mother was twice as big as that.

They swam beside us for hours. They’d disappear for a while, and then come back. When the sun rose higher, I saw them up close, because they swam so near I could almost have reached over and touched them. I saw their eyes, and they saw me, and I knew that they were saying hello. I could feel it. So I said hello back. Then I brought Hollie out. He had seen whales before, and was fascinated by them, but I think the whales were even more fascinated by him. They stared at him with such intensity. And when he barked, the mother whale slapped her tail on the water. If that wasn’t a greeting, I didn’t know what was.

A few hours later, I was inside making tea when I heard Merwin stirring in the bow.

“What time is it?”

“Seven o’clock.”

“How long have I been sleeping?”

“About ten hours.”

“Wow, why didn’t you wake me?”

“There was no need to. Besides, you needed the sleep.”

“It’s so quiet and warm in here it’s easy to sleep.”

“I know. Do you want tea?”

“I’d kill for tea. Do you want me to make French toast?”

“That would be great. We have company.”

“We do? Who?”

“They’re outside.”

“They are? Who’s outside? Another ship?”

“Go take a look.”

Merwin wiped the sleep from his eyes, climbed the portal, and strapped on the harness. A few seconds later I heard him yell. “Whales! Oh, fantastic!”

Later, when we sat down for breakfast, Merwin spoke excitedly about the whales, and about Captain Watson. Whales were Merwin’s favourite animal, and the captain was his hero. “I believe that whales are the smartest and kindest creatures on the planet,” he said. “They’re way smarter than we are, and much kinder. They know that we kill them, and yet they still like us. It’s as if they’re waiting for us to grow up, to stop killing, and to live in peace.”

“Have you ever met Captain Watson?”

“Like you, I’ve seen him up close, but have never spoken with him. He’s a busy man, and doesn’t stay long in one place. There are many countries where he cannot go, or he’ll be thrown into jail. Especially in Japan, where they’d lock him up and probably throw away the key. They must really hate him there. He has devoted his whole life to saving whales and dolphins, and that has made him the number one enemy of the Japanese whaling industry. But he’s doing what nobody else has the guts to do. I admire him tremendously.”

Merwin kept talking, but I had gone for such a long time without sleep that it was getting hard to hold my head up. His voice started sounding like a radio in another room. With a belly full of French toast, I plopped down on my cot, and shut my eyes. I was asleep in seconds.

Merwin was under strict orders to wake me if there were any problems, or if he wasn’t sure what to do. The sub was cruising along at nearly top speed, and the engine was purring like a cat. I checked it before lying down just to make sure it wasn’t straining. Merwin was so impressed with the engine that he just stared at it and didn’t know what to say. I was very proud of it. All he had to do while I slept was watch the radar, keep an eye on the tanker, and make sure we didn’t get too close. He said, no problem, it was a piece of cake. I thanked him for a wonderful breakfast, and went to bed.

I fell into a deep sleep, and had strange dreams. That always happened when I ate too much. In one of my dreams there was a monster ahead of us. Merwin was there, too. We were travelling through a jungle, and we could hear the monster roar, but couldn’t see it, even though it was right in front of us. I kept trying to warn Merwin to watch out for it, but he was flipping French toast and whistling at Hollie. I woke from the dream in a half-wake state, and wasn’t sure where I was or what was going on. I could still hear the monster rumbling, even as I opened my eyes. How could that be when I was awake?

Suddenly, in a panic, I recognized the sound I was hearing, and knew where it was coming from. I sprang out of bed, and flew up the portal. There, in front of us, not more than seventy-five feet, was the stern of the tanker rising out of the water like an iron giant. She had cut her engines, and we were about to crash into her. How could this have happened? Where was Merwin?

I raced back inside and shut the engine. Then I pulled the wheel and swung to port as sharply as possible. The sub lost speed as it turned, but we couldn’t avoid striking the hull of the tanker lightly. It was just a bump, and did no damage to anyone, yet it made a lot of noise inside the sub. I saw Merwin’s head pop up from inside the stern, just before we hit.

“What’s up?” he said, when he saw me turn the wheel.

“Brace yourself!” I yelled, but we struck the hull before he had a chance to, and the collision knocked him off his feet. “What did we hit?” he called from the floor.

“The tanker.”

“What? How is that possible?”

I started the engine again, and headed away from the ship. I wanted to put distance between us as quickly as possible in case there were men with rifles on her deck. It had happened before. Merwin climbed the portal to look for himself, and then came back inside. “How is it possible?” he asked again.

“I don’t know. I guess she cut her speed. When was the last time you checked on her?”

“About an hour ago, I guess. Or maybe two. We were gaining on her so slowly. She was still pretty far ahead last time I looked. I don’t know how we could have caught her so fast.”

“What were you doing?”

“Peeling potatoes in the cold room. And then I got distracted. Look.”

He showed me a handful of small sculptures—two whales and a submarine. He had sculpted them out of potatoes.