Chapter Three

“Time’s a-wastin’,” Gus said. “What’s the problem?”

“Nothing.” Alex couldn’t stop staring down at the space between the boat and the dock. She felt dizzy. Was it getting wider? What if she slipped and fell in?

“Bogs!” Gus said. His two plate-sized hands reached over, scooped her up, and plopped her down on the deck.

“Don’t touch me!” Alex backed away from him. The deck moved beneath her feet and she wobbled slightly.

“Haven’t got all day.” Gus gazed down at her for another second before turning and walking through the glassed-in cabin to an open door leading to the wheelhouse. Another, shorter, man was already at the controls.

Aunt Sophie was babbling away with the older couple, oblivious to Alex’s plight. Some guardian she was. Lion man could have tossed her overboard. Alex spied the bright red life jackets and put one on. Her heartbeat slowly returned to normal. At least she wouldn’t drown.

She retreated to the back of the boat and sat on the cushioned bench that lined the sides of the open deck. She pulled her bent legs into her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Leaning forward, she rested her chin on her knees and stared at the shimmering water.

Soon they were chugging out of the harbour. Gus pointed to great blue herons perched in the trees along the shoreline. Alex had never seen one in real life, just on television. They looked like exotic birds from the Amazon rainforest.

The waves got choppier as they rounded the lighthouse and headed into open water. It was colder, too. The life jacket didn’t do anything to stop the wind. Alex shivered and hugged her knees more tightly to her chest.

“Give Alex one of my sweaters, would ya, Soph? There’s a stack over on the bench,” Gus bellowed from the wheelhouse. “Grab one for yourself too.”

Did he have ESP? Alex wondered. Or maybe eyes in the back of his head? How did he know she was cold? She didn’t turn around as a knitted sweater was wrapped around her shoulders.

“Put it on, it’ll keep you nice and toasty,” Aunt Sophie said. “Sorry, I forgot to bring jackets.”

The sweater was scratchy against her arms, which made sense since it belonged to Gus, the lion man. Scratchy, like she imagined lion fur would be. She didn’t put it on but didn’t shrug it off, either. At least it was warm.

Gus joined them on the open deck. “Got my nephew at the controls today. Susan, our biologist, is out sick, so you’re stuck with me.”

The couple was asking Gus an endless stream of questions. What kind of whales would they see? What other wildlife? How long had he been doing this? What did he do when tourist season was over?

Half listening, Alex learned that with luck they would see humpback, minke, and maybe fin whales. Sometimes, there were sightings of right whales, an endangered species. She also learned that Gus fished lobster in the off-tourist season.

“Why are they called right whales?” the woman asked.

Alex was wondering the same thing. It was kind of a weird name for a whale.

“It’s sad, really,” Gus said. “Whalers way back in the day named them that because they were the ‘right’ whale to hunt. They swam slowly and close to the surface, so they were easy to harpoon. And, because they had a thick blubber layer, it made them float after they were killed.”

“Oh my goodness, how horrible!” the woman exclaimed.

Alex thought it was horrible too. Why did the whales do that? They should have been smart and swum faster and dove deeper. Then they wouldn’t have gotten killed.

“Are you excited to see whales?” the woman asked her.

Alex didn’t want to talk, but also didn’t want to be embarrassed again by having Aunt Sophie call her rude. “Not really.”

“Oh.” The woman’s smile faltered slightly. “Why are you out here, then?”

“My aunt made me come,” she said politely. Aunt Sophie frowned at her from across the deck, but didn’t say anything. Well, what could she say? It was the truth, and she hadn’t been rude.

“I see.” The woman’s smile disappeared and she walked back over to stand beside Gus, resuming her questions.

Happy to be left alone, Alex looked towards the water again and gasped—she couldn’t see a thing. Fog had crept in from nowhere and cocooned them in a world of white.

She heard Gus sigh at the same time the motor stopped. The boat drifted in silence. “Welcome to the Bay of Fundy!” he chuckled. “I had been hoping we would keep the sun, but apparently Mother Nature has other plans for us today.”

“Do we get a refund?” the woman’s husband asked. “We were guaranteed to see whales. Who can see anything in this pea soup?”

Gus didn’t get angry. Alex figured this must have happened before. “Don’t give up. We don’t use any fancy equipment or anything to find the whales. It’s just keen eyesight looking for blowholes on the horizon. When it’s sunny, that is. In the fog, we’ll have to use our ears. You can hear them when they blow.”

The man frowned. “You’ve got to be kidding, right? Listen for whales on a whale watch?”

Gus smiled again, but Alex noticed his lips were more pressed together. She wondered what lion man was like when he got mad.

“We’ll go ahead slowly for a bit, then stop, and we’ll see what happens,” he said, pausing to yell the instructions to his nephew. “Be patient. The whales have a big bay to swim around in and we didn’t tie ’em up the last time we saw them. You never know where they’ll turn up. Besides, Bay of Fundy fog is a fickle lady—she could scurry off as quick as she came.”

They cruised around for the next half hour, stopping every few minutes to listen for whale blows. Alex didn’t even know what the sound was supposed to be. Not that she could have heard anything anyway. The man was complaining more loudly by the minute about what a waste of money the trip was, and that they should have gone golfing in Digby instead.

When the boat stopped again, Gus disappeared up to the viewing deck. Sophie and the woman were on the other side of the boat. No one was talking to the man, and he had gone into the sheltered cabin section of the boat and was reading a magazine.

This stinks, Alex thought. Plus, she was freezing. Looking around to make sure no one saw her, she pulled Gus’s lion-fur sweater over her head. It fell below her knees and the arms drooped well past her hands. She rolled up the sleeves as best she could. Despite its scratchiness, the sweater was warm.

Wondering if she might be able to at least catch a glimpse of a nearby jellyfish through the fog, Alex leaned cautiously over the railing and peered down into the calm water.

A humungous eye was staring back at her.

Alex screamed.