Terrible Mysticetes of the North (b)

No time for communists now, thought Stinson, and like a shot, he was standing outside Littlewood’s cockpit, rattling further the already-rattling door, and shouting, ‘DOLPHIN RED DOLPHIN RED DOLPHIN RED...’

‘Hold your horses,’ said Littlewood, opening the door with a soft kick.  ‘Are you sure it isn’t a yellow one now?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.  Confirmed red.’

Littlewood sighed; then shuddered.  He had just downed the last of a Redbreast bottle, thinking he had smooth sailing ahead of him after that pestiferous pack ice.  He had a head load of drink now, but he swiftly moved to precautionary mode like the seasoned gaffer he was.  Very very seasoned.  He shut engines off and went down to check the bilge pump.  When he got to it, he realised he should really have first warned the rest of them so he clomped back up to the deck and yelled, ‘Grab onto something, yiz layabouts!’  Then he went back to check the bilge pump.  It was fine.  Ready if needed.  He popped into storage and gathered up the life jackets.  Five in total.  That meant one of them was out of luck.  Shit, he thought.  But, oh well, he also thought, it was his own fault for allowing those other two on.  While in the storage room, he surveyed again the priests’ luggage.  There was so much of it.  Heavy cargo.  One of them had brought the whole parish with him.  Probably that Geissel one. 

Littlewood twitched with saggy unease – it wasn’t good to be drunk at a time like this.  His fear was that the weight they were carrying would be too much for Dolores and they would keel over quick – if the dolphin’s curse turned out to be true.  Ah, it was true.   If he believed any oral history at all, it was that of the mariner.

But yet.

Nothing was happening.

He went back up on deck and threw the life jackets on the floor in front of the others, who were bracing themselves in a variety of ways: Masterson, clinging to the side, and he had the big stick wedged between the starboard rails; Walter and Geissel, arms locked together, Geissel’s leg curled up in some loose rope that he found attached to the unused winch; Katrine and Stinson had taken refuge by the old maintenance box, kneeling, both gripping onto it tightly.  Although all secure, their faces looked unconvinced, since nothing seemed to be happening.

‘What’s wrong, Captain?’ asked Geissel.  ‘Are we sinking?’

‘Not yet,’ replied Littlewood, enigmatically.

‘What’s this shite all about?’ complained Masterson.

‘Quiet!’ snarled Littlewood.

There was silence all around them, but Dolores had a rumble in her tummy, and her bobbing began to intensify; it was not lost on anyone that something was indeed bothering her. 

There was a surge in the water about ten yards from stern.  Littlewood intuited a whale; and he was right.   A gray whale.  It tore out of the sea , white steam gushing from its respiratory hole, a great wheeze of relief; it spun twice in the air, and then whumped back down with such power the ocean had an almighty seizure.   Dolores lurched over on her right side – almost the whole way over – and there were cries of shock as her passengers lost their respective stays and slid across deck.  But she didn’t roll completely; mercifully, she was able to pick herself back up, though struggle she did to do so.

Dolores Costello, as strong as she was, looked helpless now.  Anthropomorphically speaking, if the union of boats had been around, they would have gathered in a room somewhere to discuss whether to go out of their way to help Dolores in her time of need, but they would have eventually advised against it considering it was an issue which far outsized the collective’s mission.  The grey whale evidently belonged to no union.  This was a lonesome beast.  There was a playfulness in its breaching that suggested an unwanted colossus, a friendless wanderer whale, vigorous and awkward in salutation.   It didn’t know its own strength, or the damage it could inflict.  On its second emergence at port side, Dolores shook again, but this time, the whale’s crash-landing sent her vaulting upwards to about six feet in the air.  If someone had taken a photograph at the right moment and from the right angle, they could have snapped a picture of a heavy duty trawler dancing in the sky with a gray whale and it would have made them some money if they had sold it to a magazine.  Or one of the newspapers.

Dolores came walloping down from her temporary suspension and hit the water starboard side.  Then she simply lay – depressed and vulnerable – in the water.  She was capable of fighting and defeating the most muscular gales, but here now was a champion she lacked the brawn to lick.  The passengers had all managed to get hold of something during the sudden aerial lift, so they had survived, miraculously, some would soon say; but, like Dolores, they were all rather scuffed up – wet, crumpled and bedraggled.  Littlewood got to his feet and staggered to the back of the boat.

‘Is everyone alright?’

Grunts and moans.

 The sea became calm again.  The water was still and upon it the wary sunlight gave a crisp glaze.   Made it twinkle like a basin of lemonade ice. 

After some time scanning the space around them, Littlewood exhaled with a degree of liberation and told the others: ‘It’s gone.’

‘How can you be sure?’ asked Katrine.

‘It’s after coming up again out there to the west.  Just stuck his head out for a bit.  I think he’s had his fun.’

‘Oh, aren’t we a lucky bunch?’ said Geissel.

‘You call that lucky?’ said Masterson.

‘I call it a miracle,’ said Stinson.

‘You would, wouldn’t you!’ added Katrine.

‘I have not heard of any ship that sighted the red dolphin before without capsizing,’ said Littlewood. ‘So perhaps we were lucky, yes.  Or maybe just fortunate to have a vessel as robust as Dolores here.’

‘What red dolphin?’ enquired Masterson.

There was a shriek.  High-pitched.  Everyone looked at Stinson, thinking it was him.  His voice was the shrillest of them all. 

But the shriek didn’t come from Stinson. 

It came from Teddy Geissel; his face had turned as white as a ghost’s; the others soon realised what had made him shriek and go white when they too beheld the open coffin of Mrs. Juhl with no body inside.