2 The Maria

1895

At full light the Maria sailed southwest toward the whale. It was a fine morning in early June after a long bout of rain. North wind snapped the lateen sails and left the taste of salt on Carlos’s lips. The canoa cast a moving shadow on the sea as the southern coasts of Pico and Faial receded in the distance. From Horta two canoas trailed—one was overturned and trying to right itself in the harbor, the other drifting with a torn sail near Monte de Guia. The boat from Capelo was nowhere in sight.

Carlos steered while his brother, João, the first harpooner, crouched amidships and trimmed the sails. Four oarsmen at the rowing thwarts scanned the water. At the bow Elidio, the new man and second harpooner, checked the harpoons and lances.

João pulled on the rigging and sighed out loud.

“Something wrong?” Carlos asked.

João tied off the rigging and settled near Carlos.

“Tell Maria to come see us. Alex keeps asking for his ‘little mother.’”

“She’ll come.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

The Maria skimmed the waves, as light at sea as its namesake was on land. It was thirty-eight feet in length, longer than a New England whaleboat, and carried an extra man. The cedar hull was canary yellow, the gunwale bright red. Carlos and the crew had built the whaleboat the preceding fall and winter—over long misty days when the world stopped at the edge of the harbor—and in early spring equipped it for the hunt.

Carlos saw a moving dot to the east.

“Something wrong?” João asked.

“How’s your arm?”

João rolled his right shoulder and winced. “It’s no worse.”

Carlos called forward, “Elidio, you make the strike today.”

Elidio—seventeen-years-old, sloe-eyed, and silent—nodded.

João whispered, “He’s hardly said two words since he came.”

Elidio, recently arrived from the island of Pico, was said to have fallen out with his former mestre. Something to do with a woman, Dolores, João’s wife had said; whether the woman was the mestre’s daughter or his wife was unknown. By the set of the boy’s shoulders and the steadiness of his gaze, Carlos thought no one but Elidio and the woman would ever know.

A long twenty minutes followed, during which the dot to the east grew larger. Then João gave a low shout.

“Bloz!”

A quarter mile to the northwest a low-angled fountain gushed over the sea. The head of the whale floated high on the water. It faced away from the Maria.

“It looks like a big one,” João said in a low voice.

Carlos steered toward the whale, going on flukes and out of the whale’s sight, with only a rush of wind to prick the animal’s keen hearing. The tail flukes lay submerged underwater with the bulk of the whale’s body, invisible until the boat came within striking range. On the forward platform Elidio braced his right thigh in the clumsy-cleat. He held the first live iron at his shoulder with the front shaft braced in his left hand and the back end secured in his right palm. The second iron was set near the thigh board.

The Maria slipped past the flukes to the hump of the whale. The light-dappled body shimmered in the sea, the skin rough, wrinkled, and covered with dark patches. Fifty-foot long, Carlos guessed. The creature lay quiet, resting on and under the water. Within ten feet of the hump, Carlos steadied the boat. A swift look back confirmed the whaleboat from Capelo’s approach. He signaled Elidio to throw the harpoon.

“Wood to black skin?” Elidio mouthed.

Carlos made a cutting motion with his hand.

Elidio launched the harpoon. The weapon arced and fell, its descent quickened by its weight, and then lodged beneath the hump, the toggle iron sinking past blubber and deep within muscle. The animal was fairly struck. Elidio threw the second iron, which bounced off the rising hump and dropped in the water to catch on the short warp. The great body shifted, its head down in the sea, the flukes—known to the whalers as the Hand of God—high over the boat. Carlos dropped the sails and mast, unshipped the rudder, and again steadied the Maria with the big steering oar while he oarsmen back-paddled. The whale dived, flukes bypassing boat and crew and smacking empty sea.

Seawater washed over the gunwales, and line rushed from the bow. In seconds the fore tub was emptied and the main line was running from the aft tub at the stern. The Maria rocked with the strain of the running rope, which whipped from bow to center and around the loggerhead, where friction slowed its movement. Carlos watched that the rope ran cleanly, and two of the oarsmen poured water on the rope to cool it.

Ten minutes passed before the line slowed and fell slack. Carlos drew a few yards of line around the loggerhead, paused, and drew a few more. He tightened the line at the loggerhead, and looped the excess at his feet. Again the line grew taut. The bow of the boat bent forward. Carlos released line from the loggerhead, and the bow lifted. The line held steady, and a few minutes later again fell slack. After that the whale surfaced and began to run south, towing the Maria behind it. The crew held fast to the gunwales, and behind them the whaleboat that had dogged them fell back toward Faial.

“Carlos has his luck!” João yelled.

Carlos laughed, shaking his head.

The crew sang as the Maria plunged into the beating wind.