Eye of the Whale by Douglas Carlton Abrams Read Free Book Online

pointed out the distinctive patterns on their tails. “Those are your whales, Liza,” Teo had said. “We won’t take them.” But what if Teo didn’t see the fluke pattern?
    “Me pray Teo don’t hurt the whale family,” Milton said.
    “It’s not a family, Milton!” Elizabeth said, not meaning to speak so forcefully. She was trying hard to control her own feelings. Besides, the discovery that Echo was escorting Sliver was not proof of anything.
    “Me know a proud papa when me see one,” Milton shot back, unconvinced.

    Elizabeth continued to scan the horizon without her binoculars, which were made useless by the rolling swell. Then she saw it. “There’s the boat!” she shouted. Her heart sank as she saw that the mast had been unshipped. “Faster, Milton! Can’t you make this goddamn boat go any faster?”
    “We fighting the wind and the waves, Liza.”
    As they approached the twenty-seven-foot double-ender whaleboat, Elizabeth could see the hunt that was unfolding. Teo and his crew of five whalemen had harpooned the baby humpback. They had given it about twenty feet of line and were using it to lure the mother, an old trick learned from the Yankee whalers. A mother will never leave her calf.
    Elizabeth knew the baby would be sending out its distress call as it strained against the rope. Elizabeth saw how small the blows were. It had to be confused and terrified.
    Then she saw the dorsal fin of the mother breaking the surface as she circled around her baby and the whaleboat. Elizabeth steadied herself against the gunwale.
    “Teo get an iron in the calf!” Milton shouted, now able to see the rope.
    Elizabeth saw Teo in the bow of the boat, his leg snug in the knee chock as he readied the second iron, preparing to strike the mother as soon as she got close enough. His burnished copper face shone in the sunlight, and the cinnamon-wood harpoon was raised above his head. Jutting out of the shaft was an iron shank as long as his arm, and at its tip was a barbed blade.
    “Stop!” Elizabeth cried, but her voice was swallowed by the whistling wind. She tried waving her arms, but all eyes were on the hunt. “Hurry, Milton, hurry,” she said as they banged over the swell and cut through the wind.
    If only Sliver would fluke up and Teo could recognize her. But she knew that Sliver wouldn’t sound, wouldn’t leave her baby. ThenSliver did something that Elizabeth had never seen a mother do before.
    Sliver’s two enormous white pectoral fins towered out of the water on either side of the calf, curving toward each other. There was no way to describe this but to say that she was embracing her baby. Sliver must have come underneath so her belly could support her newborn. To help the tired baby breathe, Elizabeth thought at first. She had seen another mother whale take her “babe in arms” and strand it on her vast chest, perhaps to calm the calf. But no. That wasn’t it.
    Sliver wasn’t willing to just help her baby die. As the mother whale began to roll away from the boat, Elizabeth realized she was trying to dislodge the harpoon. Sliver kept turning, the three-quarter-inch line wrapping around the mother and calf, yet the barb in the harpoon held fast. The mother was entangling herself, trapping herself as she tried to rescue her baby.
    As they approached, Elizabeth waved her arms again and shouted Teo’s name. But her voice was still lost in the wind. Then she covered her mouth in horror as Teo cocked his arm back.
    Teo pitched the harpoon into Sliver’s vulnerable left side just below her flipper. Elizabeth heard a cheer from the boat as the wound started to spray a four-foot jet of watery blood.
    “Oh, God, no, oh, God.”
    The mother had left herself vulnerable to the whalers, and they had struck her near her lung. “Teo!” Elizabeth shouted again, and this time she was close enough to be heard.
    Teo looked up at her.
    “It’s Sliver! Stop! It’s Sliver!”
    Teo’s face fell as he realized what he