Rocked In The Cradle Of The Deep

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Title:     Rocked In The Cradle Of The Deep
Author: Charles G. D. Roberts [More Titles by Roberts]

Casting his flies across the eddying mouth of one of those cold streams which feed the crystal bosom of Silverwater, Uncle Andy had landed a magnificent pink-bellied trout--five pounds, if an ounce!

"Hi, but isn't he a whopper?" he cried exultantly, holding up his prize for the inspection of the Babe, who had been watching the struggle breathlessly.

"A--whopper?" repeated the Babe doubtfully. His idea of a whopper was something that objectionable little boys have been known to tell in order to get themselves out of a scrape. No full-fledged fisherman as yet, he did not see what it could have to do with a trout.

Uncle Andy seemed to divine his difficulty.

"I mean," he explained, "isn't he a big one? _Tremendous_?"

At this again the Babe looked doubtful. The fish was certainly a very beautiful one; but to the Babe's eyes it did not seem in any way remarkable for size. Yet he did not like to appear to disagree with Uncle Andy.

"Is it _big_?" he inquired politely. "Bill says there's some fish bigger than a house."

Uncle Andy looked at him askance.

"Seems to me," said he, "you're mighty hard to please to-day. And, anyhow, Bill talks nonsense. They're not fish, those monsters he was telling you about. They're _whales_."

"But they live in the water, don't they?" protested the Babe in surprise.

"Of course!" agreed Uncle Andy, wrapping his big trout up in wet grass and seating himself on a handy log for a smoke.

"Then why aren't they fish?" persisted the Babe, ever anxious to get to the root of a matter.

"Because they're not," replied Uncle Andy, impatient at having let himself in for explanations, which he always disliked. "They're animals, just as much as a dog or a muskrat."

The Babe wrinkled his forehead in perplexity. And Uncle Andy relented.

"You see," he continued, "they're not fish, because they cannot breathe under water like fish can, but have to come to the surface for air, just as we would have to. And they're not fish, because they nurse their babies as a cow or a cat does. And--and there are lots of other reasons."

"What are the other reasons?" demanded the Babe eagerly.

But Uncle Andy had felt himself getting into deep water. He adroitly evaded the question.

"Do you suppose this old trout here," said he, pointing to the grassy bundle, "used to love and take care of its little ones, like the whale I'm going to tell you about loved and took care of hers? No indeed! The trout had hundreds of thousands, and liked nothing better than to eat them whenever it got the chance. But the whale had only one--at a time, that is--and she always used to think there was nothing else like it in the world. There are lots of other mothers as foolish as that. Yours, for instance, now."

The Babe laughed. It pleased him when he understood one of Uncle Andy's jokes--which was not always, by any means. He squatted himself on the moss before the log, where he could stare straight up into Uncle Andy's face with his blue, steady, expectant eyes.

"It was a long way off from Silverwater," began Uncle Andy in a far-away voice, and with a far-away look in his eyes, "that the whale calf was born. It was up North, where the summer sun swung low over a world of cold green seas, low grey shores, crumbling white ice-fields, and floating mountains of ice that flashed with lovely, fairy-like tints of palest blue and amethyst. The calf himself, with his slippery greyish-black back and under-parts of a dirty cream color, was not beautiful--though, of course, his mother thought him so, as he lay nursing just under her great fin, rocked gently by the long, slow Arctic swells."

"What's Arctic swells?" interrupted the Babe, wrinkling his forehead more than ever. He had a vision of tall, smart-looking Eskimos, in wonderful furs; and it seemed to him very curious that the old mother whale should be so tame as to let them come close enough to rock her baby for her.

"Rollers, I mean; Big waves!" grunted Uncle Andy discontentedly. "A fellow has to be so extraordinarily literal with you to-day! Now, if you interrupt again, I'll stop, and you can get Bill to tell you all about it. As I was going to say, he--the calf, not Bill--was about eight or nine feet long. He looked all head. And his head looked all mouth. And his mouth--but you could not see into that for it was very busy nursing. His mother, however, lay with her mouth half open, a vast cavern of a mouth, nearly a third the length of her body--and it looked all whalebone. For, you must know, she was of the ancient and honorable family of the Right Whales, who scorn to grow any teeth, and therefore must live on soup so to speak."

Here he paused, and looked at the Babe as much as to say, "Now, I suppose you're going to interrupt again, in spite of all I've said." But the Babe, restraining his curiosity about the soup, only sat staring at him with solemn eyes. So he went on.

"You see, it was a most convenient kind of soup, a _live_ soup, that they fed upon. The sea, in great spots and patches, is full of tiny creatures, sometimes jelly-fish, sometimes little squid of various kinds, all traveling in countless hosts from somewhere-or-other to somewhere else, they know not why. As the great mother whale lay there with her mouth open, these swarming little swimmers would calmly swim into it, never dreaming that it was a mouth. There they would get tangled among those long narrow strips or plates of whale-bone, with their fringed edges. Every little while the whale would lazily close her mouth, thrust forward her enormous fat tongue, and force the water out through this whalebone sieve of hers. It was like draining a dish of string beans through a colander. Having swallowed the mess of jellyfish and squid, she would open her mouth again, and wait for another lot to come in. It was a very easy and comfortable way to get a bite of breakfast, while waiting for her baby to finish nursing. And every little while, from the big blowhole or nostril on top of her head she would 'spout,' or send up a spray-like jet of steamy breath. And every little while, too, the big-headed baby under her flipper would send up a baby spout, as if in imitation of his mother.

"You must not think, however, that this lazy way of feeding was enough to keep the vast frame of the mother whale (she was quite sixty feet long: three times as long as Bill's shanty yonder) supplied with food. This was just nibbling. When she felt that her baby had nursed enough, she gave it a signal which it understood. It fell a little back along her huge side. Then, lifting her enormous tail straight in the air, she dived slowly downward into the pale, greenish glimmer of the deeper tide, the calf keeping his place cleverly behind her protecting flipper.

"Down here the minute life of the ocean waters swarmed more densely than at the surface. Swimming slowly, the mother whale filled her mouth again and again with the tiny darting squid, till she had strained out and swallowed perhaps a ton of the pulpy provender. As they felt the whalebone strainers closing about them, each one took alarm and let fly a jet of inky fluid, as if thinking to hide itself from Fate; and the dim green of the surrounding water grew clouded till the calf could hardly see, and had to crowd close to his mother's side. A twist or two of her mighty flukes, like the screw of an ocean liner, drove her clear of this obscurity, and carried her, a moment later, into a packed shoal of southward journeying capelin."

The Babe's mouth opened for the natural question: "What's capelin?"

But Uncle Andy got ahead of him.

"That's a little fish something like a sardine," he explained hastily. "And they travel in such countless numbers that sometimes a storm will throw them ashore in long windrows like you see in a hay field, so that the farmers come and cart them away for manure. Well, it did not take long for the old whale to fill up even _her_ great stomach, when the capelin were so numerous. She went ploughing through the shoal lazily, and stopped at last to rub her little one softly with her flipper.

"All at once she caught sight of a curious-looking creature swimming just beneath the shoal of capelin, and every now and then opening its mouth to gulp down a bushel or so of them. It was about fifteen feet long, of a ghastly grayish white color, and from its snout stood straight out a sharp, twisted horn perhaps six feet in length. It was only a stupid narwhal, with no desire in the world to offend his gigantic neighbor: but she was nervous at the sight of his horn, which made her think of her dreaded enemy the swordfish. Tucking her baby well under her fin, she made an hysterical rush at the unoffending stranger. His little pig-like eyes blinked anxiously, and, darting off at his best pace, he was speedily lost to view in the cloudy myriads of the capelin.

"Having now been under water for some twelve or fifteen minutes, the mother whale knew that it was time for her baby to breathe again--though she herself could have held on without fresh air for another five or even ten minutes without much trouble."

The Babe gasped. It was like a bad dream to him, the idea of going along without a breath.

"Oh, how it must hurt!" he burst forth. "I should think it would kill them."

"It would kill you, of course, in about two minutes," replied Uncle Andy. "But they are built differently. They have a handy way of doing up a lot of breathing all at once, and then not having to think any more about it for a while. You can readily see what a convenience that might be to them.

"When they got back to the surface, they lay comfortably rocking among the green swells, while they both blew all the used-up air and steam out of their lungs. The feathery little jet of the calf rose gravely beside his mother's high and graceful spout. The calf, always hungry, because he had such a lot of growing to do and was in such a hurry to do it, fell at once to nursing again, while the mother lay basking half asleep. Overhead, some great white gulls flapped and screamed against the sharp blue, now and then dropping with a splash to snatch some fish from the transparent slope of a wave. A couple of hundred yards away three seals lay basking on an ice-floe, and in the distance could be seen other whales spouting. So the mother knew that she and her baby were not alone in these wide bright spaces of sea and sky.

"As a general rule, the great whale was apt to stay not more than two or three minutes at the surface, but to spend most of her time in the moderate depths. Now, however, with her big baby to nurse, she would often linger basking at the surface till her appetite drove her to activity. In general, also, she was apt to be rather careless about keeping watch against her enemies. But now she was vigilant even when she seemed asleep, and anything the least bit out of the ordinary was enough to make her take alarm. As she lay sluggishly rocking, the great blackish round of her head and back now all awash, now rising like a reef above the waves, she suddenly caught sight of a white furry head with a black tip to its nose, swiftly cleaving the water. She knew it was only a white bear swimming, and she knew also that it was not big enough to dare attack her calf. But with her foolish mother fears she objected to its even being in the neighborhood. She swept her dark bulk around so as to hide the little one from the white swimmer's eyes, and lay glaring at him with suspicious fury. The bear, however, hardly condescended to glance at her. He was after those basking seals on the ice-floes. Presently he dived, a long, long dive, and came up suddenly at the very edge of the ice, caught the nearest seal by the throat just as they were all hurling themselves into the water.

"To this unhappy affair the old whale did not give so much as a second look. So long as the bear kept a respectful distance from her precious baby she didn't care how many silly seals he killed.

"But presently she observed, far away among her spouting kindred, the black, slow-moving shape of a steam whaler. In some past experience she had learned that these strange creatures, which seemed to have other creatures, very small, but very, very dangerous, inside of them, were the most to be dreaded of all the whale's enemies. It was at present too far off for her to take alarm, but she lay watching the incomprehensible monster so sharply that she almost forgot to blow. Presently she saw it crawl up quite close to the unsuspecting shape of one of her kinsmen. A spiteful flame leapt from its head. Then a sharp thunder came rapping across the waves, and she saw her giant kinsman hurl himself clear into the air. He fell back with a terrific splash, which set the monster rolling, and, for perhaps a minute, his struggles lashed the sea into foam. Then he lay still, and soon she saw him drawn slowly up till he clung close to the monster's side. This unheard-of action filled her with a terror that was quite sickening. Clutching her calf tremblingly under her fin she plunged once more into the deep, and, traveling as fast as possible for the little one, at a depth of perhaps two hundred feet, she headed for another feeding ground where she trusted that the monster might not follow.

"When she came again to the surface, fifteen minutes later, the monster and all her spouting kinsfolk were out of sight, hidden behind a mile-long mountain of blue ice-berg. But she was not satisfied. Remaining up less than two minutes, to give the calf time for breath, she hurriedly plunged again and continued her journey. When this manoeuver had been repeated half a dozen times she began to feel more at ease. At last she came to a halt, and lay rocking in the seas just off the mouth of a spacious rock-rimmed bay.

"Here, as luck would have it, she found herself in the midst of the food which she loved best. The leaden green of the swells was all flushed and stained with pale pink. This unusual color was caused by hordes of tiny, shrimplike creatures--distant cousins of those which you like so well in a salad. The whale preferred them in the form of soup, so she went sailing slowly through them with her cavernous mouth very wide open. Every now and then she would shut her jaws and give two or three great gulps, and her little eyes, away back at the base of her skull, would almost twinkle with satisfaction.

"But, as it appeared, she was not the only one that liked shrimps. The air was full of wings and screams, where gulls, gannets, and skuas swooped and splashed, quarrelling because they got in one another's way at the feast. Also, here and there a heavy, sucking swirl on the smooth slope of a wave would show where some very big fish was taking toll of the pinky swarms. The whale kept her eye on these ponderous swirls with a certain amount of suspicion, though not really anticipating any danger here.

"She was just about coming to the conclusion that one can have enough, even of shrimps, when, glancing downwards, she caught sight of a long, slender, deadly-looking shape slanting up toward her through a space of clear water between the armies of the shrimps. She knew that grim shape all too well, and it was darting straight at her baby, its terrible sword standing out keen and straight from its pointed snout.

"In spite of her immense bulk and apparently clumsy form, the whale was capable of marvelously quick action. You see, except for her head she was all one bundle of muscle. Swift as thought, she whipped herself clear round, between her calf and the upward rush of the swordfish. She was just in time. The thrust that would have gone clean through the calf, splitting its heart in two, went deep into her own side.

"Withdrawing his terrible weapon, the robber fish whirled about like lightning and made a second dash at the coveted prize. But the mother, holding the little one tight under her flipper, wheeled again in time to intercept the attack, and again received the dreadful thrust in her own flank. So swift was the swordfish (he was a kind of giant mackerel, with all the mackerel's grace and fire and nimbleness) that he seemed to be everywhere at once. The whale was kept spinning around in a dizzy circle of foam, like a whirlpool, with the bewildered calf on the inside. The mighty twisting thrusts of her tail, with its flukes twenty feet wide, set the whole surface boiling for hundreds of yards about.

"At last, grown suddenly frantic with rage, with terror for her little one, and with the pain of her wounds, the tormented mother broke into a deep booming bellow, as of a hundred bulls. The mysterious sound sent all the gulls screaming into the air, and frightened the basking walruses on the ledges three miles away. Every seal that heard it shuddered and dived, and an old white bear, prowling along the desolate beach in search of dead fish, lifted his lean head and listened nervously.

"Only the swordfish paid no attention to that tremendous and desperate cry. In the midst of it he made another rush, missed the calf by a handbreadth, and buried his sword to the socket in the mother's side.

"At this the old whale seemed to lose her wits. Still clutching the terrified calf under one flipper, she stood straight on her head, so that the head and half her body were below the surface, and fell to lashing the water all around her with ponderous, deafening blows of her tail. The huge concussions drove the swordfish from the surface, and for a minute or two he swam around her in a wide circle, about twenty feet down, trying to get the hang of these queer tactics. Then, swift and smooth as a shadow, he shot in diagonally, well below the range of those crashing strokes. His sword went clean through the body of the calf, through its heart, killing it instantly, and at the same time forcing it from its mother's hold. The lifeless but still quivering form fixed thus firmly on his sword, he darted away with it, and was instantly lost to view beyond the dense, churned hosts of the pink shrimps.

"For perhaps a minute the mother, as if bewildered by the violence of her own exertions, seemed quite unaware of what had happened. At length she stopped lashing the water, came slowly to the surface stared about her in a dazed way, and once more bellowed forth her terrible booming cry. Once more the seabirds sprang terrified to the upper air, and the old white bear on the far-off shore lifted his head once more to listen nervously."

"And she never saw her baby any more," murmured the Babe mournfully.

Uncle Andy snorted, disdaining to answer such a remark.

"Oh, I wish somebody would do something to that swordfish," continued the Babe. And he wiped a tear from his nose.

[The end]
Charles G. D. Roberts's short story: Rocked In The Cradle Of The Deep

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