It was madness. The most terrifying, leaping, heart-stopping madness that Ryan had ever known. He was soaked to the skin within seconds, hands blistered from the heavy oars, muscles in his shoulders cracking with the effort of pulling. His hair was flattened to his skull, and he gritted his teeth as the frail boat bounded over the long Lantic rollers in pursuit of the broaching whale that he'd sighted.
How long ago?
Eternities hurtled by, like grains of sand. But his common sense told Ryan that barely twenty minutes could have elapsed. He'd been ordered down immediately from the masthead, to be replaced as look-out by one of the Oriental cooks. He was needed in the lead whaleboat, skippered by Cyrus Ogg, with its ironsman, Donfil More, crouched in the bow.
The long, narrow boat had been lowered hastily into the sea alongside the Salvation, now running under a skeleton crew, most of her men eager to row after their prey.
Pyra Quadde had raged the decks like a woman possessed of demons, lashing out with her stick at any sailor unlucky enough to run within range. Froth clung to her fleshy lips, and her eyes rolled bloodshot in their sockets.
"Now we see him, ye shiftless lazy sons of gaudy whores! Get to the boats and after him. Row and row, cullies. Jack in plenty for a good hunt and a clean kill. No food for a week if he slips away from ye!"
"Naught but ears and arms, my brave lads," said Cyrus Ogg, encouraging the five men to pull for their lives toward the patch of disturbed, misty water where the whale had last been sighted. "Pull and pull and pull again. That's the word for the silver mug of fine oil and a rich lay for us all. Pull and pull and pull yet more."
Ryan had never traveled in such a bizarre way before — with his back to where they were going, unable to see what was happening. Only Donfil in the triangular bow section and Ogg at the tiller in the stern could judge what should be done.
Walsh in the second whaleboat and a grizzled veteran named Piper Fairman in the third were only a dozen yards behind them. Ryan had heard that Captain Quadde sometimes took an iron herself if a whole school of whales was spotted. But here, with only a single beast marked down for the hunt, she was content to remain on board the Salvationand shadow the trio of small dories.
Because of the height of the long ocean waves, it was often impossible for the oarsmen to even glimpse the Salvation. Most of the time Ryan could see the three masts, and occasionally the whole white and black hull. The lookout at the top of the mainmast was still pointing dead ahead of them, to where Ryan figured he could see the birds waiting for the reappearance of the monster.
"Steady and together, my stout boys, with an in and an out, an in and an out. Any roan stops rowing, and he'll be tied to the grating and I'll flog the skin from his back. Next I'll flog the muscles and flesh away from his back. Then the gleaming ivory of his spine shall feel the kiss of the metal-tipped lash. I'll whip that man so hard his liver and lights'll be shredded and flensed and pulverized and torn so that they can be served over the side as bait for the sharks."
The world was shrinking around Ryan. Though there were few men fitter in all of the Deathlands, the endless heaving at the clumsy oar, sometimes deep in the water and sometimes kicking the empty air, was taking its toll on him. He fought for breath, feeling soreness across the tops of his thighs from the pressure and the movement against the seat.
"I'll press thine eyes inand then outof thy skull and drive a white-hot awl inand then outof thine ears and hammer hook-end nails inand then outof thy nostrils." Each repetition of "in" and "out" was accompanied by a barely audible change in the pitch of the mate's voice.
"She blows!" Donfil yelled from the bow.
Ryan wasn't able to stop himself from turning on the planking seat, seeing the most amazing sight, catching the scent of old, old earth, ripped from the belly of the Lantic.
It was as though someone had thrown up a great wall of wrinkled, blue-gray stone across their course. Rearing it, dripping and gleaming, streaked with shards of green weed, unimaginably huge.
"Turn thy face to me, outlander, and bend thy back. Or we all perish."
Cyrus Ogg nodded at him like a friendly schoolmaster, mentioning some tiny error in his tables of multiplication.
Ryan bent again to the oar, hearing a deep, sonorous roaring, which seemed as if it were vibrating the very marrow of his bones, shaking the core of his being.
"She blows, she blows!" the Apache repeated. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan could see that his companion had taken up one of the long harpoons and was hefting it in his right hand, just as he'd done on the quayside of Claggartville, aeons ago.
But now his target was not a daub of white paint upon an old door. It was Behemoth itself, the lord over all deep waters.
"Hold oars," the first mate called, raising his voice for the first time, forced to raise it over the caldron of boiling foam and spray that seethed around them. "Now, Master Ten-from-Ten! Here be thy chance. Strike!"
Ryan was able, now they had no further need of rowing, to glance over his shoulder once more and witness the next — and most dramatic act — of the murderous play.
The towering bastion of living flesh had hardly moved. Its skin was dappled with small shellfish and crusted with strange cancerlike growths. Near the crest of the blunt head Ryan could see the tiny eye — not dead like that of the great shark that had attacked them on their raft. This eye twinkled with life and with curiosity. The jaws were only just ajar, the sea swilling in and out between the fronds of its teeth. They were nearly close enough to touch it.
"In with the lance, outlander!" one of the rowers yelled.
"Aye," called another, voice cracking with tension. "Before he sinks us with his fucking tail!"
"Thanks for the meeting!" Donfil cried, casting the harpoon with all of his power, driving it deep into the whale, by the great hump of muscle behind the head.
"Clear of the line, lads," Ogg ordered, keeping one hand on the tiller, using the other to fill a metal dipper with seawater.
The thin rope that was attached to the harpoon ran through a notch in the bow of the whaleboat, under the seats of the oarsmen and around the stubby wooden post, called the loggerhead, between the feet of the first mate. The line was controllable there, running back into one of the two kegs of coiled rope. Hundreds of feet in all, ready to be linked together if the whale should run and run. And in the bow, clipped to a bracket, was a small honed ax. The other task of Donfil was to cut the line if the wounded monster should suddenly decide to dive deep. The ocean thereabouts was of a depth that could lose a thousand whales.
Walsh's harpooneer also managed to strike his iron from the other side. Provoked by the stinging pain, the whale exhaled in a gust of noisome air and mist. It began to move, towing the two dories behind it. The third whaleboat hadn't managed to pull in close enough and was soon left behind.
"Ship your oars, or they'll go over the side," Ogg ordered. "Quick, Master Deadman, and hold on tight for the devil's surf ride."
The rope ran out unchecked for the first hundred feet, to give a safer distance between boat and whale. It hissed along, whining as it smoked around the loggerhead, so that Ogg had to cool it with a pan of water.
The vast tail of the creature waved in the air, darkening the day, coming down with a cracking sound that hurt the ears, casting a welter of green water over the pursuing boats.
Ryan laughed aloud for the sheer animal pleasure and exhilaration of the chase. The whale was gathering speed, and the Salvationwas disappearing fast behind them. Spray danced, and the sun dazzled through it in a burst of prismed colors.
"How far will he run?" he shouted to Ogg.
"How's that, Master Deadman? How far will the beast pull us?"
"Yeah. What if dark comes before it tires?"
"We will have it afore night come, outlander. But I have known a chase with a truly big whale to take a day and a night and half of the following day. But there was many a barrel of fine oil in that one, I tell thee."
"It dives!" Donfil yelled,
"Ready to cut. Not until my order or I'll have thy cock and balls for clock chimes."
As the whale plunged beneath the surface, the day was instantly silent. The rushing, roaring noise of their mad progress was stopped, and the two whaleboats floated serenely, only a few yards away from each other, while gulls cried out above their heads.
"How deep, Mr. Ogg?" the second mate called, standing in the stern, watching the line as it continued to race out over the bow.
"Our iron went deep and true, Mr. Walsh. How went thine?"
"Deep and true."
"Then I think we shall see him again shortly as he tries to rid himself of the pesty barbs that hold him to us."
Cyrus Ogg poured more water over the smoldering line as it continued to race out around the loggerhead and beneath the sea.
"He's diving more shallow," Donfil called, leaning far out, shading his eyes against the reflection of the sun on the water.
"Shows he'd tiring fast. Ready to haul in the line, lads, soon as he broaches again. Outlander, thou must coil it as it comes, to keep all neat and unclogged in the keg there."
"Aye," Ryan said.
"Quiet and silent. Soundless it is. No sound. No noise. Still as death. Still as snow. Still as sleep and still as dark."
"Still as Jehu," Cyrus Ogg warned the gibbering crazie, "or you can swim back to the ship."
"Here he comes..." said Walsh. "The birds know it."
"Haul in," the First Mate ordered, voice betraying the excitement. "Where away, Ten-from-Ten? Tell me that."
"Close," Donfil said. "The rope's gone slack, but I can't... Ysun! It's right..."
The world exploded.
Ryan was hanging on to the side of the boat and the whale surfaced so near that its skin grazed his knuckles. It erupted clear into the air, hanging for an unbelievable, impossible moment of frozen time. Then it crashed down, its tail catching the other whaleboat a glancing blow as it dived again. The frail little craft was overturned, spilling men and oars and line into the sea.
"Cut thy line and save the boat, Walsh!" Ogg shouted.
Once again they were off in a flurry of white spray. But this time Ryan could detect a slowing in the exertions of the great creature. Then their forward motion stopped once more, and Donfil again peered over the bow.
"Going back beneath us!" he yelled.
"Out oars and spin her on a nailhead," Ogg snapped. "Quick for our lives."
Ryan grabbed at his oar, fumbling it into position and obeying the order to back water while the men on the other side tugged with all their strength. The tiller went hard over and the cockleshell darted around like a mayfly. Once they were facing in the right direction, Ogg ordered them to ship oars again, and pull in the slack line, so that they would be close in to the whale when next it surfaced.
"Heading for the men in the water!" Ogg muttered.
The rolling mountain of the beast's hump broke the surface about fifty feet in front of them, jerking them onward. As the first mate had said, the whale was making for the other boat. Walsh and two other crewmen had clambered back into it and were now bailing it empty. But the other five men were still floundering some distance away.
The sun was bright, showing the streams of crimson blood that flowed down the sides of the whale, spouting from the two irons in its flanks.
And the Salvation, all sail crowded on, was bearing down on them.
Ryan watched as the beast came closer, picking Jacob Lusk, one of the fattest members of the crew, building up more speed. Its jaws were open, funneling the Lantic between the rows of teeth. Above the sound of the rushing waters, Ryan and the others heard with an awful clarity the last scream of despair from the sailor as he vanished into the gaping suction of the jaws.
"Widowed wife and fatherless children," Ogg said quietly.
As though its spasm of savage revenge had exhausted it, the whale slowed down once more, half turning so that it presented its side to Donfil's harpoon. The Indian had taken out a longer lance, ready for the killing lunge.
Once again, sitting still in the gently rocking boat, Ryan glimpsed the whale's little eye, rolling toward him. It was shot with blood, seeming both resigned and fearful. For a fraction of eternity it locked onto Ryan's own eye.
He couldn't say what it was that he saw in that eye, but it made him gasp and shudder.
"Deep as the deepest well," Cyrus Ogg said, his voice caressingly soft.
Donfil stood poised like a statue, the harpoon gripped in both hands. Then he drove it at the whale's skin. The razored head and the first 2 1/2 feet of the shaft vanished, and more blood jetted out, pattering on the cold water. Some of it splashed on Ryan's arm and neck, startling him by its heat.
"Again, again, again, again," crooned the first mate.
Donfil, lips pulled off his strong white teeth in a ferocious vulpine snarl, stabbed the iron in again and again, twisting it around to deepen the wound.
Ryan saw the light go out in the whale's eye as its life slipped away. Suddenly it was no more than a floating carcass.