The Boy with the Bronze Axe by Kathleen Fidler

Author:Kathleen Fidler [Kathleen Fidler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782505419
Publisher: Floris Books
Published: 2018-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

“Why, it is red like the flesh of cattle!” they cried in surprise. All the fish they had known had white flesh. Here was a creature of the sea with flesh like that of their own animals!

There was a thick layer of fat underneath the skin. This the men stripped off. The women carried it away in their big earthenware bowls. From all points of the compass screaming gulls and gannets descended on the shore, brought there by the sight and smell of the meat. The children were set to scare them away. The men tore at the red flesh. There was a terrible pandemonium what with the shouts of the men, the yelling of the children and the screaming of the seabirds.

Blood ran everywhere. The arms and tunics of the men were soaked in it as they hacked at the carcass and staggered with great lumps of meat to the dunes. The air was thick with the stench of blubber and whale meat. The women built peat fires in the hollows of the dunes to smoke the pieces of meat, so that they could be rubbed with salt and preserved for a time in stone chambers under the ground. The folk of Skara did not even pause to eat. Eating could be done later. Now they had to save their precious booty from the grasp of the sea. They worked away feverishly.

When twilight came the tide was returning. The fires still burned and the smell of roasted whale meat filled the air. The gulls were still screaming and darting in to seize pieces of meat. Most of the flesh had been stripped off the whale. The bony skeleton was left with scraps of meat still adhering to it.

“The bones are light enough for us to pull out of the reach of the sea,” Birno decided. “Bring leather thongs from your houses.”

The men knotted the thongs together to make reins. Each man harnessed himself to the reins by a loop tied in the thongs. Even boys like Brockan joined the teams of men. The leather reins were tied to the whale’s skeleton. When all was ready Birno gave the word.

“Pull!” he shouted.

The men heaved on the leather reins. The skeleton of the whale came slowly up out of the hollow in the sand it had made for itself. When it was halfway up the shingle they paused to get their breath and ease their aching muscles. The tide was beginning to run rapidly over the sand.

“Pull again!” Birno cried.

With chests almost bursting with effort they strained again at the leather thongs. The women left the children to keep the marauding birds off the meat. Headed by Stempsi, they came down to help the men. Stempsi organised them into a team to push at the skeleton while the men heaved. Foot by foot, yard by yard, they brought the great framework of whalebone to the foot of the dunes, where it was among dry sand and pebbles and out of the reach of the tide.

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