Whalesong (The Whalesong Trilogy #1) by Robert Siegel

Author:Robert Siegel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robert Siegel

Seven

Lost in such reflections, I hardly noticed the cool dawn mist rising. A noisy bunch of gulls landed on my head and began pecking at barnacles. They were a scruffy-looking bunch. One had lost a leg. Scree, as he was called, hopped about, balancing himself with his wings. He was talkative, and informed me the gulls lived on what men threw into the ocean. More important, he revealed the lagoon was an hour’s swim up the bay. But he never did say how he lost his leg.

While we talked, a small boat putted out of the fog, carrying two men. The mouth opened on one and a burning thing fell, hissing on the water. He made a sound, but the boat vanished again in the fog before the other man turned. I could hear the boat begin to circle back, though, so I fluked without saying goodbye.

When I surfaced again, the fog had parted and was rolling away up the land. The sight is fixed in my memory. The green land and pink mist stretched away to white-topped mountains—enormous waves of land higher than the highest in the sea. Rocks and tall plants shone in the early light and from them the land swept down to cliffs of many colors which fell steeply into the bay. Here and there the dwellings of men glinted in the sun among expanses of yellow, brown, and green plants which reminded me of kelp beds. The bay itself shone silver, stretching inland beyond sight.

Nevertheless, the view left me uneasy. A sense of anxiety had been growing in me all night, ever since I thought I heard whale cries. The beauty of the landscape made me feel a greater urgency to find the lagoon. What began as restless curiosity was now an obsession. Unaccountable feelings of panic and anger swept through me, and I had forcibly to resist them. I wondered if the polluted waters had affected my brain.

Even if another whale had been captured by the ship, I reasoned, it would do no good for me to get upset. Of course I knew I was taking a chance of getting caught myself, coming this close to man’s habitat. It made me uneasy that the small boat had spotted me. But there was no immediate danger, and I prided myself on dismissing fanciful fears. I concluded the oil in the water was making me skittish.

At last I spied the lagoon—a small body of water set within the shore. Above it red, blue, and yellow flags fluttered as if from the masts of a ship. Beyond it rose a number of brightly colored human dwellings, and a deep inlet led to it. I submerged—the water was cleaner here and didn’t hurt my eyes—and surfaced behind a cluster of rocks near the inlet.

On the far side of the lagoon hundreds of men, as gaily colored as tropical fish, were milling about. From a pool above the ground a dolphin would now and then leap straight into the air and knock a round red thing out of a man’s flipper.

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