Waiting for the whales (page 3)
Then, in front of the boat, a grey flash. The orcas aren't alone.
"A dolphin!” cries Carolyn.
"He's got good nerve,” remarks Pye.
"Sometimes orcas and dolphins feed in the same area,” says
Snow. Pye stops the boat to view some action taking place ahead
of us. The grey and black bodies seem to smash together at one
point and intertwine. We ease closer, and an orca skims past.
"Uh-oh,” observes Snow. "It's got something in its mouth.”
AFTER DINNER, Snow shows us the frozen, disembodied dolphin
dorsal from his previous excursion. We feel exhilarated yet
strangely glum about the morning's action. In the space of an
hour, we watched orcas stalk and kill three dolphins in total.
Arlene says it's rare to witness predation. In all her years of
watching whales, she's never seen anything like it.
"I felt sorry for the dolphins,” she admits, and we all nod. I
remember how the grease from the dolphins' rent bodies
slicked the surface of the water and shiver. But then I remember
my suitcase has finally arrived on the three o'clock ferry, full
of fleece and wool and a box of red wine - all of which await
back in my room.
Once the heart of the cod industry, Battle Harbour has been
designated a National Historic District of Canada, and the ladies
and I are housed in the former RCMP detachment (Judy has
been given the jail cell, with bars on the windows). And while
the village possesses many Old World charms, I am mostly coming
to love it for the abundance of North Atlantic comfort
cuisine that awaits us every time we climb shivering out of the
boat. Hot porridge, fish cakes, partridgeberry crumble, baked
beans, all served up by women with names like wood nymphs
- Myrtle, Daphne - who only add to the deliciously infantile
state the food induces by calling you "my love,” "my darling.”
As I trudge the impossibly craggy perimeter of Battle Island,
toque pulled low against the wind, it occurs to me that perhaps
this is a culture defined in reaction to the lack of comfort in the landscape: shaped to soothe. Therefore, the much-celebrated
Newfoundland and Labradorian consolations of music, of rum,
of carb-laden food, of multiple endearments in speech, "my
duck,” "my dear one.”
THE NEXT DAY, a humpback whale almost knocks over our boat.
Snow says no. It merely displaced the water, and that was the
reason for the queasy creaking noise, the list to one side. Yes,
the animal had been too busy feeding on herring to notice us.
And yes, it got a bit close before veering off, but no, he says, it
certainly didn't rub up against us.
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