Killer Whale Read online

  ‘I think it’s the factory ship, the Nisshin Maru,’ he said. ‘We’re coming up astern of her. They don’t know we’re here.’

  ‘Where’s the killer ship, Captain?’ asked Billy.

  Captain Dan studied the radar screen. ‘About a mile to the north. We’ll deal with the Nisshin first, then go looking for her.’

  ‘Sink them, Captain Dan!’ cried Harry.

  ‘Shhh,’ I said softly. This was a tense moment. Captain Dan had a ship to command and he might send Harry and me below deck if we got in the way.

  Frøya came over and stood next to us. ‘Captain Dan does not actually sink whaling ships, Harry,’ she whispered. ‘He just stops them from murdering whales.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You will see,’ said Frøya.

  Slowly the huge Japanese factory ship materialised out of the murk. It was still several hundred metres away. I could see an orange helicopter on the afterdeck and, below it, the wide, blood-stained ramp cut into her stern where they winched the dead whales out of the sea. The sight of it turned my stomach, but I was over my seasickness now that the storm had passed.

  ‘Shall we ram them with the can opener, Captain?’ asked Billy, making a minor adjustment to the Black pimpernel’s helm.

  Captain Dan lowered his binoculars. ‘only as a last resort, Billy. I think we’ll try the prop foulers first, then hit them with the butter acid and smokebombs.’

  He turned to Frøya. ‘Tell the prop-fouler crew to man their stations. But everybody’s to keep their heads down till I give the order. I want to take them by surprise.’

  ‘For sure,’ said Frøya, and raced downstairs.

  ‘Billy, see if you can get around in front of her.’

  ‘Aye aye, Captain.’

  Down on the bow, the Jolly Roger flapped in the breeze as Billy spun the helm to the right. It was really exciting. Like being in a movie. We rocked over the Nisshin Maru’s wake and headed straight for the whale ramp. There was a pinkish-brown stain in the water and the sickening smell of death in the air. My excitement turned to anger when I thought of the hundreds of dead whales that had been dragged up that ramp and butchered for the Japanese fish markets.

  Billy spun the helm again, taking us around the factory ship’s stern and along its starboard side. It dwarfed us. All I could see was a wall of steel. Painted along the Nisshin Maru’s side in huge white letters, each one as tall as our radio mast, was a single word in English:

  RESEARCH

  Frøya’s words came back to me: Sure, they say it is research, but they do not kill one thousand protected whales every year for science!

  Harry and I had come to Antarctica because we’d won first prize in a raffle to raise funds for wildlife conservation, not to actually do anything for wildlife conservation. But fate had landed us aboard the Black pimpernel, and now I had a chance to get involved.

  ‘Should I go down to the water cannons, Captain Dan?’

  He looked at me and frowned, and I knew immediately that I should have taken my own advice to Harry and not attracted attention to myself.

  ‘How old are you, bud?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘A babe in the woods!’

  ‘I’ll be turning fifteen in a couple of months,’ I said, desperate to convince him. ‘And I know my way around boats. My uncle has a houseboat and we spend two weeks every summer cruising up and down the Murray River.’

  Captain Dan flipped a switch on the console above his head. He wasn’t even listening. ‘Tell you what, bud. Why don’t you and your brother – ’

  I knew what he was going to say: Why don’t you and your brother go below deck where you’ll be out of the way and not in any danger of falling overboard.

  But he never got to say it. Because suddenly there was the blast of a ship’s horn – Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!– and the sound of a whistle blowing. Behind us, white water boiled around the Nisshin Maru’s stern as the huge, underwater props powered up to maximum revs.

  ‘We’ve been spotted,’ said the first officer.

  Captain Dan strode to the window on the port wing of the bridge. ‘Put the hammer down, Billy. Give it everything we’ve got.’

  Billy pushed the throttle lever to full power. There was a rumble under our feet and the Black pimpernel surged forward.

  It was a race. The Nisshin Maru had a higher top speed than Captain Dan’s old rust bucket, but we’d caught the whalers napping. They had been idling along at only four and a half knots when they spotted us; we were doing twice that. Gradually we overtook them and pulled ahead of the Nisshin Maru’s huge curved bow. Billy kept us on a steady course until three hundred metres of clear water separated the two vessels. Then Captain Dan gave an order that chilled my blood.

  ‘Thirty degrees to port, Billy.’

  To port, I thought. Wasn’t that left? But the Nisshin Maru was on our left!

  Sure enough, the first officer spun the wheel to the left. And the Black pimpernel turned slowly across the path of the approaching giant.

  Now the Japanese ship was coming straight towards us. Even though it was three hundred metres away, it looked as big as a mountain. Its captain blasted the horn, warning us to get out of the way.

  ‘They’re going to smash into us!’ Harry whispered, his eyes big with fright.

  I put my arm around him. It did look like the two vessels were going to collide. But both Billy and Captain Dan seemed perfectly calm. Captain Dan reached for a microphone.

  ‘Deploy the prop foulers!’ he commanded, his voice booming from a pair of loudspeakers mounted above the bridge.

  Below us, a team of crewmen wearing bright-yellow dry suits swarmed out on deck and rushed back towards the stern. They began heaving coils of thick black rope with floats attached into the churning grey sea behind the Black pimpernel’s stern.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Harry asked.

  ‘They’re trying to tangle the Nisshin’s propellers,’ I said. Frøya had explained it to me earlier. ‘If it works, the factory ship will have to be towed back to Japan for repairs and they won’t be able to kill any more whales.’

  But I wondered if Captain Dan had left it too late. The Nisshin Maru was a hundred and fifty metres away, rushing towards us at full speed.

  Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! went its horn.

  ‘Collision, forty-five seconds!’ Captain Dan’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers.

  It confirmed my worst fears. The Nisshin Maru was going to T-bone us.

  We’d be cut in half!

  13

  BOMB CREW, DO YOUR STUFF!

  The Nisshin Maru’s huge, reinforced bow came slicing through the sea like a giant axe. It was going to hit us mid ship. We’d go straight to the bottom.

  ‘Should I turn?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Hold your course,’ said Captain Dan, as cool as a cucumber. It was a deadly game of ’chicken’ on the high seas. He pulled the microphone close to his mouth.

  ‘Collision, thirty seconds!’

  More crewmen in life jackets rushed out on deck below us.

  Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! went the Nisshin Maru’s horn.

  Even though the temperature on the poorly heated bridge was only a few degrees above freezing, I was sweating. Harry slipped his hand into mine.

  ‘Collision, twenty seconds!’ Captain Dan’s steely voice boomed across the ship.

  Then the Japanese captain lost his nerve. With its horn blaring angrily, the oncoming juggernaut began to turn left. But a ship weighing eight thousand tonnes can’t change direction quickly. It wasn’t going to turn in time!

  ‘Should I let her through?’ asked Billy, beads of sweat glistening on his forehead as the Nisshin Maru loomed huge on our port side.

  ‘Hold your course,’ said Captain Dan. ‘They’re trying to turn inside us to avoid the prop foulers.’

  Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! went the Nisshin Maru. It grew bigger, bigger, BIGGER, until I could see nothing else out the window.

  I held my breath as the f
actory ship’s massive curved bow swung right overhead. It blocked out the sky. All of us on the bridge, except Captain Dan, instinctively ducked our heads, waiting for the smashing impact that would send us to the bottom.

  It didn’t come. Miraculously, the Nisshin Maru swept past barely ten metres from the Black pimpernel’s port side.

  ‘Looks like the prop foulers didn’t work,’ Captain Dan said as the Japanese ship slowly overtook us.

  The two ships were side by side.

  Captain Dan reached for the microphone. ‘Butter acid and smokebomb crews, do your stuff!’

  I watched enviously as a dozen yellow-clad figures raced up onto the foredeck. Using hand-held catapults, they started firing bottles and smoking canisters up towards the Nisshin Maru’s deck.

  ‘Wicked!’ said Harry. ‘Blow them up!’

  Captain Dan laughed. ‘Nobody will be blown up, young Harry. But there’ll be a few sore eyes and runny noses on board their ship tonight.’

  Not as many as there should be, I thought. Half the missiles didn’t make it over the Nisshin Maru’s rail. Instead, they bounced off the hull and fell harmlessly into the sea, trailing plumes of orange smoke behind them. I might have been only fourteen – a babe in the woods– but I knew I could do a better job than many of the bomb crew.

  ‘Can I have a go, Captain?’

  ‘No, bud, this isn’t a game,’ the captain said. He clicked the microphone back on. ‘Tagging detail to the main deck. I think her paintwork needs a touch up.’

  Four crew members dragged a compressor and a ten-litre tin of paint to the rail and began spraying bright-orange lines onto the Nisshin Maru’s side. It wasn’t until the lines joined and became a huge dribbly that I realised the tagging detail was writing a word. next came a two-metre-high , then an . But they didn’t get the next letter finished - it was going to be a – before the factory ship began drawing away from the smaller, less powerful Black pimpernel, leaving us rocking in its wake like a child’s bath toy.

  it said on the Nisshin Maru’s hull, half obliterating the bogus RESEARCH sign that was already there.

  ‘Nice work, taggers,’ Captain Dan said over the loudspeakers. ‘With any luck, you’ll get to finish your artwork a bit later on.’

  As the factory ship sailed away, I saw a tall black fin break the surface just behind its blood-stained spillway. The sight of it made my skin prickle.

  ‘Look – a killer whale!’

  ‘They often hang around whaling ships,’ Billy said. ‘They feed on the shoals of fish attracted by the blood from the butchered whales.’

  ‘Eeew!’ said Harry.

  Captain Dan’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers again: ’C Crew and D Crew, prepare Zodiacs for launch.’

  There was a frenzy of activity on the deck below us. Within a couple of minutes, two Zodiacs, each with a crew of four, went charging off after the Nisshin Maru. The Zodiacs were faster than the Black pimpernel; they could keep up with the factory ship.

  ‘What will they do?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Lay another prop fouler across their bow, if they can,’ Captain Dan said. ‘And chuck a few more smokebombs. Basically, just give the whale butchers a hard time so they get the message that they’re not wanted here.’

  As the Japanese factory ship and the two tiny pursuit craft disappeared into the mist, Captain Dan switched the radio to an open maritime channel. ‘Nisshin Maru, Nisshin Maru, this is Black pimpernel. You are in violation of international whaling laws. Killing whales for human consumption is a criminal act. Next time we meet, I’ll put you out of business for good!’

  ‘I wish you’d sunk them,’ Harry muttered.

  ‘They nearly sank us!’ said Billy, wiping his brow. ‘That was a really close call.’

  Captain Dan winked at Harry and me. ‘I haven’t lost a game of chicken yet.’

  ‘What if you had lost?’ I asked.

  ‘The Japanese captain and his officers would have gone to gaol. We were on their starboard, so we had right of way.’

  ‘Were you worried they weren’t going to give way?’

  ‘A bit,’ Captain Dan admitted. ‘But it would’ve created such an international incident that it might have ended Japanese whaling forever. So either way, I couldn’t lose.’

  ‘You could have lost your life.’

  ‘We all could have lost our lives,’ Captain Dan said grimly. ‘And I apologise for putting you and your brother at risk. But in the long run, losing our lives might have saved the lives of thousands of whales. A fair exchange, don’t you think?’

  14

  FREAK OUT

  Would it be a fair exchange? I wondered. Sacrificing the lives of everyone on board the Black pimpernel for the lives of thousands of whales? I didn’t know if I would risk my life to save even one whale.

  Anyway, Captain Dan wasn’t going to give me the chance. Ever since he had found out my age, he’d treated me like a little kid. It was frustrating. I wouldn’t have missed the Nisshin Maru’s deck if I’d been one of the smokebomb crew.

  Frøya came puffing back up the stairs to the bridge. Her bright-yellow dry suit was flecked with orange paint. She must have been one of the tagging detail.

  ‘Four of the men are sick, Captain,’ she said.

  Captain Dan turned from the chart table. ‘What are the symptoms?’

  ‘Vomiting and diarrhoea.’

  ‘Excuse me, Captain, could you take the helm?’ Billy asked. His face had turned white. ‘I don’t feel so good.’ He staggered across the bridge and disappeared below deck.

  Captain Dan took over the wheel. He was a bit pale, too. ‘Looks like food poisoning,’ he muttered. ‘It must be that seafood soup we had for lunch.’

  ‘I didn’t have any,’ said Frøya. She’d told me earlier that she was vegetarian.

  ‘Me neither,’ I said.

  But Harry did. There was a gurgling sound at my elbow and Harry charged across the bridge to my bucket. He got there just in time.

  Captain Dan burped and rubbed his stomach. ‘It looks like we’re going to need a lot of buckets,’ he said.

  Thirty-nine, to be exact. And eight more when the two Zodiacs came back. They had to break off their pursuit of the Nisshin Maru because everyone got sick.

  In the space of half an hour, the Black pimpernel went from being an anti-whaling ship to a hospital ship. Every one on board except Frøya and me had food poisoning from the contaminated seafood soup.

  Frøya wasn’t very sympathetic. ‘We are supposed to be on the same side as the sea creatures,’ she said. ‘Should we really be eating them?’

  It was a difficult question. One that I didn’t have much time to think about because I had other things on my mind. Like how to drive a ship.

  The food poisoning was so nasty that even Captain Dan had to go below deck. He left Frøya and me on the bridge with orders to maintain our present course and speed until he came back. He said he’d only be gone five minutes. But five minutes ticked by, then ten, then fif-teen, and still he wasn’t back. After nearly half an hour, Frøya went looking for him, leaving me at the helm. Captain Sam. In charge of a fifty-metre pirate ship.

  Cool!

  I would have enjoyed it more, except there were three icebergs ahead and the middle one was directly in our path. Should I go around it, or slow down?

  Either way I’d be disobeying Captain Dan’s orders, but I was alone on the bridge and the safety of the Black pimpernel and its crew was in my hands. There were forty-nine people on board, including my five-year-old brother, whom Frøya and I had carried below deck and put to bed in an empty cabin. It was a big responsibility.

  The iceberg was big, too – roughly the size of the Sydney opera House. If we ran into it, it would be Titanic all over again.

  I made my decision and spun the wheel to starboard.

  ‘Steady as you go,’ I muttered as the Black pimpernel began to veer slowly to the right. It was as easy as driving my uncle’s houseboat.

  Whe
n the gently flapping Jolly Roger on the bow was lined up with the gap between the middle iceberg and the one on the right, I straightened the wheel. The gap was easily wide enough to fit through.

  Doing a steady eight knots, the Black pimpernel motored towards the gap. I turned it a few degrees to port so we would pass dead centre between the two icebergs. The ship came around nicely. Being a sea captain wasn’t so difficult.

  From a hundred metres away the icebergs looked magnificent. They rose out of the sea like cliffs of cut glass, glowing blue-green where the light shone through them. I wished Mum was there to see it. I wished she could see me at the controls of an actual ship. She’d freak out!

  Then I saw something that nearly freaked me out.

  Penguins. There were about twenty of them in the middle of the gap between the two icebergs. And here’s the freaky part – they were standing on the water ! I wasn’t fooled. Even penguins can’t do that.

  So what were they standing on?

  Shishkebab!

  An underwater bridge of ice stretched across from one towering iceberg to the other. It was the same blueish colour as the sea, so I wouldn’t have noticed it if not for the penguins.

  The icebergs were joined. It wasn’t two icebergs like I’d first thought, it was the one iceberg. With a valley in the middle and a towering peak at each end. I knew enough about icebergs to know that most of the ice was beneath the surface, hanging in the water like an upside-down mountain range.

  And the Black pimpernel was going to plough straight into it!

  15

  GO DOWN FIGHTING

  It was too late to turn. I grabbed the throttle lever and pulled it back as far as it would go. There was a rumble under my feet and the Black pimpernel trembled from stem to stern as its propeller went into reverse. We started slowing down, but not fast enough. Penguins scooted right and left as the edge of the ice came rushing towards the ship and disappeared under its bow.