A clap of thunder shattered the silence of the cloudless day and roused the echoes of the woods; another, and another, swiftly following like drum strokes on some Gargantuan drum.
Katafa sprang to her feet.
The mirror-still water of the lagoon was broken and boiling with fish, fish driven and in flight, great bream tossing themselves into the air, palu driving like swords through the water, schnapper, garfish, all as if pursued by some enclosing net, whilst louder now came the thunder and turmoil of a battle that was drawing closer, a battle between Titans of the sea.
A bull cachalot, cruising alone and exploring the great depths to southward of the island for octopods, had fallen in with four bandits.
The first was a Japanese swordfish, a ferocious samurai of the sea who had come on the Kjiro Shiwo current from Japan to Alaska and from Alaska down the Pacific Coast, past Central America, then skirting Humboldt’s Current, striking west for Gambier and up past Karolin to its fate.
Close on to Palm Tree, sighting the cachalot, a dusky bloom in the green ahead, it reversed its gear and then charged. Swift as a dagger stroke the appalling sword got home and stuck like a nail in a barn door.
Now, that sword, driven by energy to be calculated in foot tons, would have passed through the planking of a ship as easily as a knife through cheese and have been withdrawn as easily; for twenty years it had ripped and slain living creatures from Honda to Ducie, but never before had it stuck.
Embedded to the hilt under the backbone of the whale, the sword resisted all the efforts of the tail and great sail-like fins of the swordsman, the cachalot shearing through the water, terrified less by the pain of the blow than the fact that its steering gear was upset by the frantic evolutions of the fins and tail of its assailant.
Then, tearing through the sea, came the orcas, three of them from miles away. They did the steering. Like bulldogs clinging to the head of the leviathan, they piloted it into the lagoon, the cachalot springing into the air and falling back in foam and thunder. Up the left arm of the lagoon the fighters came, driving everything before them, palu, garfish, bream, turtle, rays and eels all rushing to escape, the orcas like tigers to left and right and ahead, sharks and giant dogfish following after, tearing at the swordfish, whose fins were in ribbons and whose tail was gone.
Then the great sight broke before the eyes of Katafa, the monstrous bulk of the cachalot rounding the cape, and the water leaping in waves over the bank as it drove into the pool. Above, a blanket of wheeling, screaming gulls followed the battle, whilst from far at sea the great burgomasters and bo’suns were coming in swift, wide of wing and all converging to one point—the cachalot.