The Garden of God

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

THE GREAT KILL

Dick, who had heard the first thunder of the battle in the woods, running from the trees had seen Katafa standing watching the cachalot come into the pool, but he had no eyes for her. The excitement of the fight and the fear of injury to the dinghy moored by the bank held him from thought of anything else.

Then, when the cachalot broke away, he followed, running through the trees, hallooing, mad with excitement and the desire to be in at the death.

He could see, through the branches overhanging the water, the foam in the wake of the fight and a long line of following gulls.

The gulls were coming down already. The high cloud of them had broken, and, as if on a moving stairway, they were coming down in a great curve that broke and flittered about the nearly dead leviathan, surging now slowly, tongueless, torn, half eviscerated, towards the break of the reef.

It seemed as though scarce consciously it was making a last attempt to get to sea to the freedom it had lost. The sharks grazing on it, tearing into it, were indifferent. It might get to sea or remain in the lagoon, it was all the same to them; it was theirs. The burgomasters and the bo’suns, clanging and wheeling and swooping, were indifferent. As long as it did not sink, it was theirs.

Dick, knocking himself against trees and tripping on the undergrowth, followed till he reached the banana beach opposite the bank. Here, where he had slain Sru, son of Laminai, whose body the tides and gulls and sharks had long dispersed, he stood to watch whilst the cachalot, practically dead, moved in a great ring on the water, a ring described beneath a vortex of birds.

Never had the lagoon looked more beautiful, glass-smooth, except where the vast bulk moved half submerged, escorted by the gulls whose reflection flew white on the surface, and whose shadows on the floor seemed phantom birds circling amidst the shark shadows and the shadows of the dogfish.

Then, as Dick watched, little by little the dying cachalot gained speed; rising on the water as the momentum increased, the great bulk showed clear, moving in the circle that Nature has prescribed for all creatures dazed or confused.

As the speed increased, the sharks held off for a moment, dozens of dark fins breaking the surface of the water. The gulls, ceasing their clamour, circled like a coil of smoke, and silence fell on the lagoon, broken only by the rush of the fish and the murmur of the reef tinged with the first fires of sunset.