The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont

by Louis de Rougemont

The women of the tribe lived amicably enough together as a rule, but of course they had their differences. They would quarrel about the merits and demerits of their own families and countries; but the greatest source of heartburning and trouble was the importation of a new wife—especially if she chanced to be better looking than the others. In such cases, woe to the comparatively pretty wife. The women certainly had a novel way of settling their differences. The two combatants would retire to some little distance, armed with one stick between them. They would then stand face to face, and one would bend forward meekly, whilst the other dealt her a truly terrific blow between the shoulders or on the head—not with a cane or a light stick, be it remembered, but a really formidable club. The blow (which would be enough to kill an ordinary white woman) would be borne with wonderful fortitude, and then the aggressor would hand the club to the woman she had just struck.

The latter would then take a turn; and so it would go on, turn and turn about, until one of the unfortunate, stoical creatures fell bleeding and half-senseless to the earth. The thing was magnificently simple. The woman who kept her senses longest, and remained on her legs to the end, was the victor. There was no kind of ill-feeling after these extraordinary combats, and the women would even dress one another’s wounds.

I now come to an event of very great importance in my life. Elsewhere I have spoken of my penchant for dugong hunting. Well, one day this sport effectually put an end to all my prospects of reaching civilisation across the sea. I went forth one morning, accompanied by my ever-faithful Yamba and the usual admiring crowd of blacks. In a few minutes we two were speeding over the sunlit waters, my only weapon being the steel harpoon I had brought with me from the island, and about forty or fifty feet of manilla rope. When we were some miles from land I noticed a dark-looking object on the surface of the water a little way ahead. Feeling certain it was a dugong feeding on the well-known “grass,” I rose and hurled my harpoon at it with all the force I could muster. Next moment, to my amazement, the head of a calf whale was thrust agonisingly into the air, and not until then did I realise what manner of creature it was I had struck. This baby whale was about fifteen feet long, and it “sounded” immediately on receiving my harpoon. As I had enough rope, or what I considered enough, I did not cut him adrift. He came up again presently, lashing the water with his tail, and creating a tremendous uproar, considering his size. He then darted off madly, dashing through the water like an arrow, and dragging our boat at such a tremendous pace as almost to swamp us in the foaming wash, the bow wave forming a kind of wall on each side.

Up to this time I had no thought of danger, but just as the baby whale halted I looked round, and saw to my horror that its colossal mother had joined her offspring, and was swimming round and round it like lightning, apparently greatly disturbed by its sufferings. Before I could even cut the line or attempt to get out of the way, the enormous creature caught sight of our little craft, and bore down upon us like a fair-sized island rushing through the sea with the speed of an express train. I shouted to Yamba, and we both threw ourselves over the side into the now raging waters, and commenced to swim away with long strokes, in order to get as far as possible from the boat before the catastrophe came which we knew was at hand. We had not got many yards before I heard a terrific crash, and, looking back, I saw the enormous tail of the great whale towering high out of the water, and my precious boat descending in fragments upon it from a height of from fifteen feet to twenty feet above the agitated waters. Oddly enough, the fore-part of the boat remained fixed to the rope of the harpoon in the calf. My first thought, even at so terrible a moment, and in so serious a situation, was one of bitter regret for the loss of what I considered the only means of reaching civilisation. Like a flash it came back to me how many weary months of toil and hope and expectancy I had spent over that darling craft; and I remembered, too, the delirious joy of launching it, and the appalling dismay that struck me when I realised that it was worse than useless to me in the inclosed lagoon. These thoughts passed through my mind in a few seconds.

At this time we had a swim of some ten miles before us, but fortunately our predicament was observed from the land, and a crowd of blacks put out in their catamarans to help us. Some of the blacks, as I hinted before, always accompanied me down to the shore on these trips. They never tired, I think, of seeing me handle my giant “catamaran” and the (to them) mysterious harpoon.

After the mother whale had wreaked its vengeance upon my unfortunate boat it rejoined its little one, and still continued to swim round and round it at prodigious speed, evidently in a perfect agony of concern. Fortunately the tide was in our favour, and we were rapidly swept inshore, even when we floated listlessly on the surface of the water. The sea was quite calm, and we had no fear of sharks, being well aware that we would keep them away by splashing in the water.

Before long, the catamarans came up with us, but although deeply grateful for Yamba’s and my own safety, I was still greatly distressed at the loss of my boat. Never once did this thought leave my mind. I remembered, too, with a pang, that I had now no tools with which to build another; and to venture out into the open sea on a catamaran, probably for weeks, simply meant courting certain destruction. I was a greater prisoner than ever.

My harpoon had evidently inflicted a mortal wound on the calf whale, because as we looked we saw it lying exhausted on the surface of the water, and being gradually swept nearer and nearer the shore by the swift-flowing tide. The mother refused to leave her little one however, and still continued to wheel round it continuously, even when it had reached dangerously shallow water.

The result was that when the tide turned, both the mother and her calf were left stranded high and dry on the beach, to the unbounded delight and amazement of the natives, who swarmed round the leviathans, and set up such a terrific uproar, that I verily believe they frightened the mother to death. In her dying struggle she lashed the water into a perfect fury with her tail, and even made attempts to lift herself bodily up. Furious smoke-signals were at once sent up to summon all the tribes in the surrounding country—enemies as well as friends. Next day the carcasses were washed farther still inshore—a thing for which the blacks gave me additional credit.

I ought to mention here that the loss of my boat was in some measure compensated for by the enormous amount of prestige which accrued to me through this whale episode. To cut a long story short, the natives fully believed that I had killed single-handed and brought ashore both whales! And in the corroborees that ensued, the poets almost went delirious in trying to find suitable eulogiums to bestow upon the mighty white hunter. The mother whale surpassed in size any I had ever seen or read about. I measured her length by pacing, and I judged it to be nearly 150 feet. My measurements may not have been absolutely accurate, but still the whale was, I imagine, of record size. As she lay there on the beach her head towered above me to a height of nearly fifteen feet. Never can I forget the scene that followed, when the blacks from the surrounding country responded to the smoke-signals announcing the capture of the “great fish.” From hundreds of miles south came the natives, literally in their thousands—every man provided with his stone tomahawk and a whole armoury of shell knives. They simply swarmed over the carcasses like vermin, and I saw many of them staggering away under solid lumps of flesh weighing between thirty and forty pounds. The children also took part in the general feasting, and they too swarmed about the whales like a plague of ants.