Free White Shark by Peter Benchley Page B

I had to do.   The Bible may say man has dominion over animals, but that doesn't mean
we've got the right to wipe them off the face of the earth."
     
    *           *           *           *           *
     
    Max was standing at the end of the pulpit,
Chase behind him on the foredeck, as they passed through a stretch of deep
water between the islands.
    Suddenly Max shouted, "Dad!" and
pointed down into the water.
    A dolphin had appeared from nowhere and
was riding the bow wave of the boat, coasting effortlessly on the bulb of water
created by the boat's forward motion.   They could see its shiny gray back, its pointed snout, the puckered
blowhole in the top if its head.   They
could hear sounds — faint clicks and trills — coming from somewhere within the
animal.
    "He's talking! " Max said excitedly.   "That's how
they talk!   I wonder what he's saying? "
    "Probably just
jabbering... maybe calling his buddies over, maybe saying something like
"Whee!"
    For several moments, the dolphin's body
barely moved; it let the momentum of the boat carry it along.   Then, for some reason, it accelerated,
thrusting its horizontal tail up and down, and pulled ahead of the boat.   It slowed, waited for the boat to catch up
and resumed its ride.
    "Look at that tail," Chase said.
    Max leaned over the pulpit.   "What about it?"
    "The left fluke.   Look at the
scars."
    Max looked, and saw five deep white
slashes, an inch or two apart, in the flesh of the tail fluke.   "What did that?" he asked.
    "This dolphin was attacked by
something," Chase said.   "I'd
say he was lucky to get away."
    "A shark?"
    "No, not a shark, no shark did
that.   A shark bite would be
semicircular."
    "A killer
whale?"
    "No, you'd see punctures or drag
marks from the conical teeth, not sharp slashes like those."   Chase frowned.   "They look like claw marks, like a
tiger's or a bear's."
    "What lives in the ocean and has five
claws?"
    "Nothing," Chase said.   "Nothing I've ever heard of."
     

11
     
    The dock had been built in a cove on the
northwest corner of the island, and as the boat puttered up to it, Chase nudged
Max and pointed overhead and smiled:   a pair of ospreys were flying high over the water, searching
for food for their young, which were sheltered safely on nesting poles that
Chase had built.
    "Once ospreys were almost wiped
out," he told Max.   "For some
reason, their eggs had become so weak they were cracking before the chicks
could hatch.   A scientist got to wondering
what was doing it, and he found out:   DDT.   The pesticide was leaching
into the water and poisoning the food chain, and the fish the ospreys were
eating were destroying their eggs.   That
discovery was the beginning of the Environmental Defense Fund.   Once they got DDT banned, the ospreys started
coming back.   They're in pretty good
shape now."
    A one-winged blue heron stood sentinel
over his tidal pool by the dock.
    "Hey, Chief," Tall Man called to
the bird, then he looked at Chase and said, "The
Chief is pissed.   His lunch is
late."
    "That's Chief Joseph," Chase
explained to Max.   "Some kids found
him over at the borough beach.   He had a
broken wing; the vet they took him to said the wing was too badly smashed to
fix, he wanted to put him to sleep, but I said no, just amputate the wing and
let us have him.   He's become a real
prima donna.   Twice a day he walks around
in the shallows, the rest of the time he stands there and complains that we
don't feed him enough."
    "Why'd you name him Chief Joseph? " Max asked.
    "Tall named him that, after the Nez
Percé chief...   you know, the battle of
Bear
Paw
Mountains
.   He said that with only one wing the heron
reminded him of what Chief Joseph said after the battle:   ‘I will fight no more forever.’"
    "Is the Chief friendly?"
    "If you've got food he is.   If you don't, he's a perfect pain in the
ass."
    Max grinned.   "Maybe I'll find some special animal, something