Free A Whale For The Killing by Farley Mowat

my little boat rocked lightly in its wash. It should have been a terrifying moment, but it was not. Inexplicably, I was no longer afraid. I began talking to the beasts in a quiet way, warning them that they must leave. They stayed at or near the surface, swimming very slowly—perhaps still exhausted—and I had no difficulty staying with them. Time after time they surfaced all around me, and although any one of them, even the smallest calf, could have easily overturned the dinghy, they avoided touching it. I began to experience an indescribable sense of empathy with them... and a mounting frustration. How could I help them to escape from what the morrow held?
    We slowly circled the harbour—this strange flotilla of man and whales—but they would not go near the harbour mouth, either because they knew the killer whales were still in the vicinity or because of the vicious barrage of bullets with which men had greeted their every attempt to escape during the daylight hours.
    Eventually I decided to try desperate measures. At the closest point to the harbour entrance to which they would go, I suddenly began howling at them and wildly flailing my oars against the water. Instantly they sounded, diving deep and long. I heard them blow once more at the far side of the harbour but they never came close to me again. I had done the wrong thing—the human thing—and my action had brought an end to their acceptance of me.
    The whales were still in the harbour when dawn broke. During the long evening in the bars, the ingenious sportsmen of St. Pierre had set the stage for a massacre.
    Early in the morning, just as the tide was beginning to ebb, half a dozen boats came out and formed a line abreast at the harbour mouth. Slowly, they began to sweep the harbour, driving the herd closer and closer to the shoals. When the whales sounded and doubled back, they were again met with rifle fire from the breakwater as on the day before. One of the largest beasts seemed to be leading these attempts to escape, with the rest following close in its wake. It looked like a stalemate until three small whales became momentarily separated from the pod as it came under the fusillade from the breakwater. They gave way to panic. Fleeing at full speed on the surface, and close-harried by a fast speedboat, they torpedoed across the harbour and into the shoals, where the tide was dropping fast. Within minutes they were hopelessly aground.
    Howling like the veriest banshees, men and boys armed with axes and carving knives leapt into the knee-deep shallows. Blood began to swirl thickly about them. The apparent leader of the pod, responding to what impulse I shall never know, charged toward the three stranded and mutilated whales. There was a wild melee of running, falling, yelling people; then the big whale was stranded too. The rest of the herd, following close behind, were soon ashore as well. Only one calf remained afloat. It swam aimlessly back and forth just beyond the fatal shoals, and for a few minutes was ignored as the boats crowded in upon the herd and men leapt overboard, jostling one another in their lust to have a hand in the slaughter. Blood from one impaled whale spouted high over their heads—a red and drenching rain. Men flung up their ensanguined faces, wiped the blood away, and laughed and shouted in the delirium of dealing death.
    Finally someone noticed the calf. Arms, red and savage, pointed urgently. A man leapt into his speedboat. The engine roared. He circled once at top speed, then bore straight at the calf, which was in such shoal water it could not sound. The boat almost ran up on its back. The calf swerved frantically, beat its flukes wildly, and was aground.
    The slashing and the hacking on that bloody foreshore continued long after all the whales had bled to death. A crowd of four or five hundred people drank in the spectacle with eager appetite. It was a great fiesta in St. Pierre. Throughout the remainder of the day there was a