Chapter X: Monsters of the Sea

On a sea ruffled to purple in the wind, Mother White bear, busy catching fish, glimpsed three large black fins.

Three piratical black fins, farther out at sea, approached like the sails of so many fishing dories, all in a row. That, she knew, meant orcas--killer whales! With a loud whoof she summoned Sitka to turn back and make for shore. He responded with that swift obedience she had taught him. But though he was swift, the orcas were swifter. But he was not far from a high rock that jutted up out of shoal water. When he had scrambled up beside his mother, his legs were trembling and his breath quite gone.

When the disappointed orcas had swum away again, their great black fins rising from the curve of their backs, and the two white streaks on their sides shouting a warning to those that could read it, Mother White Bear was reminded of a battle she had once seen between an orca and a cachalot, one of the giant sperm whales. Of course Sitka wanted the story.

“Fortunately,” said Mother White Bear, “cachalots never come as far North as this. It was the time I drifted so far South on the ice that I saw this battle. A cachalot mother had come to a quiet inlet off the coast of Southern Alaska to rear her baby. It must have been an exceptional case, for though I have heard of orcas going far South, I never knew of but the one cachalot to come so far North. But a traveler such as myself sees many an unusual happening.”

“I’m going to be a traveler, too,” vowed Sitka.

“You certainly will, if you grow up into a regular bear,” she agreed. “But first you know that whales are mammals, like bears and dogs, and nurse their babies.”

“Honestly?” marvelled Sitka.

“Yes. And the orca mother has a way of carrying her calf tucked behind her left flipper, or as it were, in her left arm, and nursing it as she lies floating on a quiet sea. Both she and her calf are cream colored on their under sides, so that the fish below cannot see them so plainly. For of course they live largely on fish.

“She herself is content to eat the great, sluggish fish that live in shallow seas, though she is also fond of seals, and I have seen her devour one whole. The one I saw and I suppose they are all alike, was lean and quick, and could dive and swim with marvelous agility. The Eskimos would have found very little blubber on her. And unlike the great, stupid, lubberly creatures you saw the Eskimos hunting, this particular whale is a good fighter, as you shall see, and cunning too. But with all this, she loves her calf.”

“What happened?” begged Sitka impatiently.

“I was watching from a cliff,” continued Mother White Bear. “First I saw this cachalot mother nursing her calf under her left flipper, and I was amazed that such a huge creature could be so gentle. For this giant creature had a head nearly a third of her entire size, and she could open her jaws till you and I could have found room to den up for the winter right in her mouth. And that huge mouth was armed with teeth that could have crunched you in one bite.” Sitka shuddered.

“Then I saw a band of orcas coming. She saw them, too, and started out to meet them, but it meant leaving her calf behind, and she turned back to the little fellow, perhaps afraid that something might come by and eat him while her back was turned. But if she stayed, the orcas would get him. So she turned once more to meet their advancing front. Picture that row of black fins coming all in a row!

“Well, that cachalot just simply opened that huge mouth of hers and snapped her jaws on the first orca she could reach, and the water turned red around them!--The other orcas,--there were five of them in that pack,--tried to swim around either side of her, at a good safe distance, but she was so afraid they would reach her calf that she chased them ferociously, without a thought for her own safety, and you would have laughed to see these same orcas, these dread killer whales, turning tail and admitting their defeat, five to one that they were! But they would have stood not a chance with those great jaws of hers, swift and fierce as the orcas were.”

“Everything is afraid of something else, isn’t it, Mother?” said Sitka.

“There is nothing I fear for myself save wolves,” said Mother White Bear.

“I am afraid of that Eskimo boy,” Sitka admitted.

“And perhaps he is afraid of you.”

“And of orcas?” the little bear surmised.

Note--The Eskimos around Bering Sea believe that the killer whales are wolves in sea form. They tell it that when the world was young the wolves of the land used to enter the sea, changing their form as they did so and becoming orcas. When they returned to land, they changed back to wolves. To this day the little brown men fear the orca as the wolf of the sea.

A sweep of her paw and Mother White Bear had landed a shining fish, which she proceeded to eat, bidding Sitka go catch one for himself. For he needed practice.

After they had both dined and slept, and felt ready to go on, they swam about thirty miles fairly close to shore. A polar bear can swim forty miles at a stretch if she has to. Sitka tired, and his mother allowed him to tow himself along by her tail once in a while to rest him. And again they caught fish and climbed aboard a floating ice pan to sleep the lengthening night away.

That was their program for many days,--swimming so close to shore that they could see the ragged outline of the pointed green-black firs when it was not too foggy. The thunder of the surf was in their ears, and the taste of the bitter brine was in their nostrils, for the wind blew the sea into foam.

Then one day, their first sunny day in weeks, they came to the edge of the pack ice.