Warren Murphy: White Water

The big otter bag was slowly sweeping them before it, the cod end filling up with living cod and capelin both. As it should be.

Roberto scanned the area for the Patriarch cod. He did not see it at first, increasing his hope that it had already been swept up by the net.

Then it darted into view. There was no mistaking the blip. Curiously it was moving through the frenzy of fish with a detached purpose. Was it not hungry? It struck out on an undeviating line through the school, and zoomed off the screen.

Roberto looked up. The unerring direction would take it toward the big factory ship. But, of course, cod do not swim unerringly, except after prey.

With a sigh, he realized he had lost the opportunity of a lifetime.

"Cut the net!" The words choked in his thickening throat.

His two sons threw themselves on the brake levers controlling the matched cable reels. They jerked them hard, angrily. The reels let go. Cable whizzed out and spilled off the stern.

And as the last strands dropped into the cold, inhospitable Atlantic, a great sadness overcame Roberto Rezendez. This was how the final haul of the Santo Fado was to end. Ignominiously.

AFTER THAT, things happened with bewildering rapidity.

The factory boat lowered two dull gray dories. They beat toward the Santo Fado. It was possible to escape, but Roberto decided it would be unwise to attempt to flee. There was no proof any of wrongdoing. Suspicion, yes. But no proof. Not with his otter net lying on the ocean floor.

As the dories drew closer, they could spy the faces of the approaching ones. They were strangely white. And there were weird blue vertical spotches covering the faces centered on their noses.

Roberto recalled that the fisherman of Nova Scotia were known as "bluenoses" because the dye of their blue mittens came off when they rubbed their cold noses. But Nova Scotia dory men did not paint their faces white or call their ships by French names.

Only when they were surrounded on both sides by the two dories could the true nature of the whitefaced ones be discerned.

White greasepaint coated their faces. The blue splotches were greasepaint, too. They formed a crisp design. At first Roberto thought of a fish. But, of course, he would. Fish were his life. The designs were not fish. They were too ornate. Coats of arms are sometimes filled with similar designs. In this case, Roberto did not know the name or significance of this design. Only that it was hauntingly familiar.

"Why are their faces painted that way?" muttered Carlos.

"To protect against the cold," said Roberto, who thought it must be true. What other reason could there be?

The dories bumped the old dragger's hull and were made fast. Roberto ordered his sons to help. He himself stood on the heaving deck, shivering in his orange waders and rubber boots, the hood of his grimy gray sweatshirt protecting his head. He was still thinking of the father of codfish that had almost been his.

"Who speaks English?" he asked as the first of the white-faced ones clambered aboard.

No one, it seemed. For when they were on board, pistols were displayed.

"Are you Canadian fisheries inspectors?" Roberto asked nervously, knowing that fisheries officers operated undercover at times.

No answer. Not even in French. It was strange. Their faces were strange with their blue clown mouths and bold blue noses spreading angular wings over their gleaming white cheeks.

"We are a U.S. vessel," said Roberto, thinking that perhaps with the Spanish name on their stern they were being mistaken for a Spanish vessel. Relations between Canada and Spain were very strained even now, two years after the so-called Turbot War.

They were urged into the boats. Not a word was spoken. It was all grunting. Perhaps some of the grunts were French grunts. Roberto could not say. He knew little enough of French.

Nodding to his sons, he led them to the dory that awaited them.

"We will obey these men, for we are in their lawful waters," Roberto said simply.

Soon they were being conveyed to the immense factory ship. One man remained with the Santo Fado. If their boat was seized, there would be very great trouble. It had happened before, during the trouble over turbot. Scallop poachers had lost their trawlers for illegal fishing. They never got them back.

As they muttered toward the Hareng Saur, something in the water caught Roberto's eye. It looked like a shark making its way. Or a porpoise. But the waters were too cold for a harbor porpoise.

With a stab in his heart, he thought, Torpedo!

The wake was arrowing unerringly toward the big gray sea behemoth.

Roberto started to speak up. To point. He was shushed with a hard look and a wave of a pistol. It was very eerie the way the white-faced ones operated in utter silence.

Roberto counted the long seconds to impact.

The thing had to be a torpedo. It was closing very fast. Glimpses of gunmetal gray showed in the gray water. It looked to be as long as a man. Or the Patriarch cod, he thought. But that was impossible. Cod were silvery of skin. And this thing moved like a machine.

Three seconds, Roberto counted. Two. One...

The wake ran into the gray hull, just below the waterline.

No explosion sounded. No impact came. No nothing. The wake simply ran into the side of the ship and was no more.

Perhaps it was a porpoise after all, diving playfully under the great gray hulk, Roberto thought.

Roberto turned his thoughts to his predicament. When the dory eased to the hull of the big ship, lines were lowered from davits and the dory was hoisted to open cargo holds in the side of the ship, then swung in.

They were escorted through the stinking hold, where fresh-caught fish were processed and frozen as quickly as they were disgorged from nets.

Even for a lifelong fisherman like Roberto Rezendez, it was an ugly sight. This was a gigantic processing plant. This was why there were no cod. Ships such as this devoured and reduced to cat food and fish sticks entire fish schools in a day's time.

A corporation owned such a vessel, he knew. No hardworking family fisherman could afford it.

"This," he whispered to his sons, "is why we have no future."

Fish were being ripped-gutted and halved-at conveyor belts in cold rooms. The stench of gurry in the malodorous hold was nauseating.

Passing a porthole, Roberto chanced to look out. There, out in the cold gray-green Atlantic, he saw the rusty bow of the Santo Fado slip beneath the waves. Just like that. He froze but was prodded on.

Glancing out through the next porthole he came to, Roberto saw no sign of his trawler. Only a lone dory cutting the water from the place he had left his livelihood.

Could it be? Had they scuttled her? Was it possible? Roberto said nothing. But all over his body the sweat was cold and clammy, and his stomach began to heave not from the dismal stench but in fear for his life-and the lives of his sons.

They were taken to a steel room whose floor was choked with fish entrails and other leavings. Roberto knew what this was. The fish paste called susumi would be made from such offal. Probably in this very room. It would be used in cat food.

The door valved shut. It was a very bad omen. Interrogations were not conducted in such quarters.

"I would like to explain myself," Roberto began.

He was ignored. Workers in bright orange waders and black rubber boots used long forks to pitch fish offal into a vat. There were blades or something whirling in the vat. They whirled and spun, chewing up the bony fish so that the bones would be small and soft and digestible.

"We were not taking cod. We were tracking the Patriarch. Do you understand?" Roberto repeated the word cod and made the time-honored gesture to show the fish's span. Of course, his arms were too short to truly encompass the size of the cod he had tracked with his fish-finding sonar.