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Odyssey From Africa 13b

Ch. 13 b (The whale, cont.)

Now the sardine hunt developed 
As they glimpsed beneath the surface 
Flashing rays of gold and silver
Of the dolphins and the swordfish 
 
That converged with blue-fin tuna
To the swarming sardine banquet 
Then not fifty paces distant
Rising from the ocean darkness 
 
Open mouthed, a humpback surfaced
Gulping a colossal volume 
Of the sardine-teeming water
Then to shrouded deep returning
 
Lisa and her brother Matto
Cried aloud with joy and wonder
Looking all around their vessel 
For another rising titan
 
Till their boat was jolted sharply 
Flinging hard against the gunwales 
Han and both the children as their
Craft was lifted from the water
 
As a whale's emerging forehead 
Raised them up and tipped them over
Pitching out into the ocean
Fisherman and son and daughter 
 
And their boat, its hull inverted 
Settled down into the sea foam
Han and Lisa swam together 
To the boat and hold its timbers
 
Which they clung to as they waited
Rescue from the shipwright’s vessel 
Matto had been flung out further 
And they watched him swim toward them
 
Struggling through the foam-flecked sea swells
As the boat of Tor came nearer
But a much more grave disaster 
Was about to come upon them
 
As beneath the swimming boy there
Formed a swift upwelling darkness
And before the shocked onlookers 
Breached a widely gaping humpback 
 
With its jaws surrounding Matto
As the monstrous throat of baleen
Swallowed up the sea around him
And he sank into the maelstrom 
 
So the humpback swallowed Matto!
Then it languidly subsided
As a disappearing shadow 
Taking down a son and brother 
 
Down into an endless darkness 
Lisa screamed in grief and horror
Han just struggled to control her
Keep her head above the water

As his heart was crushed with sorrow 
Now the wave made by the humpback 
Turned their capsized boat back upright 
And the shipwright Tor now reached them

With his sons he lifted Lisa
And her father from the water
They embraced in silent sorrow 
In the boat for several moments 

Somewhere in his anguished memory 
Han remembered from his childhood 
An account his father told him
Of a sailor who had also 

Been in likewise manner swallowed
By a whale, but had not perished
Breathing from a gastric bubble
In the whale's enormous stomach 

Then had been regurgitated 
Back into the ocean water
Han, in bleakest desperation 
Now made up his mind to follow

Copyright © Phil Salmon | Year Posted 2017

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