Straggling whale watchers have seen what has happened. Soon a crowd has gathered around Sharisha. They try to push her back into the water. The Whale Caller is fearful that they will hurt her. He helps to push while admonishing those he thinks are being rough. Among those who are watching from the shoreline he can see Saluni. She must be rejoicing, he thinks. Is this not what she has always prayed for?
“We need more hands,” shouts a man. “The whale is too heavy”
“You’ll all be in trouble,” responds another from the shore. “The law forbids you to touch a whale.”
An official, obviously from some environmental agency, takes pains to explain that it is indeed unlawful to touch, disturb, kill or harass whales, or come closer than three hundred metres to them. But this does not include bona fide efforts to render assistance to a stranded or beached whale.
By late afternoon they still have not been able to move the whale. The place is now teeming with police officers and bureaucrats from various government departments that deal with fisheries and nature conservation. Emergency rescue teams have been flown in from Cape Town. They spray Sharisha with water to keep her skin moist. An official suggests that a shelter be erected to provide her with shade. The rescuers decide against it. Although it is still quite hot, the sun will soon set. The whale will have some respite. In the meantime they try to keep her flippers and tail flukes cool with more water.
Sharisha is not helping much with her own struggling. She almost rolls onto her side. The rescuers have to push her and then prop her up so that the blowhole is facing upwards. The blowhole must always face upwards if the whale is to be saved from certain death. The onlookers have become too noisy and the rescuers try to keep them at a distance. Even the men who have initially helped are told to move as far back as possible and not to make any noise, for that will only agitate the stranded whale and make things worse. The Whale Caller is offended that he too is told to move away. He tries to resist. An official pushes him away. He pretends to walk away but sneaks back to a different part of the whale. This infuriates the emergency workers. One loses patience with him and tells him to get the hell out of here or they are going to arrest him for interfering with the rescue effort. He reluctantly moves away, silently lamenting the fact that people who know nothing about Sharisha have taken over and her life is in their hands.
He goes back to where he had been sitting when he played the horn and lured Sharisha to such danger. She will be rescued though. These arrogant people seem to know what they are doing. They will rescue her. He finds his kelp horn lying between two rocks. He wonders how it escaped being trampled to pieces by the gawpers.
The emergency workers use spades and shovels to build a sandbank near Sharisha. It collects water to keep her wet. And it also prevents her from further rolling towards the shoreline. Already there are patches of blood on her fins as a result of rolling that one time when the workers had to prop her up so that the blowhole would face upwards.
The voyeurs have thinned. Night has fallen and they gradually drift off to their homes and hotels until only a small team of emergency workers and scientists from the aquarium and whale museum is left. And the Whale Caller. He vows that he will not budge from that place until Sharisha is rescued. He watches the emergency workers as they place sisal sacks on her and then occasionally splash buckets of water on them. They are very careful not to cover the blowhole with the sacks or with anything else. More water is splashed on the flippers and flukes.
He is tempted to blow his horn but thinks better of it. He does not want to annoy the rescuers, who claim that any noise will make things worse for the whale. He just sits in silent vigil. He looks like a raw clay statue.
Under his breath he tries to sing her away from the beach. Away from the shallows to freedom. To the southern seas. If only she had migrated to the southern seas she would not be lying here helpless, stripped of all dignity. If he fails to sing her away he will try to sing giant waves into coming and sweeping her into the depths of the ocean. He remembers the Dreaming that he heard from the same sailor who told him about the shark callers of New Ireland and about Starfish Man and Whale Man. Way way back in the Dreamtime of Australian Aborigines the stranding of whales and dolphins attracted people to binges of feasting, as it did with the Khoikhoi of old in what later became the Western Cape. Their Strong Men used to attract whales to the shore with songs and rattles and medicines. However, in the Ramindjeri clan, whose totem was the whale, Kondoli nga: tji, there was one Strong Man who could sing to make a female whale and her calf escape the shallow waters. The Ramindjeri, who produced canoes and nets and fished at a place called Yilki before the eons and dimensions of Dreamtime came to pass and Yilki became Encounter Bay, loved and respected the Strong Man for his power to save the female of the species and the future generations that would replenish the seas. He will become the Strong Man of Hermanus.
The Whale Caller prays for the powers of the Ramindjeri Strong Man and tries to sing Sharisha away from the danger. His voice cannot be heard for the plea for her life is uttered only inside him. He focuses his mind on Sharisha, looking her in the eye, hoping to send his messages of salvation to her mind. He beams them out in vain. He can’t reach her. He can never acquire the powers of those whose totem is Kondoli nga: tji. Perhaps he should just leave everything to the experts from Cape Town. They will save Sharisha. They will surely save her.
His night is haunted by the sweet and mouldy smell.
Saluni. She is squatting behind a mud-covered bush watching him grieve. She watches over him the whole night. Like a guardian angel. Behind the bush. He sits motionless for the whole night, and does not even stand up to relieve himself. She wonders how he managed that because usually he goes out to pass water up to three times a night. It is strange how grief can shut down the body’s pumps of life. Sometimes it shuts down even the ultimate pump, and the griever lives only in obituaries. It will not happen to him though. He is a strong man. He will get over it. It is just a fish after all. How she wishes she could go to him, and hold him in her arms, and keep him warm now that the temperature has plummeted overnight, and tell him that everything will be fine. On many occasions throughout the night she is tempted to go to him, to tell him that they still have a chance to start on a new page. She is willing to forgive and forget if he is. But she does not have the courage to walk the few steps down the cliff path. She suspects he will not hear her because his mind is with the beached whale. Once more that whale is coming between them.
Now the sun is up and the busybodies are streaming back. She regrets that she failed to take the opportunity presented by the silence of the night. Perhaps there will be another night. Once more everyone will leave and she will have her chance. Provided they have not saved the whale by then. Otherwise she will meet him at the Wendy house and she will tell him the words she wanted to tell him last night. Reconciliation won’t quite be the same at the Wendy house. At this place of grief her overtures would acquire sincerity. They would show that she is not the uncaring woman he thinks she is.
She watches him watching the rescuers, who are trying once more to keep Sharisha cool as the winter sun returns with a repeat performance of yesterday’s heat. They tie a rope to her tail and all pull in unison, attempting to drag her out of the shallow water to freedom. “A boat,” a man suggests. “Its engine will cause a racket but it will save the whale.” People remember how a humpback that had beached itself near Van Staden’s River Mouth in the Eastern Cape was saved that way. In no time the engine of a pilot boat is revving about sixty metres offshore. The rope tied to the whale’s tail is connected to the boat by swimmers. The boat then tries to drag the whale away from the shore into the surf. But this southern right is too heavy. And the rough sea has no intention of cooperating with the pilot boat. The rescuers have to stop the attempt when they realise that the only thing they will achieve is to inflict further injury on the whale. Already they can see blood oozing out where the rope has dug deep into the flesh.