WeTried Translations
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Wind and a Cluster of Stars
Chapter 12
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Whaling Ship, Strange Phenomenon
22. Whaling Ship
April 17, 2 p.m.
The ship belching black smoke in the Celtic Sea only revealed its identity once we got close enough to make it out with the naked eye.
All three vessels were converted Balsa whalers, with broad decks and low hulls.
One of them was putting out especially thick smoke, and we only learned why after we moved closer and noticed the water had changed color.
At first we approached without realizing anything. Then the water gradually turned purplish, and after we passed one nearby Balsa, it had turned red.
What looked like the flagship of the fleet was hauling up a freshly caught sperm whale with a crane and butchering it.
Sailors and workers moved around busily.
As our ship passed nearby, the captain of the whaler waved and suggested we come alongside.
Soon, as our ship slowed and drew close, the wind dropped, and a fishy blood smell mixed with the foul stink of something burning.
"Hey there!"
The captain was unmistakably Irish, with that distinct accent, red hair, and a thick shaggy beard.
His thick arms were covered in red hair too. He looked like a hardened Irish seaman to the bone.
The whaling captain wanted to get some fresh produce from us.
Since I was from the same country, and because I had the sense they had not set foot inland in a long time, I told Amy to bring some vegetables.
While that was happening, I got a chance to watch their work in detail.
What they had caught was a small sperm whale calf, only about 9 meters long(...).
If a whale was truly huge, they harpooned it, dragged it to shore, and butchered it there.
This sperm whale yielded high-quality spermaceti, literally whale brain oil.
And if they were lucky, they could get ambergris too, a very precious perfume ingredient, so this was one of the most prized whales in whaling.
The hauled-up whale was being torn apart by sailors and workers clinging all over it, and it was quite a spectacle.
Some sailors worked hand pumps nonstop, splashing seawater to wash down the deck. Some carved up the massive whale with huge knives. The rest boiled separated fat and entrails over black-smoking fires to render oil.
When it boiled and clear oil floated up, they skimmed it and gathered it into large barrels, salt-cured the meat, and sorted the remaining byproducts by part.
Of those, the one I knew was baleen (baleen did not mean whales had whiskers, it was the filtering organ they used instead of teeth), and that was probably taken from baleen whale species they had caught.
Back when I lived in the mansion, I once had a brush made from baleen.
And whale oil could also be used as fuel for lamps on ships.
"Thank you, Captain."
When I handed over small sacks of carrots and onions, the Irish whaling captain offered a handshake with his blood-stained, mottled hand.
Then he had his sailors give us two wooden boxes in return.
One held a large cut of whale meat covered with cloth, likely flesh from the whale they had just been cutting.
It was an armful-sized chunk of meat, and it was palm-thick, which made its size striking all over again.
The other box was filled with assorted fish.
"Thank you for the gift. See you again next time."
We turned our ship and started north again, and he waved at us.
...
"Ugh...! The smell!"
Amy made a huge fuss, worried whale blood might have gotten on the ship or the smell might have soaked in.
When I checked the fish and whale meat brought up on deck, Zenon and the sailors came to look too, their interest piqued.
"There are all kinds of fish here. Herring, cod, sardines, horse mackerel, squid..."
These were probably from the whale's stomach.
There was a little mucus mixed in, and sperm whales ate fish.
Soon Amy rolled up her sleeves and started cooking.
If fish were big, she cut them into pieces and salt-cured them. If they were small, she filleted them and made dried fish meat.
Since Amy did not know whale meat, she asked Zenon for advice.
Experienced Zenon gave his opinion and said whale meat was similar to beef.
I watched Amy cook from the side.
She cooked it the way she would sear beef, pouring a little olive oil onto a metal griddle and laying down sliced whale meat.
But whale meat released so much fat that she had to pour it off midway.
The finished whale meat was served with a little salt and lime.
"How is it, Captain?"
"It's not bad..."
If I had to compare, whale meat was indeed similar to beef.
But it had that distinct whale smell, and the texture was very oily, so I did not think I could eat much of it.
Next was squid.
British people did not like squid, so I had never had the chance to eat or handle it myself.
Of course Amy was British too, so it was the same for her.
Again, Zenon, who had tried it before, advised Amy, so she removed the guts, peeled the skin, sliced the cleaned squid, and stir-fried it with onions.
Then we added a little garlic and some salt.
The squid tasted very unique, with a flavor and texture like chicken mixed with rubber.
...
10 p.m.
The seawater seemed to be getting colder.
The cold current carried a chill from far away, and the cold was still in full force.
The weather kept shifting. It had rained briefly a little while ago, yet clouds gathered again in the sky.
No stars were visible.
"Will we reach Dublin tomorrow morning?"
"If things stay like this."
Navigator Zenon was out wearing even a thick tarred raincoat.
"Looks like rain, right?"
"No. It's snow."
From his experience, predicting snow in this kind of weather was probably not difficult.
Like sea fog rolling in, everything around us turned hazy, as if milk had been poured into water, and then snowflakes started to fall one by one.
A misty circular halo formed around the lantern hanging on the mast.
"Snow in April."
"The farther north we go, the more that happens, Captain."
Before we knew it, Amy and the cat were beside us too, looking a little flustered as the weather suddenly turned cold.
...
About an hour later, the sea that had been quiet began to rise.
It was not quite a storm, but with distant thunder the snow turned to sleet, and the weather worsened rapidly.
Worried about the ship, I wrapped a shoulder cape around myself and stepped out to the rail.
Dark night.
The ship was moving ahead without major trouble.
Lightning flashed now and then, and waves sometimes washed over the upper deck, but nothing serious.
Then, just as I finished my patrol and turned back.
-Bzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzz
I had checked the bow and turned around when I heard a strange sound from near the bowsprit, the long structure jutting from the front of the ship.
At that low, spreading sound, goosebumps rose on me before I knew it.
"W-what... is this!"
23. Strange Phenomenon
-Bzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzz, bbbbzzzzzzzz-
It was beyond shocking. It was horrifying.
In rough seas with crashing waves, with cold sleet falling, it appeared together with that low eerie sound.
At the pointed tip of the bowsprit, blue fire blazed so hard it looked almost deep indigo.
And it had started as one, but the number slowly began to increase.
Small flames burst at both ends of the spritsail yard as if to show themselves off, then in an instant wrapped the ends and burned.
That was not all.
Blue fire was burning at the very top of the foremast too.
This unknown sound, and that eerie blue light...
It was a situation I could not understand at all.
"C-C-Captain, d-do we put that fire out?"
So I had definitely not gone mad.
The bow watchman, who stood watch at the bow while others watched the stern, asked in a stutter, dazed.
"N-no."
I answered as if I were not scared, but inside I was terrified to death.
Those ghost-like blue flames kept burning even in this sleet, and the sails were not actually on fire.
They burned for about thirty more seconds, then vanished abruptly.
When the light and the low eerie sound disappeared, all I heard again was waves and rain.
It was a truly staggering experience.
Would Zenon know what it was?
I clearly had not hallucinated.
I was not the only one who saw it. The watchman saw it too.
"What was that?"
"I don't know. It's my first time seeing it too... maybe a banshee*?"
*(banshee: an Irish ghost said to wail in sorrow when someone is about to die)
"Maybe..."
I had heard that if that ghost cried, someone would die.
So the ghost already knew who would die and grieved because of it...
And we were sailing near Ireland.
Of all times, Zenon had already gone into his room by then.
...
April 18, 5 o'clock.
By the time I lay awake until dawn and finally got up, it was already close to five.
Maybe because I had not slept properly, my body kept trembling.
Outside was still cold, and the sleet had turned to cold rain that fell in a wet, sticky way.
Shivering, I went looking for Amy to drink something hot, but she had no watch duty and no reason to wake early, so it was not her time to be up.
In the end I had to go down alone to the stove on the lowest level.
In the damp air, no matter how much I rubbed and spread the tinder, I could not get embers to catch, and I struggled badly.
At last I got water boiling and brewed one cup of hot black tea with sugar.
Some milk would have made it better...
When I came back up to the deck, I saw Zenon at the helm.
"You're up early."
As if my haggard look amused him, the corners of his mouth lifted beneath his graying Kaiser mustache.
I told him what had happened yesterday.
And how grotesque and strange it had felt.
"Ah, that. So that's what kept you awake."
Zenon seemed to know.
"That's St. Elmo's fire."
"What is that?"
"Well, I don't know the details, but one thing's sure, it happens often on cloudy days with lightning. It's not extremely rare."
"So it's connected to Saint Elmo? Did a saint manifest in person or something?"
"Not sure. Some sailors say it's Saint Elmo guiding the way."
At least now I knew it was not a ghost.
Still, on that cold rainy night, I felt like I would never forget that eerie light and sound from yesterday.
...
9 o'clock.
In the continuing cold rain, the fluyt Red Tea docked at the decaying harbor of Dublin.
Before going ashore to work, we ate hot porridge and bread to fill up first.
The rain-carried chill seeped into every corner of the ship and made my whole body tense.
I put on a wide-brimmed hat and a wool cloak over my shoulders and stepped down onto the muddy floating pier.
April in Dublin was cold and damp.
Everything was wet and sticky with rain.
Under heavy air, all kinds of white and black smoke settled thickly, and people passing by kept coughing.
Dublin was an old city.
But industry and other sectors had not developed much, and that was a major reason the city was poor.
So most of what had developed centered on livestock and agriculture.
I walked along the bank of the River Liffey that ran through Dublin.
Goat herds and ducks moved along the muddy embankment road, and small ferries drifted beside it.
A boy herding goats drove them this way and that with a pole, and after the herd passed, small round goat droppings were mashed into the mud along the path.
After asking around, I finally found the grain exchange beside a market and got a signature.
That result took two hours of wandering through these cold narrow alleys and muddy lanes.
With that, every task I had received from the Guild was fully resolved.
I put the documents into a storage tube so they would not get wet, sealed the lid tightly, and tucked it into my coat.
"Filthy rain that just won't quit."
Even when I left the grain exchange with that thick Irish accent behind me, rain kept falling.
It was not a heavy downpour, but it did not stop, so there was not a single dry spot anywhere.
The alleys were full of trapped smoke that would not rise, and because of that I nearly bumped into passersby several times.
My leather boots were caked with heavy lumps of mud too, and every step felt like labor.
Even so, this was a city where Celtic culture had flourished, and old traces of it remained everywhere, so many things fascinated me.
In ancient graveyards whose origins were unknown, Celtic crosses and rough stone walls remained, making it feel like that culture was still alive.
And even as many buildings were being modernized, taverns and certain other buildings I passed from time to time still preserved their way of life with thick walls and low roofs.
Even after hundreds of years, their descendants, their land, and their buildings were still guarding this city.
"Damn it."
But the walk back still took two full hours.
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