The surging great river crashed into the estuary, churning up silt where clear and muddy waters met. Bright whale song came drifting from afar, lingering at the edge of the cloud-sea sky. North again from North Port, the trembling sea waves chased the song of the whales, weaving seven or eight hundred li, and then abruptly arrived at the northernmost end of the West Coast, at the edge of all under heaven—the greatest source of meat and oil in the world, the Makah Whale Port that still kept its whale Totem Pole!
"Main God bless us! Hidawawa-d, pupu-qadi, dudu-kaxa! (hi, pu, dudu·!)..."
"Main God bless us! I heard the sound, I found it! It's whistling, it's calling and singing!..."
"It's there! A whale coming closer—our prey! Prepare for whaling!..."
On the Kingdom's longship, the Makah chieftain Jinghai cupped his ear and listened, then let out a high, shrill cry in the short, urgent tongue of the Makah Tribe.
Jinghai was the most experienced old hand at whaling, with hearing far beyond ordinary men's, and he almost never made mistakes. Though the Kingdom's warriors had heard nothing, the warriors and hunters on the three longships all readied their throwing spears and fishing nets together, tense and prepared for the hunt. By the reefs on the shore, the Ancestral Spirit Drum used to "lure whales" beat urgently, while the Wooden Beast disguised as a "beautiful whale" bobbed up and down, bewitching the "same kind" that seemed far away, yet in truth swam with astonishing speed.
Less than half a quarter-hour later, a vast gray whale weighing more than thirty tons surfaced from the western entrance of the strait. Haro Strait, where Whale Port lay, was a maritime thoroughfare in the eastern North Pacific. Whale pods heading south from the North Pacific would