17th August

It is the middle of the night and I am wandering alone on the beach.

I’m more exhausted than I have ever been but I just can’t sleep. I had to come down here to check it all really happened. To follow the lines that tether the five dead whales in the surf so I can touch their rubbery bodies, just once, to check they are actually real.

Bits of today keep replaying in my mind. Stefanus stood quivering with the harpoon on his shoulder right before the strike, the frantic thumping noise as the men hammered their spearheads into the bamboo shafts, the boat that was pulled under, the people sat on its hull, tables turned by the animal they had sought to kill. The whale. The panic. The blood.