Dolphin Island

“You have skills and enthusiasms we need badly,” said Professor Kazan. “What you still lack is discipline and knowledge—and you’ll get both at the University. Then you’ll be able to play a big part in the plans I have for the future.”

“What plans?” asked Johnny, a little more hopefully.

“I think you know most of them. They all add up to this—mutual aid between men and dolphins, to the advantage of both. In the last few months we’ve found some of the things we can do together, but that’s only a feeble beginning. Fish-herding, pearl-diving, rescue operations, beach patrols, wreck surveys, water sports—oh, there are hundreds of ways that dolphins can help us! And there are much bigger things…”

For a moment, he was tempted to mention that sunken spaceship, lost back in the Stone Age. But he and Keith had decided to say nothing about that until they had more definite information; it was the Professor’s ace in the hole, not to be played until the right moment. One day, when he felt that it was time to increase his budget, he was going to try that piece of dolphin mythology on the Space Administration and wait for the dollars to roll in…

Johnny’s voice interrupted his reverie.

“What about the killer whales, Professor?”

“That’s a long-term problem, and there’s no simple answer to it at the moment. Electrical conditioning is only one of the tools we’ll have to use, when we’ve decided on the best policy. But I think I know the final solution.”

He pointed to the low table at the other side of the room.

“Bring over that globe, Johnny.”

Johnny carried across the twelve-inch globe of the Earth, and the Professor spun it on its axis.

“Look here,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about Reservations—Dolphins Only, Out of Bounds to Killer Whales. The Mediterranean and the Red Sea are the obvious places to start. It would take only about a hundred miles of fencing to seal them off from the oceans and to make them quite safe.”

“Fencing?” asked Johnny incredulously.

The Professor was enjoying himself. Despite Nurse’s warning, he looked quite capable of going on for hours.

“Oh, I don’t mean wire-netting or any solid barrier. But when we know enough Orcan to talk to killer whales, we can use underwater sound projectors to shepherd them around and keep them out of places where we don’t want them to go. A few speakers in the Straits of Gibraltar, a few in the Gulf of Aden—that will make two seas safe for dolphins. And later, perhaps we can fence off the Pacific from the Atlantic, and give one ocean to the dolphins and the other to the killer whales. See, it’s not far from Cape Horn to the Antarctic, the Bering Strait’s easy, and only the gap south of Australia will be hard to close. The whaling industry’s been talking about this sort of operation for years, and sooner or later it’s going to be done.”

He smiled at the rather dazed look on Johnny’s face, and came back to earth.

“If you think that half my ideas are crazy, you’re quite right. But we don’t know which half, and that’s what we’ve got to find out. Now do you understand why I want you to go to college? It’s for my own selfish reasons, as well as your own good.”

Before Johnny could do more than nod in reply, the door opened.

“I said five minutes, and you’ve had ten,” grumbled Nurse Tessie. “Out you go. And here’s your milk, Professor.”

Professor Kazan said something in Russian which conveyed, quite clearly, the impression that he didn’t like milk. But he was already drinking it by the time that Johnny, in a very thoughtful mood, had left the room.

He walked down to the beach, along the narrow path that wound through the forest. Most of the fallen trees had been cleared away, and already the hurricane seemed like a nightmare that could never really have happened.

The tide was in, covering most of the reef with a sheet of water nowhere more than two or three feet deep. A gentle breeze was playing across it, producing the most curious and beautiful effects. In some areas the water was flat and oily, still as the surface of a mirror. But in others it was corrugated into billions of tiny ripples, sparkling and twinkling like jewels as their ever changing curves reflected the sunlight.

The reef was lovely and peaceful now, and for the last year it had been his whole world. But wider worlds were beckoning; he must lift his eyes to farther horizons.

He no longer felt depressed by the prospect of the years of study still ahead. That would be hard work, but it would also be a pleasure; there were so many things he wanted to learn about the Sea.

And about its People, who were now his friends.

A Note from the Author

I hope that if you have read this far, you will want to know how much of this book is based upon fact and how much is pure imagination.