Island of the Blue Dolphins

25

The Aleuts never again came to the Island of the Blue Dolphins, but every summer I watched for them, and early every spring I gathered shellfish, which I dried and stored in the cave where I kept my canoe.

Two winters after they left I made more weapons — a spear, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. These I also stored in the place beneath the headland, so if the hunters returned I would be ready to go to another part of the island, to move from cave to cave, living in my canoe if necessary.

For many summers after the Aleuts had gone the herd of otter left Coral Cove. The old otter which had survived the Aleut spears and by now were aware that summer was a time of danger would lead the herd away. They went far off to the kelp beds of Tall Rock where they stayed until the first storms of winter.

Often Rontu and I would go out to the rock and live there for several days catching fish for Won-a-nee and the others I had come to know.

One summer the otter did not leave, the summer that Rontu died, and I knew then that none of the otter who remembered the hunters were left. Nor did I think of them often nor of the white men who had said they would come back, but did not come.

Until that summer, I had kept count of all the moons since the time my brother and I were alone upon the island. For each one that came and went I cut a mark in a pole beside the door of my house. There were many marks, from the roof to the floor. But after that summer I did not cut them any more. The passing of the moons now had come to mean little, and I only made marks to count the four seasons of the year. The last year I did not count those.

It was late in the summer that Rontu died. The days since spring, whenever I went to the reef to fish, he would not go with me unless I urged him to. He liked to lie in the sun in front of the house and I let him, but I did not go so often as in the past.

I remember the night that Rontu stood at the fence and barked for me to let him out. Usually he did this when the moon was big, and he came back in the morning, but that night there was no moon and he did not return.

I waited all that day for him until almost dusk and then I went out to look for him. I saw his tracks and followed them over the dunes and a hill to the lair where he had once lived. There I found him, lying in the back of the cave, alone. At first I thought that he had been hurt, yet there were no wounds on him. He touched my hand with his tongue, but only once and then he was quiet and scarcely breathed.

Since night had fallen and it was too dark for me to carry Rontu back, I stayed there. I sat beside him through the night and talked to him. At dawn I took him in my arms and left the cave. He was very light, as if something about him had already gone.

The sun was up as I went along the cliff. Gulls were crying in the sky. He raised his ears at the sound, and I put him down, thinking that he wished to bark at them as he always did. He raised his head and followed them with his eyes, but did not make a sound.

‘Rontu,’ I said, ‘you have always liked to bark at the seagulls. Whole mornings and afternoons you have barked at them. Bark at them now for me.’

But he did not look at them again. Slowly he walked to where I was standing and fell at my feet. I put my hand on his chest. I could feel his heart beating, but it beat only twice, very slowly, loud and hollow like the waves on the beach, and then no more.

‘Rontu,’ I cried, ‘oh, Rontu!’

I buried him on the headland. I dug a hole in the crevice of the rock, digging for two days from dawn until the going down of the sun, and put him there with some sand flowers and a stick he liked to chase when I threw it, and covered him with pebbles of many colours that I gathered on the shore.