His phrase provoked smiles of the guys who tried to hide them as it was quite an inappropriate moment for it. Sensei didn’t reply anything to Eugene. He started to raise a little the head of the dolphin holding him with two hands.
“Nikolai Andreevich, help me…”
Apart from Nikolai Andreevich the other guys, including Eugene, rushed at once to help. But it was quite enough of Sensei, Nikolai Andreevich and Volodya for body transportation. The ‘mournful escort’ moved to the sea. Part of our group was left on the coast, the others, including my person, accompanied them. Hardly the water reached the waist and the body of the dolphin was half-sunk to the water, Sensei said to his assistants, “Let me go further alone. His weight is less in the water …”
When men handed over the body of the dolphin to Sensei, I noticed that Sensei didn’t only embrace it. To my surprise, he put the palm of his left hand right on the wound as if hiding it from curious eyes and embraced the back of the animal from top with his right hand. Having half-sunk the body of the dolphin to the water, Sensei went with him deeper. We stood on the same place.
Sensei was moving slowly and carefully as if it were not the dead dolphin in his hands but a little child whom he gently supported and patiently taught to swim. Little by little they moved away from the shore. Only when the water reached the chest of Sensei, he stood still. I thought that now he would push away the body to the depth and it will sink down. I felt so sorry for this dolphin. Despite these sad circumstances due to which we got a chance to meet this beautiful creature of nature and the short time of our ‘acquaintance’, this dolphin seemed to me so dear and close. I felt something unusual towards this animal and this feeling was hard to be described in words as if his grief, when he was alive, was my grief, his pain was my pain. This strange feeling of some invisible unity started to overfill me from inside. I half-closed my eyes fearing to see the moment of his going down to water and I thought that it would be better if my memory saves the picture of his ‘voyage’ with Sensei. However, having closed my eyes for a moment I suddenly heard the voice of surprised Tatyana, “Is he alive or what?”
I opened my eyes and saw with astonishment that my friends were observing with curiousity Sensei and the dolphin which was still in his hands. The water was rippling in the regions of the dolphin’s tail. First I thought that it only seemed to me. But in a few instants the tail waved again, even much strongly. We couldn’t be wrong. The guys noticed it, too. We exclaimed with joy, “Look, look, he is alive!”
Our noise attracted attention of the guys who were left on the shore and they made an attempt to come closer to us. While we wanted to near Sensei. But Nikolai Andreevich stopped all of us, “Keep quiet, don’t make noise. Stay still. Don’t scare him…”
Our group stood frozen, looking at it with admiration. The movements of the dolphin were weak first as if he recovered after a long slumber. But a bit later they became much more brave and intensive. The most amazing was the fact that this wild wounded dolphin obviously experienced the pain from a man who almost killed him but he didn’t even try to loose from the hands of Sensei though the last one only supported him afloat. On the contrary, judging by vivid movements he looked as if he was filled by life energy. It seemed that the dolphin somehow understood it and didn’t hurry up to slip out from careful and kind hands.
In some time the dolphin threw up from the water his flat tail which was similar to a whale’s one, but in a miniature, and dove after slapping with it funnily on the water. Coming to the surface not far from Sensei, he showed his side and balanced some time on the surface without assistance ‘observing’ Sensei who has been recently holding him in the hands. Sensei also froze looking at the dolphin. In a few instants obviously after this silent ‘dialogue’ finished, the dolphin turned around and slowly swam to the depth of the sea. Contrary to our expectations he didn’t dive anymore but tried to be on the surface. Sensei cast a glance at him, then dipped into the water, sleeked his hair and started to come back to the shore.
When we all crowded on the shore, Victor remarked, “He is still swimming weakly. As far as I know, dolphins are high-speed creatures.”
Eugene responded him in his favorite country dialect, “If you were beaten so by the gaff, I would look at you swimming… It’s good that at least he can tow his body like that.”
“Yes, he is still weak,” Sensei uttered thoughtfully looking how the dark silouhette with a half-moon fin slowly moved away from the shore, disappearing from time to time among waves.”
“I wonder, too, whether he will survive,” Eugene said busily.
“Keep your fingers crossed,” Stas replied.
Eugene immediately followed his advice. He crossed his fingers, put off his hat and touched his head. Stas noticed his movements and smiled, “You should better touch wood, not the head.”
“Blockhead is like wood,” Eugene answered in such a manner as if it were just triffles.
We smiled. And having waved his hand towards Eugene Stas turned to us, “Help us bring the stuff. We have no longer desire to continue fishing.”
We didn’t need to be asked twice. We went all together to take out fishing tackle, rucksacks in order to unload the air-bag. The guys floated the boat to the shallow water and dragged it along the coast like barge haulers.
While we were making our preparations, the strong wind has risen. Leaving this place we threw again a glance at the sea looking for our dolphin. But he was not seen anywhere between the huge waves. We heard a sad cry of a seagull whirling over the water… Well, unfortunately, everything has its beginning and its end in this life.
We hung our heads. It seemed that nobody wanted to believe that our almost alive dolphin sank though the common sense told quite the contrary. For some time we were going not saying a word, looking back with hope at the place where the dolphin had been seen for the last time. But every time we lowered our gazes to the sand underfoot.
“Well, finally,” Eugene was the first who couldn’t stand this mournful general silence. “Dolphins don’t sink. They are fishes!”
“They do,” Sensei replied with even and calm voice, without a slight trace of any emotions. “There are cases when they sink within one minute, especially when they are excited or scared. But if they sink, it happens quickly… As far as that goes, dolphins are not fishes at all, they are warmblooded mammals like human beings. They possess well-developed brain. And by the way, the cerebral cortex of dolphins is bigger than the cortex of humans.”
“Therefore it has more convolutions than some Homo sapiens,” Nikolai Andreevich added in jest looking at Eugene.
Sensei smiled and went on, “Like humans, dolphins react to different situation, including the stressful ones. They also possess fear.”
“I can’t grasp it anyway, how can they sink?” Eugene shrugged his shoulders, either really not understanding or pretending.
“It’s simple,” Sensei answered. “They just swallow the wrong way like people. If a dolphin is under stress, it’s enough that water goes through blowhole to lungs… and that’s all.”
“Through a blowhole?” Ruslan asked again. “It’s something like human nostile, or what?”
“Right, but it is located in the very top of the head. It is directly connected with lungs.”
“That’s great! Just sneeze once and the whole sea…” Ruslan didn’t continue his phrase letting the inertly smiling crowd to finish his “brilliant guess” by itself.
“I wonder how he coughs in the water,” Andrew inquired.
“He doesn’t. Dolphins never cough.”
“Lucky they are … these warm-blooded mammals,” Victor