We found our first catch just upriver of Eldermann’s Crick, sunning himself on a boulder-beach pullout. He was too filled with bliss to be wary and by the time our hooks had lodged themselves into his flesh and began to drag him under the slaughter-cannon’s mouth he was still only half-bestirred, resentful at being pulled from slumber as much as being pulled to death. He was a grand old bull-terrorpin, some seventy tons or more, and it took nearly three volleys to crack his skull deep enough to shatter his brain-pan. Ah, the bloody smell in the air that day when his lungs emptied for the last time! It was as if one were inhaling molten iron all afternoon as one cracked through shell and carapace and scale, fit to turn the stomach but also to invigorate the arm and toughen the palms. The same sun that had bestirred the old bull’s veins now scorched us burnt-brown and sweated our backs until his gore ran away from our red-streaked limbs. It was a vision as if from hades to see us mine through him bit-by-bit, chiselling away the finery of his shells and the trophies of his bones and the tender comestibles of his flesh until at last his heart was before us for the retrieval, still-beating, and we cheered as one raw voice.
***
When concerning yourself with terrorpin-hunting, the first and most important detail of which to be aware is your goal: the heart, that precious muscled mass which burns so stately and so strongly with ponderous life that it may continue to churn onwards for decades in proper conditions. This accordingly will fix your targets: the largest of terrorpins, which in due time will lead you to the eldest as they never quite cease to grow, and the eldest of the grandest sort such as the shark-jawed and leather-capped which are correspondingly scarce to be found as their great appetites prohibit a sizable population.
***
The long afternoon ended in good spirits, but it was only the beginning of the troubles that were taken with the old bull’s corpse. What meat we couldn’t consume fresh was smoked; what couldn’t be salted was salted; what couldn’t be salted was chopped for bait and chum to keep the fishermen of the crew busy; what remained was thrown overboard for the sport of the gyrfrogs to snap and fight over, with some rapscallions even going so far as to bet on the outcomes of these most cruel brawls. His bones were cleaned with knife and boiling water before being wrapped and stowed deep in the hold; his shell was polished as lovingly as the ship’s own deck until every speck of mud and muck that had decorated it in life was no more, leaving only the most gorgeous glassy shine; and his heart was taken to the ship’s surgeon-mate for soothing and massaging and immersion in only the most carefully-chosen brines. There it would marinate for the rest of our voyage, sealed-tight against outside intrusion until it could be taken home to a machinery and be canned for its final purpose.
***
The killing of a terrorpin is a matter of care as much or moreso than it is violent force; though the beast is vast and courageous in its own defense it remains but a beast and its defeat at the hands of brave and clever men is assured, should it not flee. The terrorpin’s shell armours it most thoroughly, and force sufficient to breach its armoured breast may also cause harm to its heart, if not directly than from the transmitted force of such outrageous impacts. Accordingly, to preserve the prize the best target for the killing is the terrorpin’s crown, and the key thing must be to maneuver the beast such that its retracted and reticent head is facing the ship’s killing-gun – a great brute muzzle-loader of a thing that can crush its skull in as few shots as possible, thereby reducing the stress felt by its target as much as possible so as to gently lull its body into somnolence eternal about its precious ever-beating cargo.
***
Even as we dealt with the matter of the old bull’s body we searched afresh for new game, for the only thing better than a terrorpin in the hull is another in your hooks – and our diligence was greatly rewarded. As we ventured down the nether reaches of the Brinkmore River, the lookout did cry a nest! a nest! and no sooner was it said than every man jack of us did behold it: a great thrashed-up trench of earth that had once been a river-bank and was now an incubator for the infants of behemoth, still dreaming in their soft-shelled wombs. But wait! – our thoughts were proven but fancies; there came trembling in the soil, such that the river-water did lap against the sides of our ship from its force, and trembling with fatigue the infants of the terrorpins burst above ground as one, already the size of dogs and panting with fatigue and weight of the world.
Ashore, ashore! Roared the captain, and every man seized a hook and a piston and an oar and made for the boats, all laughing in the spirit of competition as we brought down the hatchlings without a care but for the thrill of the sport, for their shells were yet thin in their youth and their hearts would go unharmed by dashing them to bits – such small, frivolous organs were of no matter or use for a ship or a ship’s paymaster but were trivial things that could be held in private by each member of the crew for resale at home, perhaps to be fashioned into engines in children’s toys. I claimed only three, for I was a green hand still, but I prided myself that not one did I put to waste through accidental force: each little heart beat firmly and proudly in my palm, and I consulted carefully with the apprentice surgeon in how best to preserve them for the delight of my own youth far and half the world away.
***
Once removed from its natural resting-place the terrorpin’s heart – until now a thoughtless lump of meat and force whose duty was fixed by dull routine and whose purpose was to please one thankless brute beast – becomes the epicentre of improvement for ten thousand lives in ways big and little too varied to imagine, let alone describe. A heart-canister is sealed and attached to a pump handle, and it saves ten thousand aching arms a year in turning a crank. It is placed in a mill, and a hundred thousand loaves of bread are baked from grain ground painlessly. It sits amidst the smoke and fury of a great steel foundry, and dozens of hammers, bellows, and forges roar at its behest. Truly, the thanks for such a miraculous organ cannot be granted merely to the terrorpin, but to Providence itself.
***
On the third day of the hunt the air itself seemed determined to repel our efforts; it grew devilish thick and heavy with foul humours, such that the stoutest lungs seemed to spasm and cough after the merest labour. With it came a fog that resembled nothing so much as a foul bean-soup grown wings that set the lookout unable to see the ship’s deck, let alone our quarry. Our journey was schooled now based on hunches and signs – an urge to turn to port rather than starboard, or a chance discovery of fresh feces lapping at the bow-wave. In such an environment of keen attention and painstaking waiting the minds of many are free to gnaw at themselves and each other, and here the adages and superstitions of the life-long terrorpin-hunter showed their shameful aspects: mutters that arose in corners and barbs flung at backs and schemes and gossip fit to make a fishmonger’s-wife seem discreet and the model of temperance. Who might be bad luck? Whose habits were leading the prey astray? Whose decision to cut their hair, to shave their beard, to spit in the wrong place or sing the wrong song at the wrong time might be to blame for the state we all found ourselves in? There were as many theories as there were theorists, and none of them kind; the sole fact all agreed upon was that the terrorpin we chased surely had the Devil in it, and matters would be set right as soon as its heart was freed from that mischievous body.
***
While the fruits of the terrorpin-hunt’s chase are rich and justly-praised, what cannot be overlooked are the benefits it brings beyond the material, which to the ignorant eye may be seen as romantic fancy but to the experienced and worldly may be recognized as that rarest of treasures: the spirit of manhood. For where else but the terrorpin-hunt, when human brilliance and muscle must work in concert with their fellows against brute nature; when the brave and few willingly risk their lives for the benefit of the feeble and many; when the prize is priceless but gifted to others with a glad heart; can be seen the freest and truest face of humanity in its naked glory?
***
The ship is lost, the crew is lost, and I am not to be found for much longer. The shattered planks between me and the songs of the gyrfrogs are thin and leaking, and I fear my blood shall find its way to unsavoury nostrils forthwith.
Such a travail has already taken place once today, when our hooks tore the flesh of our quarry at last, only for its alarumed thrashing to draw the eye of a greater beast. It was indeed a Devilish terrorpin, but the monstrous creature that rose from the depths was no terrorpin; nay, it was no less than Satan Himself, rose to claim all our souls for vanity. His great toothed jaws snapped our keel in twain and tore deeper bite after bite even as we foundered, and with half our boats lost on this damnable chase we were short of places to be manned and long on men to flee – all of them armed, all of them filled with rage and fear. Oh God, oh my God, the sounds! The screams! Only in death will they leave me, and only in death did they leave the poor devils; in the fury of the waves as our prey tore loose and our besieger’s giant armoured tail rent us stem from stern I saw not one boat leave for shore.
May this canister preserve my writings, may another tell my family of my begging their forgiveness.
God be with you.
***
In conclusion, the terrorpin-hunting trade, though often overlooked these days to its exceedingly brief lifespan and limited economic import in the grand scheme of the fortieth century (with the development of the ‘steel heart’ taking place less than a decade into industrial-scale terrorpin harvest and its improvement to rough parity within six years of that), was of notable importance ecologically. Many of the larger species of readily-visible terrorpins were extirpated regionally and some breeds such as Blandly’s terrorpin and the timber terrorpin were brought to the brink of extinction. This led to massive faunal turnover in the equatorial swamplands, as sediment ecosystems that depended on terrorpin churn for nutrient cycling clotted and stalled and many species of greater water-weed that relied on terrorpin predation of their major grazers were brought startlingly low and remain historically reduced to this day. Finally, terrorpin-hunting led to the near-extinction via starvation of the superpredator known as the Amerogan Annihilgator some two decades before any sightings of the beast were confirmed by scientists. The ongoing impact of even the briefest and most petty of human avarice cannot be underestimated.