Sounding [antikvár]

All the starless night he cruised joyfully south, butting through rising seas at a steady four knots, his enormous flukes stroking upward in power and sinking in rest. He had been traveling thus for days, in growing excitement, churning awash for a half-mile to breathe, submerged for the following four. Tonight he was blatting, from spring-taut internal lips in his headcase, a loud and repeated peal: "Blang blang blang " The sound, like a mallet slamming an empty steel drum, would have deafened a man in the water. The sperm whale was echo-scanning peaks of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge below him, listening for reverberations from the walls of an undersea canyon that scored the ocean bottom and was the ninth mark he must fix in his mind before turning southwest. He seemed alone but knew that he was not. Twenty fathoms beneath him, on an erratic course that he knew would end off the shoals of Newfoundland, swarmed a school of cod. He echoed on them curiously at his low-frequency cruising range, swept them finally with a ratchety put-put-put-put—like the sound of an ancient outboard motor—which told him 3