The Whale for the Killing [antikvár]

i.' < ! . Chapter 1 A torment of sooty cloud scudded out of the mountainous barrens of southeastern Newfoundland, Harried by a furious nor'easter, eddies of sand-sharp snow beat against the town of Port Aux Basques; an unlovely cluster of wooden buildings sprawled across a bed of cold rock and colder muskeg. A^ite frost-smoke swirled up from the waters of the harbour to marry the cloud wrack and go streaming out across Cabot Strait toward the looming cliffs of Cape Breton and the mainland of North America. January deals harshly with Newfoundland. It had just dealt harshly with me and my wife, Claire, and the hundred or so other passengers who had endured the crossing of the Cabot Strait to Port Aux Basques aboard the slab-sided, floating bam of a car ferry, William Carson. The passage from North Sydney, in Nova Scotia, normally takes six hours. This time the storm had extended it to twelve, and the Carson, savaged by that surging sweep of wind and water, had meanly revenged herself on passengers and cargo. A ten-ton bulldozer, lashed to the deck with half-inch cables, had been pitched right through the steel bulwarks into the green depths. Grey-faced and desolate, most of the passengers lay helplessly asprawl in cabins reeking with the stench of vomit. \^en the Carson eventually wallowed into Port Aux Basques harbour and managed to get her lines 1