And now he heard a new sound that made no sense at all.

Huge splashing.

As if something enormous was getting dropped or thrown down on the water.

Out there.

In the fog.

Where he couldn’t see.

Sometimes it seemed close, or again very muffled as if further off.

And then nothing for a time.

And more. Two, three times – explosions of water-sound – with no order or rhythm. Quiet, then whoosh-bang!

Again, then it was gone.

He had quit paddling but when the water-thunder (as he thought it) seemed to have stopped, he started up again and had gone a while in the fog, stroking evenly, straight ahead, trying to push his eyes through the grey blank wall in front of him . . .

When suddenly, as if passing through a thick veil, he came out of the fog.

He had just two moments to see what lay before him. He had come out into a large bay surrounded by islands and the mainland on the east so it made an enormous circle of calm water.

And it was filled, absolutely filled with whales. There were spouts everywhere, one after another, and whales – not just killer whales but true giants of the sea – leaping up into the air and falling back with a large thunder-crash of water.

Then, directly in front of the canoe, the very ocean seemed to swell, pushed up from beneath – and first the nose, then the whole front half of a giant grey whale exploded up, towering over the canoe and Leif, hung for an instant, then slammed down and over to the side in an explosion of water and noise that seemed to engulf the whole canoe.

If it had come down on me, we never would have come up.

Leif couldn’t believe the canoe was still floating. The pressure wave from the falling whale ploughed into the side of the small boat, drove it sideways, skidding on the water like a chip of wood. He had no control. Had the opposite of control because everything he tried to do turned out to be wrong.

In the thick fog, paddling as best he could in a straight line, without realizing it he had come well out into the bay. He had heard the jumping whales around him but had seen nothing and now . . .

Now he could see everything.

And what he saw came close to terrifying him. He was smack in the middle of what seemed to be an Odin-inspired gathering of true giants and he suddenly remembered Old Carl watching Little Carl trying to keep up and getting brushed aside with men at work saying: ‘When oxen dance in the barnyard, mice hide in their holes.’

And now Leif was the smallest of mice in a massive barnyard. In the fog he had propelled himself out into the very centre of all that was happening – a frenzy of whales.