Only to find that he was on top of another ring of bubbles and had to grab the sides of the canoe and use his knees to keep balanced to avoid being rolled up and over and out of the way.

Trying, and failing, to keep calm, he took to the paddle once more and tried to manoeuvre away only to find himself yet again in the wrong place as a giant open mouth exploded up under him.

If I just keep working back and forth . . .

But no. Along with the whales that were bubble-fence feeding, more, many more, were just lining themselves horizontally on the surface and lunge-feeding, thrashing with their flukes along the top of the water with their mouths open.

And so it went. Cut one way, mouth up from the bottom, cut another way, slam sideways when a lunge-feeder caught him, spin, up from the bottom, lunge, scoot backwards to another bubble-feeder. Back and forth, to and fro, spin and jerk until somehow he found himself flattened against the shore, hanging on desperately to a dead tree limb that stuck out from a rock, without having the slightest idea of how he and the canoe got there.

He was soaking wet – the canoe had a lot of water sloshing back and forth in the bottom – his hair was hanging in his face and a good-size piece of unchewed smoked salmon was jammed in his mouth.

Somewhere along the wild ride, he must have felt hungry and grabbed a strip of meat – though he had no memory of doing it – and in the furore of trying to avoid wrecks with the whales had forgotten to chew and swallow it.

He did so now, swallowing it in chunks, and dug out the copper pot and bailed the canoe out, all without really thinking. In the bay, which lay before him, the whales were still at it – jumping and falling and bubble-feeding and lunge-feeding – so that the surface seemed to be boiling with them.

But he was now well free of them, and crawling along the shore, he came to a small inlet – really little more than a dent in the side of the shoreline – and turned in. There was a little circular pan of gravel and rock – he could see no bear scat – and he pulled up the canoe, turned it over to dry out, and made camp near a trickling brook that came out of the rock and forest above him.

All this took no time or thought. It was becoming nearly automatic for him – quick fire-circle of rocks, a mouse nest to make a spark to make a fire to make . . .

To make.

All of it without thinking. Wherever he was now became his home, was as familiar as if he had designed things for himself, had put this firewood just here, put this mouse nest just there . . .

Of course there were life surprises that were not always good.