"The figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning this ebonness was a glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round and round upon his head."
I'm a little troubled my what Captain Oshan mutters under his breath as we step aboard:
"To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Is he mad?"
"...Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks."
Captain Oshan takes us on a nice cruise of the coastline and them out past the northern tip of Nova Scotia. Then we hear him yell:
"There she blows!--there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!"
So really..what happened was a nice three hour cruise on the north end of Cape Breton and a view of some small pilot whales...but there was this odor...
"It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment."All block quotes courtesy of Herman Melville...In the morning we head down to North Sydney and consider the ferry to Newfoundland. The kayak thing didn't work out because of heavy fog in the morning...
We went shopping this afternoon for groceries and purchased some wine at the local Provincial liquor store. The prices her for wine, milk and gasoline are much higher than in the States. Fortunately, I'm smoking a pipe these days. You don't even want to think about Canadian cigarette prices. Last time we went though Canada they were $12 a pack. I bought some scallops and some bacon to wrap them in. They had some really big lobsters in a tank for $6 a pound, but I don't have the heart to throw them in a pot of boiling water.
We've got good Wi-Fi here so I went online and:
So anyway, here are a couple of Pix from her website (reposted without permission).
If you see an image on this blog without my signature, I stole it off the internet. My own pix are all signed. This is a lovely island, about the size of Puerto Rico (100 miles by 50). It's pastoral and manicured with many potato farms, rivers and bays.
I went fishing yesterday. The people running the boat had heavy Irish accents. A lot of Irish immigrants settled here. I caught a codfish but had to throw it back because the season on cod starts July 11 this year. Tuna fishing starts July 19, but even if you catch a 1,000 pound blue fin tuna, the boat owner keeps it and sells it to the Japanese for about $30,000.
So, what we caught was mackerel. I have a couple of pounds of fillets in the freezer. We also went into Charlottetown to a "Founders" exhibit that did a good job of explaining how the Canadian Provinces came to be, starting with an exploratory meeting here in PEI in 1864. The Maritime Provinces (PEI, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) were not really that hot on the concept of confederation. The last of them came into the fold in 1948. Our hosts still think that it was all a bad idea for PEI. Eventually, about 80% of Canada was purchased from the Hudson Bay Company for about $1,000,000. Unfortunately, the company didn't really have title to the land so treaties had to be hammered out with the natives.
We've been playing doubles with our hosts. They're really nice people who make us feel like they'd be fine if we parked in their yard all summer. Freeman has a good serve. Today our games were 7-5 and 6-4.
We came over on the eight mile long "Confederation Bridge" from New Brunswick. On the way out, in the morning, we'll take the ferry to Nova Scotia and the Breton Peninsula. Today is "Canada Day", a big holiday here. Happy Birthday, Canada!
