CHAPTER 11What Culver heard was fact and legend and emotion so oddly blended that it was difficult to tell where one began and another took on.
“The Murmurer!” said Peterson. “There was a ship! A clipper is a lady, but a whaler is a man with double timbers that never hog or sag. Ice couldn’t bust the Murmurer. It never whimpered because of the sea or him that drove the ship. That was Parrish, boys. Red Parrish was getting old. Mostly his hair was gone, except a fringe. But all of him was red and yellow-freckled, blistered and peeling. Parrish—he was a cat, and the fat mice he hunted around the world was sperm whales. He ran them in the attic to Baffin Bay. He ran them in the basement to South Shetlands and the Weddell Sea. He could have found them in the dark, smelling them out. His eyes
