To Conrad there was something deeply pleasing about the mundanity of his morning routine with Rollo, its repetitive, unchanging nature. He would have been disappointed if, having hauled on his stiff black waders, Rollo hadn’t promptly struggled out of them again, announcing that he needed to relieve himself—the click of the chest straps acting as some kind of Pavlovian trigger that also spared him the chore of loading the gear.

The equipment was stored in a barn behind the house. Windblown sand had banked up against its sides giving the impression it had risen up out of the ground, pushing its way through the soft mantel. The barn’s clean hard lines belied the muddle inside. Sails hung from its rafters like giant bats. Gill nets, drift nets and haul-seines were bundled up all around. There were cod lines, drag lines, Greenport sloop dredges for scallops, basket rakes and bull rakes for clamming, oyster tongs, lobster traps and eel traps; as well as all manner of other paraphernalia for ensuring the smooth operation of the above—tubs of cork floats and lead weights, clusters of small anchors and marker buoys, spools of twine and coils of rope, buckets of nails, tins of grease and barrels of tar.

Stacked in one corner of the barn was a jumble of obsolete whaling gear—lances, double-fluke and toggle harpoons, longhandled blades for cutting into blubber, block and tackle for prizing the blankets free from the carcass, more blades for mincing the blubber, two cast-iron cauldrons for trying-out the whale oil, and large sieves for skimming off the bones and skin.

This clutter had come with the old whaleboat house—Rollo’s contribution to their enterprise—that now stood beside the barn. A twenty-six-foot whaleboat had also formed part of the package. They had hoisted the craft up into the barn’s rafters where the beauty of its slender lines was revealed to maximum effect. It was the first thing Conrad’s gaze would settle on each time he heaved open the double-doors. This morning was different in that he found himself smiling as he stared up at the craft.