SNOWBLIND
PROLOGUE
Edge was tired, so very, very tired, and cold, bitterly so, the Basilisk had been held fast now for some eleven weeks, trapped by the ever thickening pack ice in Cumberland Bay being driven into King Edward Cove.
When Captain Joshua R Abbot and the crew of the Basilisk had first taken shelter off Hope Point the Norwegian whalers had welcomed them, if not with open arms, then at least with benign resignation of the hard ship to come over the dark winter months.
At first DR Graham Edge had enjoyed the enforced incarceration on the whaling station, he might have gained his sea legs during the long voyage since departing Portsmouth in March the previous year but after fifteen long months at sea even to walk the frozen ground amid the stench of dismembered whale carcasses was pleasurable.
Unfortunately events had taken a twist for the worst since their arrival at Grytviken, initially the crew of the Basilisk and whale station had mixed well under the circumstances however as the unprecedented winter storms had lashed the settlement incessantly moral had been tested sorely, then there had been a number of bizarre incidents resulting in the death of three Norwegians and four crew from the sloop, finally their had been an unexplained out break of out of what appeared to Edge to be cholera, within days the combined crew of the Basilisk and the whaling station were reduced to twenty seven.
With at least three months of winter to come before there was any chance of the Basilisk breaking free, it was with a great deal of trepidation the that Edge sat huddled in front of the stove listening to the howling phantoms beyond the door.