Te Awaiti Whaling Station, Marlborough Sounds

The smell hit Dickie like a brick; he'd been away from here too long and was no longer accustomed to the stench that pervaded everything. It repulsed him more now than at any time before. Perhaps it was age, he thought. As a younger man, the stink had not bothered him much at all - no, he decided, he wasn't old, just getting soft.

The two men accompanying Dickie, his associates, had never been to a whaling station and they ...