Living Silver 



ally the worm would break, somewhere near its midrifif. Some- 

 times it managed to rescue itself completely but for tentacles that 

 could always be re-grown. Only occasionally would the whole 

 beast be torn from its tube and into the stomach of the sole. 



DOVER SOLE 



And so they mauraded like flocculent, soft-lipped tigers, or 

 slush-coloured snowflakes skimming the sea-bottom, the lemons 

 of the market, the expensive ones, the prime. Men loved them, 

 paid for them willingly, paid five times as much as they would pay 

 for the catfish. And fishermen therefore hunted them five times 

 as intensively. They were the great prize. Twenty baskets of 

 lemons and any trip was made ; and twenty baskets of lemons were 

 sometimes taken in a single haul. But only in the north, for the 

 lemon sole was sub-Arctic fish. It was found, indeed, and numer- 

 ously enough, over large areas of the North Sea, but the big ones 

 began in the Faroes and went on to the Iceland grounds. In this, 

 cis in most other respects, it differed widely from the Dover sole 

 that was caught by English trawlermen in the waters off Suffolk. 

 There were some people ashore, Jan learned, who couldn't tell 

 lemons from Dovers. He himself, and most other fishermen, 

 found it difficult to see any resemblance between the two species 

 — except, of course, that they were both flatfish. 



The Dover lived among mud and its own skin was mud-col- 



I lO 



