The Flatties 



sea came to lie on a bed of living tissue. They too, like the flat- 

 fish, did not eat during their hibernation. They were even more 

 rigid in their observance of the annual fast, and slept together 

 with never a movement of the tail. Their winter quarters, too 

 deep to feel the effects of currents, must have been fetid with their 

 exhaling breath, a fishy version of the Black Hole of Calcutta. 



Plaice did not shoal. They lay apart, each burying itself on its 

 own ground. And there they waited for the return of warmer 

 water and the impulse to hunt and kill. They would feed occa- 

 sionally, if food became easily available ; but they would not disturb 

 themselves with any effort to hunt it. The only signal to which 

 they responded was the rattle of a trawl chain behind them, bump- 

 ing on the ground and making it rumble as in a minature earth- 

 quake. They fled from the trawl. They did not know what it was, 

 any more than land animals understand about forest fires. They 

 just fled. There was no time to begin to try to understand. There 

 was just the absolute necessity for flight. Jan could sympathise 

 with their fears but could never really get to know what happened 

 in the mind of a fish. Naturally, it was too elementary. His own 

 knowledge didn't really help him to realise how fish minds work- 

 ed ; their stubborn ignorance was beyond all his powers of com- 

 prehension. He could not even imagine the kind of messages that 

 reached their brains, how visual they were, how auditory, how 

 olfactory, how well or badly organised. Was it only a hint of 

 shadows moving that they saw ? or was it a shape ? Did the rumble 

 of the trawl come to them as a distinct sound or as some indefinite 

 tension in the surrounding water? Perhaps, even, they did not 

 sense the net at all ? Maybe it was just that the other fish were 

 fleeing, so they fled too ? It was impossible to understand them 

 because it was impossible to know even the elements of their be- 

 haviour, far less the knowledge in them that prompted it. All he 

 could do was remember that the fish did run away from the trawl. 

 And that was too obvious to be very meaningful. 



Since the bottom of the sea had hardly ever been directly ob- 

 served, it was often difficult to discover even such elementary, al- 



105- 



