A Breath of Sea Air 



side so that a lobster could hardly reach the eye through which 

 it must travel if it wanted to be boiled alive, but plunk and level 

 on its wooden bottom, with stones arranged for ballast to hold 

 it in place. 



The first five creels were all the same. But Frank was a patient 

 man. He did not shift his gear. For four days now he had not 

 caught a single beast among those particular shallows and, if the 

 trap were empty again tomorrow, he would have to make a 

 change. But he knew the ground, and he knew it as a good 

 ground, and he was willing to gamble a little more. 



Jan rowed on, about a quarter of a mile further round one of 

 those garish headlands of reddish stone that always struck him as 

 resembling a fossilised version of the Polish summer. He rowed 

 on into another tiny bay where they met with further disappoint- 

 ment. Sometimes the bait was gone, nibbled away by small fish 

 perhaps, and the disintegrated bones washed out by the movement 

 of the tide. Or, perhaps, the sea-lice had got it. In any case, 

 there was no lobster, not until the ninth creel surfaced. 



It was a large animal and, in spite of its obviously ferocious 

 appearance, there was a kind of tranquillity about it, the peaceful- 

 ness that comes from stolidity and the lack of fear. It had that 

 deep-centred slowness of a business magnate who can afford to 

 take his time because his business is big enough to get the better 

 of time. The weak must be impatient. They must work fast. 

 They must anticipate the moves of the market. But the strong 

 man creates his own market. He can choose deliberately. And 

 this lobster was obviously very sure of itself. There was nothing 

 in the sea that could injure it except for the parasites in its gills, 

 and only the barnacles that made it look like a heavily encrusted 

 hunk of blue rock could hinder it. But it would lose them when 

 it next shed its shell and underwent ecdysis. 



Frank opened the flap that faced the five-ribbed fan of its tail. 

 Before it could turn, his hand was firm on its back and he had 

 dragged it into the air. Its claws performed angry contortions. 

 Its curved abdomen flapped helplessly. Nothing could dislodge 



7 



