The Concrete Deck 



these newcomers to the industry were seldom efficient and often 

 more of a nuisance than a help. They would fail to show up when 

 the ship was ready to sail. They would go to sea and turn so sick, 

 vomiting blood in alarming quantities, that it had sometimes been 

 necessary to bring the vessel straight back to port before a net had 

 been shot. Or then again, they would survive the trip but, once 

 on the grounds, the usual length of their working hours would 

 breed a mood of mutiny that ended only when one of them had 

 surreptitiously slashed the last trawl so that it came up from the 

 bottom in shreds. 



Yet none of these disadvantages, whether it were of ships, or 

 money, or men, seemed to slacken the incessant activity of the 

 market. From three o'clock in the morning it went on until mid- 

 day, cranes, baskets, boxes, birds, flying, sliding, slipping, sailing, 

 all without stop. And the lorries coming to be loaded, going away 

 often half empty, the roads alongside as cluttered with traffic as 

 the oily harbour water with ships. There was no stopping them. 

 They were carrying fish, and fish must be carried quickly if it is 

 not to be allowed to rot. These fish were going to be Jan's busi- 

 ness and, at last, he began to be able to see them from behind the 

 jumble of activities in which they had been hidden. But there 

 were so many of them, they were so different from one another, 

 that it took him many weeks of reading and observation before he 

 began to understand the most elementary facts. 



55 



