The Concrete Deck 



and the ice melting, and the fish-room warming, and the catch 

 going bad in the pounds. That too sometimes happened, but not 

 very often. In spite of their antiquity, there was hardly any weather 

 too bad for these little ships when they stowed away their nets 

 and turned their stems towards home. 



The men who lived and worked on them could take almost any- 

 thing. If they couldn't then they didn't sail twice ; for it was the 

 crew's accommodation that had been most skimped by the builders 

 and that had suffered most with the ageing of the vessels. The tiny 

 fo'cs'le of a scratcher, with its double tiers of bunks arranged in a 

 bent triangle, the anchor groaning overhead, its chain rumbling 

 with rust as the whole room soared clear of a wave or slapped back 

 downn like a fist on the water, the mugs swaying until they had 

 broken from their little iron hooks, the fug of eight sweating bod- 

 ies, each screwed to a pipe or a cigarette, all this Jan could imag- 

 ine ; but not until he had made a trip on one of them did he really 

 know the terrible strain, felt in every muscle of the body, that 

 comes from continually striving against the maximal movement of 

 the ship, trying, sometimes unsuccessfully, to avoid clattering out 

 of a bunk. Nor had he understood that, when the vessel is under 

 full steam in rough deep water, a man must sometimes crawl on 

 hands and knees, gripping the iron battens on a constantly capsiz- 

 ing deck, heading, wet neck first, into a ton of green and white 

 and battering brine, crawl painfully forward every time that he 

 wants to pass from the wheel house to his blankets. Such experi- 

 ences could be terrifying. And yet, when he had come to know 

 them intimately, Jan found them more exhilarating and less miser- 

 able than the trials of warm, smooth water. He could not have 

 anticipated how the depressive confinement forward, with its al- 

 most total lack of sanitation, its bullying and its obscenity would 

 have made the drenching and dangerous sea into a healthy relief, 

 almost an escape, from the boredom of his quarters. For though 

 he had understood the physical discomforts of trawling (a single 

 day on the Caroon had been enough for that) he had not realised 

 that the same social degredations as are found in Glasgow tene- 



5^ 



