CHAPTER THREE 



NET OVERBOARD 



JAN woke, and shuddered at the green famihar face of his voci- 

 ferating alarm clock. Its hands were set at half past five of an 

 early November morning. It was the beginning of the first day 

 he was to spend on the North Sea. Half asleep still, he found 

 himself at the window, trying to measure the strength of the 

 wind. There was only a slack and dismal dank breeze to stir the 

 raw dawn air. And a good thing too. 



Once washed and dressed in his old sea clothes, the things he 

 had worn in the Orkneys, he set off for the ship. He knew it was 

 lying at Point Law, just outside the dock gates where the Gold- 

 fish would not have to worry about the state of the tide in the 

 channel. But he had never been to Point Law. It was a much 

 longer walk than he had expected and, in the soft grey half-light 

 that blended imperceptibly with the harder greys of granite, it 

 was more dismal than a mid-winter stroll among the bogs of his 

 homeland. For what seemed almost a mile he walked alone, 

 hearing his footsteps clatter like immense dice shaken at the 

 bottom of a well, along a broad lane with its high herbaceous 

 borders of chimneys. There was no other activity. The factories 

 and the repair shops strung at the side of his path were still 

 shuttered. Only the thick but penetrating stench of millions of 

 decaying carcasses reminded him that he was in the middle of one 

 of the centres of the fish industry. It was to this lane that most 

 unsaleable landings were brought, those that had been condemned 

 as unfit for human consumption and those that had simply failed 



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