Living Silver 



communal prognostications of disaster in tea of the same colour 

 and texture as a very ancient khaki uniform. It appeared that the 

 ship was a wreck. The planks of the decking were held together 

 by fish-slime and spittle. The plates of rust were cemented with 

 paint. The mast was tethered by the Goldfish's aged underwear. 

 And the boiler would burst if the barometer fell. This grumbling 

 made Jan more confident. He had contracted a sentimental 

 veneration for the still mythical profession of a trawlerman. He 

 wanted to protest. But, after a cursory inspection of the Carooiiy 

 he decided that he had better keep silent. 



Her basic lines were all right though they were not quite the 

 latest fashion. A straight high stem and gently curving bulwarks 

 led back to a trawler stern with its broad beam curving sharply 

 down to the rudder: the wheelhouse just aft of midships over- 

 hanging the trawl winch, two large drums, big with warp, flanked 

 at either end by much smaller solid drums that were bare of any 

 trace of wire : in front of that the broad free space of the deck, 

 the hatch to the fish-hold in the middle of it : and the foremast 

 standing close to the fo'c'sle, its spar of a gilson pointing directly 

 at the wheel: then, behind the skipper's quarters, the metal line 

 of the engine-room casing, subtending on either side its string of 

 rollers or sheaves, and the funnel that stood out high and straight 

 above the quay, all these were well enough. And so was the boat 

 hung on its derricks, and the after mast where the mizzen sail was 

 tethered, the sail used to steady the ship while she was towing 

 or shooting or hauling. There were lots of things that would pass 

 at a muster, and yet Jan was not reassured. 



She had been built in 1898, and she looked her age. Her plates 

 were dented and rust flaked off them when he patted them with 

 a length of stick. The planking looked as worn as the staircase up 

 to the shrine of a saint's miraculous relics. One of the windows of 

 the wheelhouse had been removed, never to be replaced. The 

 immense winch, immediatly under the bridge, was coloured a 

 deep dark red though the miles of wire trawl warp that were 

 coiled about its two main drums had blushed into a rust of some- 



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