Living Silver 



little more than ten inches. This size difference seemed to have 

 an effect, too, on the body proportions. They looked like a diff- 

 erent species from big ones he had landed three weeks earlier. 

 Their heads were smaller, he thought but he couldn't be dead 

 certain. 



And there wasn't time to muse about it. Already Tadeusz had 

 thrown the buffs over the side, Adam had started the engine and 

 the ropes had begun to uncoil dovsmwards behind them. When 

 had it all been done ? Who had rolled the net so neatly in its place 

 being careful that each wing would unravel smoothly when it 

 came to be shot? Who had unshackled the split links that held 

 the ropes to the Dan Lenos and reshackled the Dan Lenos to the 

 opposite ends of the furthest coil ? For that too must have been 

 done since the position of the ropes was reversed as they came in. 

 And who had fastened the pick-up ropes to the buffs ? This pace 

 was a new thing to Jan. Things didn't happen quite like that on a 

 trawler. Every man on a trawler was busy at his own job. He 

 could stop and light a cigarette when he felt like it. But here 

 everybody seemed to do everything. It was Jerzy who was now 

 in the engine-room and Adam was standing near the winch, ready 

 to brake it if necessary. Hurriedly, Jan finished sorting the fish. 

 There were just enough of them for the job of gutting to be a full 

 time occupation by itseff. But he had othei things to do as well. 



The pace of seine-netting became familiar, but it was a gruelling 

 pace. There were times when life aboard a trawler was looked 

 wistfully back at, as though it had been a form of relaxation. 

 Memories of days off Faroe, days and nights spent dallying in the 

 fish-pond, knife in hand, gutting cod at the rate of five a minute, 

 were recalled as a comfortable counter to the exhaustion of sein- 

 ing. The deep cold well of a trawler's fish pounds was softened 

 by these memories into the simulacrum of a sofa, and the slush of 

 spray and slime that spilled over the yellow frontage of his frock, 

 inlaid and glistening with the scales of fish, even that grew into a 

 smoothly invigorating image at the back of Jan's mind. 



Yet that first day on the April Morning was one of the best he 



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