Living Silver 



them down with his hands, judging the tension, shouting orders 

 occasionally to Adam who was at the winch : 'Stop the starboard', 

 and Adam would take the starboard drum out of gear. The port 

 rope tightened until it was exactly as taut as the starboard one. It 

 was the one great law of hauling that both sides should be drawn 

 in at the same rate. Otherwise the net would rise lopsidedly and 

 empty its catch back into the freedom of the sea. And Jerzy had 

 a very delicate judgement about these things. Only he could be 

 relied upon to keep the movement on both sides simultaneous. 

 Not even the splices between the coils could be relied upon. Ropes 

 did not all stretch equally, and sometimes a coil had to be short- 

 ened in order to excise a flaw. There was no impersonal way of 

 measuring the amount still out on either rope. Only the balanced 

 judgement of a man who understood every twinge in each strand 

 could ensure that the Dan Lenos of both vdngs would break sur- 

 face at the same moment. They didn't. 



It was just as the end of the second coil broke surface - the 

 frayed part. It snapped. On the other roller the ninth coil held. 

 The loose end of that second coil whipped back, with all the 

 strength of the tension in it, upon the upper third of Jerzy 's thigh 

 boots and bruised his thighs. 



Jerzy luckily came to no grief. He lost a sea boot and his rheu- 

 matism got worse, but ropes were not like trawl wires. Their 

 breakage seldom killed a man. The April Morning though was left 

 with two ropes and a heavy net out, and there was only one rope 

 on the winch and one drum to draw in the broken gear. It was a 

 delicate, time-wasting job. At any moment the other rope might 

 give under its quadrupled strain. For two hours they hauled slow- 

 ly, the boat at a standstill, the winch revolving like a slow-motion 

 film . And the weather graduated from the adolescent pranks of a 

 stiff breeze to the fully adult hatefulness of a storm. They did not 

 even dare to move head into the wind. The watery half-hours had 

 to be tolerated lest the single strand that held them to their gear 

 should be broken. Even worse was the danger of fouling. As the 

 propellor wrenched clear of the surface they would see the screw 



176 



