Living Silver 



and a half fathoms was all the freedom they could extort from the 

 pull of the great line. The evil-looking hook was biting deep into 

 the membranes of their oesophagus. Every tug hurt, but they 

 went on pulling in their dreary circles, shifting the ground-line 

 for a yard, perhaps, just shifting it but never escaping from the 

 pull of the snood or the pain of the hook. Again Jan felt 

 dizzy. His anatomy, once more, became hopelessly congested. 

 He could hardly believe that his own hands really belonged to 

 him. 



For the rest of the trip, however, he kept a very clear head - 

 and he needed it. Radcliffe had allowed him to sail because he 

 thought Jan intelligent enough to learn quickly. But he still had 

 to learn. Already, ashore, he had practised with a line, learning 

 to arrange 420 fathoms of strong hemp in a basket. A rim of cork 

 ran round the top of this basket and into it the hooks had to be 

 fitted. And they had to be fitted in the correct order. And there 

 were 1 1 2 of them in every basket of line . It was the most element- 

 ary of a linerman's techniques but even it required considerable 

 dexterity. 



Sandy had been a good friend to Jan as well as a cousin of his 

 wife and it had not been the least of his acts of friendship to allow 

 Jan to take his twenty lines aboard the Honor. Their total value 

 amounted to over six hundred pounds and, if Jan were to be care- 

 less, several of them might easily be lost. Sandy's trust was not, 

 of course, without basis. He knew that Jan was a ready man at 

 most of a fisherman's skills and that he could probably adapt him- 

 self to this new one as easily as he had to the others, but he would 

 never have trusted the Pole with his lines if he had been sailing on 

 any boat other than the Honor. It was not to Jan alone that he 

 entrusted them but to Radcliffe, the mate and the other three 

 sharemen with whom he had spent so many hard and jovial hours. 

 And they, too, had accepted Jan as much for the sake of their in- 

 jured friend as because they hoped or thought Jan would make a 

 linerman. 



At first Jan believed that their interest in his progress was a 



226 



