Living Silver 



There would be no time to raise them before the damage was done. 

 About the remainder of the gear they were not worried. It was 

 deep enough to escape the heaviest waves that could be expected. 

 But, as the wind showed signs of increasing, Jan grew more wor- 

 ried about these central nets. He began to realise that George 

 was right and that it had been a 'damned silly caper'. Not only 

 were the four shallow nets in danger but they were a weak link in 

 the fleet. Instead of being bound eye to eye along the whole side, 

 or head, of each net they were fastened to the rest of the fleet by 

 ropes long enough to allow for the difference in depth. If a storm 

 did come up and these ropes gave, the fleet of gear would be 

 broken in two and they might easily lose half of it. 



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DRIFT NET 



Very occasionally now, the stylus of the echo-sounder would 

 flick down a small brown mark, hardly big enough for a single 

 herring far less a shoal of them. To the west they could see the 

 glint of red and green lights and all around them were the flashes 

 of lighted buoys. Their nets were not the web. They were on the 

 edge of a gigantic spider's web and their own two miles of waiting 

 lint was no more than a single filament in it. And still the buoys 

 rolled gracefully in the growing uneasiness of the water. Again, 

 like all aristocrats, the drift net was not particularly concerned 

 about the prospect of its o\vn extinction. If a storm was coming 

 it would either ride it with careless ease or it would be altogether 

 shattered. 



But Jan was a peasant. He was worried. He began talking to 



216 



