Living Silver 



sometimes occurred in enormous numbers, but it was impossible 

 for even the best of skippers to predict its movements. They con- 

 tented themselves with their luck when they caught it and with 

 their jealousy when somebody else did. Most of the time it was 

 represented, in the North Sea, by a few stragglers from a popula- 

 tion that was centred well south of Ireland, probably off the French 

 coast. But every summer it did wander north, sometimes in con- 

 siderable numbers. 



The Cassius of the oceans, it had a very lean and hungry look. 

 To the hands of the deckles it presented its rows of needling teeth 

 and its viciously spiked fin rays. Large bright scales tattooed a 

 back the colour of printer's ink. Its cadaverous length would have 

 made it look as though it had not eaten for months had it not been 

 for the bulbous white belly that was found to contain anything up 

 to half a dozen newly interred small fish. If the stomach was empty 

 it was usually because it had been exploded out of the mouth as 

 the hake was raised on the trawl winch. This was a common acci- 

 dent, and not only in the case of the hake. The whiting, too, often 

 inverted its stomach, the cod sometimes, the ling and the Nor- 

 wegian haddock always. It was due to the sudden expansion of the 

 air-bladder, a hydrostatic organ equivalent in some ways to the 

 lungs of land animals, an expansion caused by the rapid drop in 

 pressure as the fish was dragged from deep water to the surface. 

 The gases in the air-bladder expanded into that part of the body 

 cavity already occupied by the stomach, and the stomach was for- 

 ced out of the body cavity through the only aperture open to it, 

 the gorge and the mouth. Whenever this did not happen, there 

 were fish in the belly of the hake, though the food did not help it 

 to put on fat. Only the solid density of white muscle around the 

 jagaed three-winged backbone gave a clue to its voracity. That, 

 and the teeth which stared out even more fixedly than the unlid- 

 ded eyes. 



Almost against his will, Jan realised that he was constructing a 

 myth around the whole family of the Gadidae. They reminded 

 him so forcibly of some historical families, particularly the Medici. 



92 



