Roundpsh 



been like the present-day Orcadians, farmers and fishermen all of 

 them. Sometimes Jan thought of them and he could never do so 

 without imagining the long lean catches of ling stretched out in 

 the last of the year's sunlight, dangling stiffly just where the fleeces 

 of their sheep had cavorted in the spring, drying like them, being 

 prepared for human consumption. And these imaginations would 

 set him off remembering the pungent taste of the boiled fish and 

 he would wonder why his own skipper had to part with such ex- 

 cellent food for little more than the money it took to catch. 



Two other gadoids were caught all the year round in the North 

 Sea and its neighbouring Atlantic - the saithe and the lythe. Black 

 jacks, the fishermen called them both and, indeed, they were al- 

 most indistinguishable. Both were energetic, streamlined. They 

 seemed to be packed hard with muscular force, as though it was 

 coiled hard against the skin, threatening to explode at every mo- 

 ment. Buttheymusthave been muscle-bound. In spite of their tor- 

 pedo shapes and the fierce out-thrust of the lower jaws, they were 

 less successful than the more graceful but less forceful whiting. 

 Often, in summer, when his ship was anchored in sheltered water, 

 Jan would watch the young of the saithe as they circumambulated 

 his vessel. They would be near the surface, looking perhaps for 

 scraps of food that the cook might throw from the galley, and the 

 oblique shine of moonlight made them into the shadows of elon- 

 gated moths. There was something clumsy, though, about their 

 movements. Perhaps their heads were working too much, sway- 

 ing unnecessarily from side to side. Jan was never quite sure. It 

 might just have been that they were waiting for food. And any- 

 how, these were only the young ones. The adults he never saw 

 except far out over open water when they hit the deck of a trawl, 

 and that was a rather unfortunate time to view even the most grace- 

 ful fish. These adults were big and savage looking, though seldom 

 as large as a good sized cod. If anatomy spoke, however, they 

 made up for their inches in ferocity : they bore no trace of the 

 easy-going gestures of the cod and they were not furnished with a 

 barbel. It was this last feature that made Jan imagine them to be 



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