Living Silver 



particular case I think the wood of those damned poles was rotten. 

 If I'd been drowned I'd have been the right one to blame for it.' 



*No,' said Ian and Jan was somewhat surprised, 'it's never the 

 sea's fault and we aa' know it. We're just damned careless, the 

 whole blooming lot of us. And they talked about the Cruel Sea.' 



*Aye, careless, Ian, and a wee bit greedy. You'd have cut my 

 buffs if it had been going to do you any good, ' For a split second 

 the two elderly seamen caressed one another with smiles that were 

 not mocking. But then George got on with his story. 'It's just 

 like one of these nets they yank the salmon out with. That's prob- 

 ably the best way to describe a brailer. Only it's a bit bigger and 

 you've got it pulleyed on to the derrick that sticks out from the 

 side of a ring boat. With a few simple tricks of the rope it's easy 

 to dip it down into the herring froth and heave them over the side, 

 full to the brim of the silver darlings - as I believe we're supposed 

 to call them, gentlemen. It's certainly a damned sight easier to 

 brail them out than to shake them.' Again Jan thought that the 

 old man was probably right. They both knew the hell of shaking 

 a drift net of tangled herring, some on the top and some on the 

 bottom. The frantic deck, not big enough to allow a single rect- 

 angle of lint to be fully stretched, would pitch the men who were 

 trying to clear their gear of its catch, trying to turn it this way 

 and that in an effort to save every fish; would pitch them until 

 they felt themselves to be no more than an additional fankle in the 

 net that was, by this time, a sticky mess of crushed herring flesh 

 dripping with cold briny blood. Compared to this, the brailing 

 on a ring netter seemed as easy as ladling sugar into a cup of tea. 

 But Jan knew enough of all fishing practices to imagine that it was 

 a little more difficult than George was suggesting. 



'That's the thing about ringing, after all. It's so easy. It's by 

 far the easiest way of catching fish, easier even than trawling. It's 

 easy, that is, if you can spot a wee shoal as soon as you come to it, 

 and that means you must have a hand for the wdre. Maybe this 

 new asdic thing will work on ringers but I, for one, don't believe 

 that the echo-sounder is either sensitive enough or inconspicuous 



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