CHAPTER FOURTEEN 



DRIFTING 



AND that was exactly what they did. The oil-feed was repaired 

 in time and they sailed at four in the afternoon. By four p.m. on 

 the following day they were back behind Yarmouth bar, having 

 skimmed the silver cream off a mile of black water. The luck of 

 the drift and the chance of a berth had brought them over three 

 hundred cran. Overnight, they became fifteen hundred pounds 

 richer. Ian, too, had a hand in their success. He told them where 

 the gannets were diving and he first sighted the gambol of the 

 whales, but his bad luck held his own boat down to a miserable 

 forty crans. 



The ground to which he guided them lay in twenty fathoms of 

 water, about twenty miles north east by east from the port. They 

 would have preferred to sail earlier and have shot their eighty-five 

 nets before twilight, but the mechanics took their time on the 

 engine and lan's boat, the Dovetail, put to sea an hour and a half 

 before the Stanislaw was ready. When they reached the ground, 

 the full moon was already visible, high over the unseen land they 

 had left behind them. The wind was from the south, light and 

 fresh, its occasional gustiness promising the storm that later de- 

 veloped: so it looked as though they were going to be able to 

 shoot north by north west and breast the tide. They thought so, 

 at any rate, until they laid eyes on the ground itself. Ian had not 

 been the only skipper to notice the gannets and the whales. Thirty 

 boats from Yarmouth and Lowestoft were busily paying out their 

 nets or were resting and drifting at the northern end of their shot 



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