Living Silver 



supernormal dangers and responsibilities have advantages over the 

 humdrum of country or suburb. There is exhilaration in danger 

 and the satisfaction of know^ing that one is asking more of oneself 

 than many men ask in a lifetime. Real risks, too, are a change; 

 and a holiday is essentially a change. 



Jan, at any rate, tried to rationalise his experience of fishermen 

 by this kind of argument. They w^ere aWays just on the point of 

 doing something but, though they often w^orked very hard, they 

 were never really consciously employed on anything. From the 

 moment they sailed, they began to plan w^hat they would do vv^hen 

 they came back ashore. As soon as they landed they started to 

 make preparations for the next trip. Carrots before noses had 

 nothing on this. The fishermen did their own pitching and they 

 aWays made sure that the carrot w^as w^ell beyond their reach. 

 They absolutely refused to settle themselves and enjoy anything. 



There w^ere minor variations betw^een one man and another but 

 the pattern remained essentially unchanged. To a peasant, like 

 Jan, it w^as an inexplicable pattern. One w^ould boast of w^omen, 

 another of bottles : Jack's beanstalk blossomed into empties in 

 these tall tales. Then there w^as Charlie w^ho talked continually 

 of his children, tw^o daughters ; but, though his interest seemed 

 more sensible on the surface, Jan came to understand that it had 

 the same element of monomania as the exploits of the drunkards 

 and the lechers. Now^here could he find an ordinary fellow^ w^ho 

 regarded fishing as, quite simply, his trade, w^ho did his job and 

 then w^ent quietly home to his w^ife and children, conscious of 

 having fulfilled a citizen's duties. At first the extravagance and 

 intensity of his shipmates struck him as a kind of desperate mad- 

 ness but, as his own experience of the sea increased, he found that 

 he himself was being infected by it, that he too was spending every 

 penny of his three weeks' earnings during his three days ashore, 

 that he too was thinking always in terms of the immediate future, 

 never of the long run, never of the present. His peasant backbone 

 revolted against him and he was able to stabilise his way of life but 

 only at the cost of becoming a social blackleg, only by isolating 



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