The Home Run 



himself and refusing to allow his comrades to develop into friends. 

 During all his six years on trawlers, this constant isolation was a 

 source of pain. 



Ordinarily people find it very inconvenient to be on bad terms 

 with their workmates or colleagues. It isn't very nice to have 

 them whispering curses just within hearing range, and then they 

 start holding up the tools for the job, interfering as much as they 

 may with the quality of the work. And the sense that the firm, 

 the owners, are behind a man doesn't do much to make the gap 

 more tolerable. On a ship, these factors are magnified. Jan had 

 to carry an extra gutting knife because he knew that if one broke 

 there would be nobody to find him another. But that kind of thing 

 was usual ashore. More than once he was nearly hauled over the 

 side when, as the nets came up, a colleague decided to take a rest 

 and thus left Jan to support the whole weight at a bad moment of 

 the swell. Then again, he grew used to overhearing stories about 

 goody two shoes. The words would float out to him on the breath 

 of a blizzard or they would worm their way through the grizzly 

 calm of a fo'c'sle filled with smoke and sleeping men. Such things 

 had to be accepted, and hundreds ashore have to put up with simi- 

 lar inconveniences. But they were just the beginnings of his 

 troubles. Not only did he have to work with these men but he 

 also had to live with them. There was no corner into which he 

 could creep and be alone, not even for ten minutes. 



It began on his first morning at sea. The evening before had 

 been bad enough. They had sailed at midnight, three sober men 

 and nine drunk ones. Most of them had got to sleep without mis- 

 hap. Jan and another Pole did the steering. But then, at four 

 o'clock, he had to find a change of watch. It was easy enough. 

 There were two drunks in the fo'c'sle, labouring punches at one 

 another with a grotesque lack of agility. When they occasionally 

 lunged, one at a time or both together, into an occupied bunk 

 there would be a snort of discomfort to interrupt a snore : and 

 then the snore would continue as though nothing had happened. 

 Jan managed to separate them and dispatched one of the drunken 



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