Living Silver 



up the four empty pint jugs and making his way to the bar. George 

 was smiling, very soberly, like the smile of a sleeping man. Jan 

 was remembering the damp black of cod-ends just rescued from 

 the sea, swaying away from the gilson then up against the bag- 

 ropes. Gigantic pincushions, they seemed to him now : instead of 

 pins, the crushed tails and open-mouthed heads of fishes had been 

 inserted into them by mistake. They were certainly not very 

 lively, though they could flap a bit, these embryonic corpses of 

 fish. And he knew that Tadeusz was recalling the long hours of 

 heaving empty drift nets as the dawn light crept, like a skinny 

 caterpillar, over the stubble on his face. The hoping, and the hop- 

 ing, that the next stretch of lint might contain a glimmer of what 

 they had seen on the echo-sounder, and the disappointment again 

 as another handful of jellyfish bit caustically and poisonously into 

 his hands and wrists. There certainly must be advantages to this 

 way of fishing which ended in such a gay and brilliant froth. 



As he returned with the next round, Ian spoke quietly: *An' 

 this '11 be the time, I expect, when you cut the hauf bowl of a fleet 

 of drift nets that were sinking under their weight of the little 

 fellows? You're a cursed set of poachers.' 



*Well, Ian, I'm not saying that a drifter's fleet has never rowed 

 on to me, and I wouldn't pretend that I liked it, but the only 

 bowls I've ever cut have been when my bags were full and their 

 nets were empty. They never lost anything through my hands ex- 

 cept for the odd buff^, and there's not a man alive in the herring 

 who wouldn't rather lose a bufp than see another boat lose a fifty 

 cran haul. Come on, man. Be honest with yourself. Would you 

 let a lump of empty lint come between you and two fifty quid ? 

 You're not going to tell me that?' 



Tadeusz, however, was anxious to avoid argument, or he was 

 just interested in ringing, so he began to steer the conversation 

 back to course. *But what happens then, George, if a drifter 

 doesn't bob up to spoil things?' 



But lan's interruption had stirred the old man out of his state 

 of pure remembering and he had to be reminded that the last of 



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