The Concrete Deck 



they would have ended by throwing most of it over the side, and 

 yet they were both annoyed. They were fishermen: they caught 

 fish. If they failed to catch fish, they became nothing. A small 

 catch undermined their faith in themselves for, though their brains 

 knew that it was what they wanted at the moment, every cell of 

 their blood revolted against the idea and cried at the frustration of 

 its primitive hunting instincts. They wanted to go out and track 

 down their prey and kill it : the more they killed, the greater was 

 their glory, the more assured their essential manhood. 'But David 

 has slain. . . .' The Hebrews too had their huntsmen and their 

 fishers : the Bible was full of the same passion : it worked in these 

 two Scotsmen as a disgust at their lack of success. 



Jan's reactions were totally different. He had never seen so 

 many fish in his life. The pound was piled high with their writh- 

 ing and flapping bodies, their mouths snapping at one another's 

 tails and their gill-cases opening and closing as they tried to find 

 their element of water in the air. But they were not all fish. 

 Eight feet by five feet and over a foot high, the pound was indeed 

 full, but closer inspection showed that there was more miscellan- 

 eous 'rubbish' (buzzers, tatties, feathers) than there were fish. 

 Spherical purple tests of urchins, the red anemones or 'horses' 

 arse holes', the long strands of rough grey 'weed' that was in fact 

 a sedentary animal; and rocks, sponges and barnacles encrusting 

 their deadness with life, and bright red starfish and dull pink ones, 

 and crabs too, little fellows with small sharp claws that were 

 clamped deep into the tails offish, and a single large spiny one, its 

 body a mass of transparent saddle oysters, cowering in a corner 

 out of the light : these were all present and would have to be 

 sorted out and shovelled overboard before they really knew just 

 how many fish were among them. 



It was not then, when he first saw them, that Jan was able to 

 recognise them by name. That took many months. All he knew 

 as he stood on the deck of the Caroon was that Finch was yelling at 

 him and the others, shouting for baskets and more baskets, and 

 ordering them to 'get the bastards out of that mess' . And he even 



43 



