Living Silver 



deed, more of the discipline that is pecuhar to the best of seamen, 

 a quiet and singularly un-self-assertive assurance. 



But, more than the Atlantic, it was like going home to his 

 native fields in Poland and living the life of a peasant. The thought 

 had first struck him when they reached the little bank in mid- 

 Atlantic where the great skate lived. He stood at the stem look- 

 ing at the anchored and flashing buoy that marked the beginning 

 of the first fleet of lines and watched the hemp disappearing below 

 the surface. They used salted herring to bait that first set of lines , 

 herring they had carried from Aberdeen. Afterwards, once they 

 began catching their own fish, the cook would cut a few ling into 

 dollops and they would use them for bait. On that first occasion 

 though, there was the silver glint of the herring to glimmer from 

 deep in the green water and, as Jan had watched them go down, 

 he had found himself imagining them to be seeds and that he was 

 sowing them in a thin straight drill. And there had been the quick 

 movement of hands as the three sharemen stood round the basket 

 of line, lifting the hooks in careful nimble rotation, baiting them 

 with hurried but precise fingerwork and throwing them into the 

 white wake of the ship. And the green sinking and the quick bait- 

 ing, and the repetition of it all, each man taking his turn, and each 

 with only five seconds in which to prepare his next hook for cast- 

 ing. It had been like sowing potatoes, the almost unconscious 

 accuracy, everyone moving in time to the others and in tune with 

 the motion of the ship . How quickly that first line had disappeared 

 over the stern. Jan had not even noticed the next one being bent 

 on to it as he stood busily at his post. But, as the last hook went 

 over, the empty basket was kicked aside and a new full one re- 

 placed it. The line went on unrolling and the silver seeds sinking. 

 It worked so easily that he could hardly believe a hitch possible. 

 Yet it had been while they were shooting, quietly, just like this, 

 that a fankled part of the line had torn out half the hooks of a 

 basket and sent them tearing through Sandy's oilskin, dragging his 

 right bicep from the bone. And Jan became suddenly conscious, 

 as he stretched out a hand to lift a hook from the cork padding, 



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