HUMAN DERELICTS 185 



appeals both to their hunger for peace and their 

 thirst for the fray. If their labour irks them; if 

 they get into trouble; if they lose their job, — 

 then back they come to the beach, seldom to leave 

 it, however loudly with their tongues they may 

 regret a fixed wage, a regular life, and work that's 

 done when it is done. 



Landsmen stranded upon the beach, who cannot 

 follow up the fishing sufficiently to become fisher- 

 men — not every man can do it, by any means, — 

 they remain derelict. They make the beach what it 

 so curiously and exactly is, a copy in small of the 

 great industrial world, with its employed, its 

 unemployed, its unemployables, and its men who, 

 having no heart except for certain particular sorts 

 of work, will half starve rather than force them- 

 selves to any other. They come — God knows 

 how they come there ! Each coming is a tragedy, 

 and usually a comedy as well. The beach is the 

 town's look-out. What more natural than that 

 a man out of work should drift there to stand 

 about and chat? Maybe the herrings are in: 

 hard frosty weather is their time. Fishermen pay 

 generously for unskilled help, just when they 

 want it. Then, by being ready and waiting to 

 lend a hand, there is money to be earned, and an 



