Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/117

Rh took out the sparking plug; without that you’d never get her going.”

Handa consoled himself with the thought that, even if they hadn’t succeeded, they’d at least done their best. So he had gone to sleep, his mind at ease. At least they’d put all their heart into the job.

He gazed steadily through the mist and there he saw last night’s boat; like a dead whale she lay motionless with just a little of the bottom showing above the water.

He had heard another boat.

Though they smashed up one, there was another to take its place. If they smashed up that, still a third would appear. And if they smashed the last one, probably Uematsu would manage to mend it and load it up with scabs again.

This was not the first time that dogged old Uematsu had got the better of them. Ever since childhood Handa had known only too well the old boss with his square-shaped skull, so flat on top that he would have had no difficulty in running with a cup of water set on it. Every morning, without fail, before anyone else was up, he would go prowling round the works. In one factory they had been wasting rope; in another they had spilt some beans. He nosed out all such minute shortcomings and then came and made his complaints.

And it was not only four or five farmers, who, through that big-skulled old boss, had lost their paddy-fields and their other lands, lost their homes inherited from their forefathers.