Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/23

Rh above the waves, shouting was heatd and a whistle from the second ship. It was no longer heard as the Itaki Marru rolled down again.

On the crab ship were eight small boats, which had to be lashed as the waves, attacking like thousands of sharks with white teeth bared, threatened to wrench them away. The sailors and fishermen were thus forced to risk their fives.

“What do one or two of your lives count?” shouted the boss. “Do you think we are going to stand by and watch the boats being lost?”

Roaring like famished lions, the waves came rushing and the ship was powerless as a rabbit. The snowstorm came sheeting down like a white waving flag. Evening approached but the storm showed no signs of abating.

When work was finished the fishermen filed down into their quarters. Their frozen limbs were stuck numbly on to their bodies. Like worms, they crawled into their separate bunks, with never a word. They grasped the iron rails because the ship shook herself desperately, like a horse trying to drive off gadflie. Some cast an aimless glances at the ceiling whose white paint had become yellowed with smoke, or at the black porthole almost buried in the depths of the ocean; others lay with their mouths half open, a blank expression on their faces. Not one was capable of thinking. A vague consciousness of danger kept them all in eerie silence.

One may lay on his back, taking swigs from a whisky bottle. The edge of the bottle gleamed in the dull yellowish light of an electric lamp. Then