Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/35

Rh figures without saying anything. One of them about forty turned away as if he could not bear the sight and shook his head with disgust.

“We didn’t pay a nice sum of money and bring you here just to have you catching cold and skulking round, thank you. And you, you bastards, mind your own business.” The boss hammered on the deck with his bludgeon.

“If hell is any worse than this. I’d like to see it.”

“When we get back home no one’ll believe these things, no matter how much we tell them.”

“You’re right. I’m bloody sure there’s nothing worse than this.”

The steam winches rattled round and round. A boat, hanging out in mid-air, all at once began to drop down. The sailors and firemen hurried about the deck, watching their step at the same time. Like an old cock with his comb standing up, the boss watched them.

During a lull in the work the students sat down behind some cargo to avoid the wind. The fisherman who came from the coal-mine suddenly turned the corner.

“It’s risking our lives!” This sentence, fraught with real feeling, that had slipped out was like a direct stab into the students’ breasts. “And in the mine it was just the same. You don’t seem able to live without being haunted by death. I was scared of the gas there; I’m scared of these waves here too.”

In the afternoon the sky changed. There was a mist so light as to seem almost unreal. Myriads or three-cornered waves sprang up across the great