Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/58

48 started to move downwards. He seemed to be straining and twisting his body, and was waving both his legs like a fly caught in a spider’s web.

At last he was lost from sight behind the saloon, and only the wire stretching down vertically could be seen, swaying now and then like a swing.

Tears seemed to have got into the carpenter’s nose, for it was trickling all the time. Again he blew it. Then, taking out the hammer which had been moving round in his side pocket, he started to work.

Suddenly, pricking up his ears, he looked round. The wire rope was shaking as if someone below was pulling at it and a dull, uncanny splashing sound was heard.

The strung-up man’s face had changed colour. From between his lifeless, tightly-closed lips foam was coming. When the carpenter went down below he passed the foreman with a lump of wood under his arm. “That’s what he hit him with,” thought the carpenter, glancing at the wood.

The fishermen, through long-continued overwork, gradually found themselves unable to get up in the mornings. The boss found an empty petrol can and walked round hammering on it close to the ears of the sleepers. He hammered on it desperately until they opened their eyes and got up. Those with beri-beri half raised their heads and said something, but the boss, pretending not to have noticed them, went on hammering. After he had hammered what he considered a reasonable amount he shouted at them: “What’s