Sylvanus Now Read Free Page B

nets,” he said, “everybody buying liners.”
    Ambrose shook his head. “Liners won’t come that close to shore,” he said quietly. “Midshore is where we’ll be fishing—sixty miles out.”
    “That’s right,” said Manny, “sixty miles offshore. Lots of room for us inshore fishermen with our trap nets and jiggers. Be all right now, if we could keep the trawlers a hundred miles offshore—or even the three bloody miles that the law says they ought to be out.”
    “Three miles,” snorted Jake. “Some distance, that is, a bloody cannon shot—yeah, a cannon shot,” he repeated at the dubious look on Sylvanus’s face, “that’s how far offshore a cannon can shoot: three miles. And in Grandfather’s day, if either a foreign boat come closer than that, they told you to blast the bastards, no problem. Now they even got that took from us—blasting cannon balls up their arse. Don’t laugh, buddy,” he cautioned at a guffaw from Manny, “because that’s what the foreigners are doing, laughing. Our fishing laws are the same as was printed out in Peter’s day. By jeezes, shoot a moose—something we governs ourselves—and see what’ll it get you—life in the dungeons, that’s what.”
    “Mind now, don’t get too worked up,” said Manny as splotches of red fired up on Jake’s long, bony cheeks. “Christ, b’ye, face like a broody hen. Here, pour me another one,” he ordered, dumping the dregs of his mug into the pit and tossing it to his brother.
    “Another war, another war,” said Jake, his tone rising, “we needs another war and a couple dozen mines out there—that’d keep the bastards off our shelves, if we blows up a few—because I tell you, my son, they never had no problem with no nets when the wars were on and they were all kept ashore; they never had no problem then.”
    “Ye-es, my son, just what we needs, another war,” said Manny with a wink at Sylvanus. “Go on, b’ye, make yourself a bib,” he taunted as Jake started to cut in, but belched instead, dribbling brew down his chin, “and get yourself a handkerchief, too, because you’ll soon be bawling if you keeps on talking about them trawlers. What do you say, Am—how many’s out there?”
    “Five hundred,” said Ambrose without thought. “Fisheries fellow told me the other day.”
    “Five hundred. Jeezes.”
    Ambrose nodded.
    “Heh, that made you sit up,” said Jake. “You won’t be taunting next week you wakes up and finds them moored off from your wharf, you won’t be taunting then.”
    Sylvanus sat up, too. “Five hundred,” he said lowly. “Jeezes, that many?” He sat back, envisioning five hundred of the sixty-foot fishing vessels and their thousand-foot nets. He’d never seen their nets, but he could figure the damage even one could do—all thousand feet of it being dragged along the ocean floor, its jaws held open by massive slabs of wood that were heavily shod with iron— dislodging boulders and flattening crevices and outcrops, crushing and burying billions of fish and their habitats in its path as it rolled along, striving to frighten up into its giant maw the bottom fish, including those mother-fish whose bellies were swollen with pounds of roe not yet spawned. Now then, imagine five hundred of them, all ploughing the spawning grounds, he thought, and sat forward again, notably disturbed.
    “How much fish are they catching then, brother?” he asked Ambrose.
    “A lot of fish, my son. Tons. And they scraps tons. Right over the side. If they gets a load of haddock and they wants cod, they dumps it. If they gets a load of cod and they wants haddock, they dumps it. Tons. They dumps tons of fish. For sure, I seen enough of it out there on the schooners.” He paused, bulbous eyes falling shyly askance at each of the men he was addressing. “And then there’s the ones they loses, their nets breaks halfways upon their decks, and—whoosh!—everything falls back overboard. Good only for the gulls,