To the Lights
“As chairman of one of the largest of the Billingsgate wholesalefish-dealing companies, I can assure your correspondent that thecause for the current high prices does not rest with the dealers.Your correspondent, who is evidently ignorant of basic facts,asserts that although it is the fishermen themselves who actuallycatch the fish, they—the fishermen—do not receive a commensurateshare of the price which the people ultimately pay for a staplearticle of food. I must therefore correct him, and insist that theydo.
“Contrary to your correspondent’s mere surmise, I may say that thehardships of a trawlerman’s life are enormously exaggerated. It mustbe borne in mind that these men are brought up from childhood toregard their ships as their homes, that there they are mostcomfortable and in their element, that they are bountifully fed,that they are in a measure independent because all work withoutwage, but share on a well-adjusted proportion of the price which thefish command at auction (and I may add that our buyers on the spotare invariably and sometimes uncomfortably liberal in their bids),and that they do neither toil immoderately nor run any very seriousrisks.
“It stands to reason that these men when in fear of storms canalways run to shelter, and that they do. There is no serioushardship or stress in the lives of the trawlermen. If yourcorrespondent were to suggest such a thing to a fisherman, he wouldbe laughed at. No, they get much for little, and it is we men ofbusiness who, by the investment of capital and brains, fluctuationsin price, etc., run all the risk.”
(Extract from a letter in the London Daily Market Scrutineer.)
Captain Joshua Fairley was pulling on the thick woolen stockingsthat would protect his ordinary socks and his trousers-legs from theharshness and oiliness of his great sea-boots. He sat on the edge ofhis bed in his cottage on Brixham hillside and stared out of thewindow thoughtfully at the sea whose surface was nearly two hundredfeet below. He felt all of his seventy-five years, as if each hadhammered him and battered him, and contemplated the hard truth thatafter a bitter venture that had failed, he was about to start lifeover again.
He pulled on his short “jack boots” absent-mindedly, and thendisgusted with his own mistake, jerked them off, stood them in thecorner and picked up and drew on the huge and hulking ones. Hecrossed one leg over the other and inspected a new half-sole andmuttered: “Old Gamble be the best cobbler in Brixham yet! Stilldoing his work. And he bean’t growlin’ at it, or at Providence, oranything else. When I went to get the boot, he was whistlin’ likeone of them skylarks. So—I’ll whistle too.”
He puckered his lips beneath the white beard and mustache and tried,“Abide with Me,” which to his mind was second only to “Rock ofAges,” and reached for his faded blue jersey and pulled it over hishead, still bravely trying to be melodious and cheerful.
“Father, be anything the matter witfc ’ee?” a voice hailed him as hecleared his head and touseled white hair from the clinging embraceof the knitted folds.
He appreciated, then, that for many months he had not attempted towhistle a melody, and that the mere fact that he had made suchattempt was proof to other ears