Free The Forty Fathom Bank and Other Stories by Les Galloway Page A

ten thousand pounds, divided by two came to five tons, multiplied by eighteen hundred would be nine thousand dollars. I went over all this several times, savoring the taste of the final figure which, because of other probabilities such as a shark on every fourth hook and then every third, increased progressively to something like thirty thousand dollars. Then I began to think about May again. I pictured the
Blue Fin
loaded. We were heading back to Princeton. I was at the wheel and May stood beside me smoking his pipe.
    â€œI’ve been thinking,” I imagined May saying in his quiet voice, “that maybe you’d want to sell the
Blue Fin
.”
    â€œI’d be willing to sell her,” I said. “I’d even be glad to. But it’s this way. I have a wife and two kids up in the City and there’s a third one coming. I’m not much of a fisherman, but if I didn’t have the boat I’d have no way of making a living.”
    May kept puffing away on his pipe. His familiar sympathy was almost palpable. Finally he said, “I’ll make youa deal. You let me have the boat and I’ll give you my share of the sharks.”
    â€œBut that would be more than five times what she’s worth, and about fifty times more than I paid for her,” I said. “You wouldn’t be getting much of a deal.”
    But when he insisted, saying he had no need for the money, I agreed to let him have the
Blue Fin
. By the time I’d gotten the check with its five perforated figures from the fish company and was heading back to San Francisco on the night bus, the keg was alongside and May was pulling it aboard with the boat hook. In an instant, my little fantasy vanished.
    I threw the engine out of gear and stood by the wheelhouse door watching the buoy line come up. The little breeze, steadier now and blowing from due south, felt warm on my face and a little moist. Probably a good wind was blowing high up for here and there big patches of blue came through the milky haze that had covered the ocean all morning. The line, snapping little sprays of water, sped upwards in a businesslike manner, silent and tight as a bow string, as May, with his ever-turned-down boots, widespread for balance, received it from off the power gurdy and coiled it in neat hard circles on the deck. When the small kedge anchor, its flukes and shank dark with slime-green mucky sand and exuding the repugnant smell of some strange decay, came over the side, the first shark could be seen turning slowly in the murky water.
    Once more, as on the night before, a dreamlike quality came over everything. The long gray snout of the hooked shark shot up from the water, the spatulate pectorals flapping like grotesque ears, the distended belly showed white in the translucent darkness and then, with no pause whatever in the relentless, beltline motion of the thick manila,the whole length of the slow-thrashing, muscular body was dragged out and, with the aid of May’s heavy steel gaff, slid through the two vertical guides of the starboard roller. Then May, in what seemed but a single, uninterrupted movement of his strong body, slit open the throat, disengaged the hook and kicked the squirming soupfin clear of the incoming line. I stepped back quickly into the wheelhouse, shoved the gear lever forward and brought the
Blue Fin
about so that the line came in on the lee side a few points off the starboard bow. I set the throttle at a slow idle and went back on deck to help May.
    No sooner was the first shark aboard than another was coming over the side. And then another. Without even noticing the rancid blast from below, I began throwing the big, twisting fish into the hold. I ran, dragging the sharks by their tails. I skidded, fell, leaped up and ran again. I counted, not to myself now, but aloud, shouting out the numbers in a chanted beat. And still they came, like from the magic salt mill, a steady, unending flow. In no time at all the