Free Bruach Blend by Lillian Beckwith

season?’ asked Erchy.
    â€˜Good enough,’ replied Willy. ‘The prices weren’t so good though an’ a lot went for fish meal.’
    I said, ‘It seems tragic when good fish is made into meal that’s often used for fertilizer when in other countries there are people dying from starvation.’
    â€˜It might seem that way,’ agreed Willy, turning to me earnestly. ‘But you see, Miss Peckwitt, it likely wouldn’t do them any good if they got it. I mind our skipper tellin’ us about a firm he knew that once dried a lot of the herrin’ an’ sent it out to one of these foreign places where the folks were supposed to be starvin’ to death. An’ he said the natives didn’t know what to make of it. They thought they’d been sent a load of roofing tiles so they nailed them on the roofs of their huts to keep the rain out. As true as I’m here,’ he said, seeing my doubtful smile. ‘The firm got word back sayin’ they didn’t want any more of the same sort.’
    Murdoch said, ‘Your skipper doesn’t mind how much sea there is, then?’
    â€˜I’ll say he doesn’t,’ responded Willy. ‘An’ he’ll have us shoot the nets supposin’ we tell him they’re likely to come up as empty as a hake’s belly.’
    â€˜As empty as a hake’s belly?’ I said quickly. ‘I’ve never heard anyone use that expression before. Why do you say that?’
    Willy looked surprised at my sudden interest. ‘Why wouldn’t I say it?’ he replied. ‘There’s nothin’ as empty as a hake’s belly can be when you catch it.’
    â€˜It sounds so strange,’ I pointed out. ‘Why particularly a hake and no other fish?’
    â€˜Because a hake’s not like other fish,’ he explained. ‘I reckon a hake can digest its food quicker than any creature in the sea. The only time we ever get a hake with food in its stomach is when it’s been able to eat the fish caught in the net along with it.’ Willy looked across at Murdoch as if expecting the bold man to contradict him, but Murdoch only nodded.
    I sat back, cherishing this new snippet of information and wondering if some day I should be able to confirm Willy’s theory in some reference book. I doubted it. Fishermen acquire so much knowledge of the mysteries of life in the sea; strange facts which they accept so easily yet do not bother to disclose so one does not necessarily find what would be called ‘expert’ confirmation. I lived near the sea; the sound of it was so constant that unless I made myself consciously listen it was inaudible; I watched it, rowed on it, even fished in my small way but I was always aware that relatively speaking I was but an observer. Except by reading and by listening to the talk of men who at some time in their lives had sought and fought the sea for a living, I would never learn more than a fragment of its mystery.
    â€˜You must find some pretty strange things in your nets sometimes,’ I prompted hopefully.
    â€˜I’ll say we do,’ affirmed Willy. ‘Why only last time we were out the skipper was askin’ us to put a name to some of the queer beasties we got in the net.’
    â€˜What like were they?’ asked Murdoch, taking the pipe out of his mouth.
    â€˜For all the world like red balloons,’ said Willy. ‘An’ they live in deep water too. On the sea bed.’
    â€˜They’d be some kind of starfish or anemones likely,’ suggested Erchy.
    Willy spurned the suggestion. ‘Starfish be damned,’ he retorted. ‘D’you no think I’ve been long enough at sea to know a starfish or an anemone when I see one? No, it was neither,’ he went on. ‘I’m tellin’ you when you pick up one of these things it sends out a great squirt of muddy water an’ crumples like a burst balloon, yet when