‘Pursuant to the department’s previous notification of the revised fishing grounds, boundaries will be marked for the purpose of controlling fish stocks in restricted zones and for the containment and management of harmful waterborne agents,’ Clem reads.
Clem is standing on the step outside the winch house, a head higher than the other fishermen. Looking at him brings to mind a sepia photograph Ethan has seen in a frame on the wall of the winch house beside the noticeboard. The photograph shows a stern priest standing alone on the beach as the boats cast off. The priest wears full canonical robes and holds in one hand a chain and censer that is leaking smoke. He is swinging the censer out in front of him with one hand and the other is raised to the departing fleet in a gesture of benediction. Ethan has always felt sorry for this man in the photograph, standing alone on the grey stones, looking out of place.
‘Motorised and sail-driven vessels, of classes one to four inclusive, are not to be permitted to come within 500 feet of boundary markers, and owners of vessels straying into the restricted zone will be subject to prosecution under the following Acts…’
Ethan has stopped listening to Clem and instead turns to look for the reaction of the other skippers and crews around him. They are, as usual, silent for the most part, though some are talking beneath their breath, or kicking the stones under their boots. One or two have already started to walk away from the beach.
When Clem has stopped talking, Ethan looks around and sees some of the older skippers shaking their heads in disgust or shame. He watches one, a fisherman who has been sailing out of the cove as long as any of the others there, as he walks off the beach and throws his son the keys to his boat, before he retreats to his house for good.
That morning no one sails out of the cove. And over the course of the next few days a few of the skippers go down to their boats, strip them of anything useful or valuable and retire to their houses, leaving their boats to rot on the shore. For some this news is more than they are prepared to take, with the fish stocks falling fast and the prices so low.
Overnight the ships arrive and are anchored at regular intervals along the horizon. After a few days, Ethan wonders whether the ships might always have been there, unnoticed and waiting for their chance to edge closer towards the shore, into sight.
The letters, still tacked up on the noticeboard, are now speckled all over with mould. The ink on them has faded and they hold less power somehow in the face of Timothy’s questions. And having Timothy on board, Ethan finds, gives him a sense of confidence, a sense of having been dared and of not wanting to lose face.
As Ethan steers a course between the ships, his feeling of unease grows. With the sun still low on the horizon, the small fishing boat comes into the field of a long shadow cast across the water by the ship’s derrick. The Great Hope passes closer to the hulking mass than he had intended, as if the smaller boat is being drawn in towards it. The water around the boat is still and darker for the mass that lies beneath it and the ship’s hull rises sheer and steep, dwarfing the smaller boat. The lower half of the ship’s visible hull is painted red and is stained with patches of rust, and at the waterline he sees the sea is oil slicked and contaminated. Above, the upper part of the hull is painted a dark grey, and the derrick and uppermost part of the deck are white, or were at some time. Rust shows through the white paint even from a distance, and as they get closer they see long scars drawn into the paintwork. On the side of the ship, what is presumably its name is written in letters ten feet tall or taller, though it is written in a script Ethan does not understand. The letters look familiar, as though he should be able to read them, though each is transfigured and mutated, and though they pass close to the ship, the letters do not resolve themselves into anything that carries meaning he can decipher. Deeper into the boat’s shadow, he sees signs riveted onto the hull at intervals. They are warnings perhaps, or impart vital information, though they are all written in the same familiar, but unreadable, script.
Ethan knows that the other three crews will be watching their passage through binoculars from their cabins, and almost certainly discussing his diversion over the radio. ‘Ethan’s lost it again’ will almost certainly be the topic of conversation. Tomas will be the most vocal on this subject, as the group’s malcontent, as the one who has threatened over and again to leave. Rab will be shouting Tomas down as he always has done, saying Ethan should do what the hell he wants. And Jory will be peacekeeping and keeping whatever opinions he holds to himself.
Though he has never seen so much as a single light on within any of them since the day they arrived, Ethan half-expects to be hailed by one of the ships, to hear a siren or a horn blast, warning them to turn back, or for floodlights to fire up. He drops the boat speed to reduce the noise they make as they pass beneath the ship’s high walls, but there is no warning or any sign at all they have been seen, just the sound of a colony of gulls that must roost on the sills of the ship’s windows and doorways. From the sound of it the colony is a large one, and the birds’ shrieks have grown louder the closer to the ship they have come. Disturbed by the boat, a host of the birds lifts up from the deck far above them. After their initial dispersal into the sky, the birds start to congregate above the boat, so that, between the high walls of the ship to one side and the flock above them the morning light is reduced to a kind of dusk. A few of the larger birds make circles around the Great Hope, and they spiral down towards the small boat in uneven loops. As the birds grow bolder, flying down to within metres of them, Ethan sees Timothy edge around the side of the cabin until he is in its shelter. The noise of the shrieking gulls becomes unbearable for a few minutes, and the birds become a heavy cloud which sits just metres above the boat. Timothy, looking nervous and apologetic, moves into the tiny wheelhouse until the number of birds above them starts to thin out, and they back off from their diving attacks. Many of the birds follow the Great Hope when it clears the ship, as though they are seeing off an intruder, but they too lose interest as the boat makes its way further out. When Ethan opens up the engine again, the few birds still following turn back towards the container ship. After a while the gaps between the ships close in again behind them and half an hour later Ethan cuts back the engine and emerges from the cabin.
‘What happens now?’ Timothy shouts back down the deck towards him. ‘It wasn’t so hard, was it? No one opened fire on us. No monster waiting for us on this side. No chasm opened up, dragging us down to the depths.’
Timothy’s voice sounds odd and out of place as it breaks the silence and Ethan can see speaking has made him uneasy. Up until this point Timothy has been silent, following Ethan’s lead, and Ethan does not tell him they have both broken rules now.
Ethan moves towards Timothy so he does not have to raise his voice against the wind.
‘What happens now is we lower the nets, wait a while, pull them up. Then we lower them back down and pull them up a few more times and then when we’re tired we go home. If we’re lucky we’ll take back a few dogfish for our trouble.’
Ethan too, though, is looking around to see what difference if any there is between where they were before and where they are now.
‘If we get bored, we pull the nets early and go move some lobster pots around by the cove,’ he continues. ‘Not that the pots deserve the title. Empty nets. Empty pots.’
They fall back into silence, until Ethan has to talk Timothy through lowering the net, and when he does speak, he surprises himself with the kindness of tone he uses. Timothy starts to lower the gear, and Ethan can see him, as clear as anything, catch a hand or a sleeve in the netting and pull himself over the side, as clear as he can see the man standing on deck before him. He pushes Timothy to one side and takes control until the nets are in the water. He’s doing better than some of the local boys Ethan has taken out on the Great Hope before. He’s not crouching in a corner puking his guts into a bucket, and that’s something when the swell is long and slow as it is now they have moved out from the still water around the ships.