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

big hooks, as though suddenly inflamed into fiendish action, leaped hissing from the rims of the tubs, whipped through the rollers and into the waves.
    I took a quick check on the compass, then looked out again to the southwest. The cloud bank was higher now, lead gray and flat on top. In the distance, the water looked lumpy, with a kind of confused turbulence as thoughsomething were going on below. Close by low, fast-running waves had begun to build. They came on erratically, veering this way and that, yet maintained a general course somewhat oblique to the direction of the big swells. The sun seemed to have drawn back deeper into the sky and to have shrunk to half its normal size. At that moment a wave struck up forward. The
Blue Fin
shuddered, lunged steeply and then the heavy spray crashed with the sound of a dropped barrel on the cabin deck. I pulled the wheel hard to starboard and then turned quickly to see how May had made out.
    Nothing had changed. The blood-black line uncoiled with the same angry haste, the upflung hooks hissed evilly in their short fast trip through the rollers and May, bracing himself by some extraordinary muscular counterbalancing, stood poised, hardly swaying, as the stern swung up over the water then fell sharply back. Poised that way with his sheath knife in his hand and his head thrust a little forward, he looked like the cast figure of some classical hero portraying, by means of this quickly changing backdrop, two alternating views of man, the one, intense and alert, a tight spring, in the midst of rushing water, flying hooks and wild, churning wake; the other, when sharply silhouetted against the clear dark sky, a lofty ascendance that could almost have achieved some sort of omniscience or otherworldly purity except for the little black tassel bobbing and tumbling about as merrily as ever linking the two together and making them one.
    Suddenly the sky and all the ocean darkened. It lasted only a moment and then it happened. I saw it first only as an obscure movement like a quick shadow or maybe even a thought or a feeling. Yet when I saw it, it was as though I had known all along exactly how it would be, as though Ihad had a working drawing somewhere in my mind all the time. The rolled down top of one of May’s boots had brushed against a tub and a hook had slipped over the cotton fabric lining of the creased edge. It was just lying there. And then four things happened almost at once. My hand flew to the throttle. Automatically my foot went to the reverse gear lever. My mouth opened to shout. And then I froze. I could not speak. I could not move. I could only stare, paralyzed as the big hooks whipped savagely from off the tub’s rim, one second per hook, not more and not more than five seconds to the hooked boot. I thought about nothing. I’m sure I thought about nothing. My mind had stopped. Then, as in a dream, a nightmare, the boot rose from the deck, not high, but just as though May were stepping over the stern and out upon the waves. His arms spread wide, his head turned slightly as if to speak. Only nothing was said, nothing at all. His lightly bearded face was as calm as ever. Only now it was gentle. Suddenly the line tangled. The tub leaped off the deck, crashed between the vertical rollers and exploded, scattering its wooden staves in all directions. Then with a soft, wet snap, the line parted.
    With a violent surge of energy, I shoved down the reverse gear lever and opened the throttle wide. My heart pounded. Thin whining noises came out of my throat. The
Blue Fin
trembled and the bow began to swing. I leaped across to the door of the wheelhouse and looked over. Deep in the waves I could see the vague twisting bundle of gray and white that was May’s sweatshirt and the bald top of his head and then the frayed end of the line, waggling away and out of sight. The black skull cap, top down and partly filled with water, was already half a boat’s length away. I threw