Atlanta Daily World

CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sondra climbed to the flying bridge on top of the pilothouse and stood there, balancing to the long, easy swing of the speeding trawler.
Stars and moon paled and after a while the flaming ball of the sun shoved up between two needle peaks, and poured its golden-crimson glory across the sky.
It was a looming morning of invisible mists that clung only to the smooth green swells, with a strangely magnifying effect. A flock of black ducks, swimming ahead, loomed like a fleet of Spanish galleons: and when Sondra looked back, the masts and upper-works of the six O'Moore trawler following in the Tanya's wake seemed tall as battleships
Chris came clambering up the ladder to the flying bridge. "Morning, Miss Sondra" He saluted with a salt-cured hand
She smiled at him. "Did Liane chase you out, at last?"
"Arrgh! That light cruiser needs some guy to knock seven bells out of-" He snapped to attention his eyes narrowing on something ahead.
There they are!" he sang out, pointing off the bow. "About two miles away. Herring! And boy, what a school!
Above the water, Sondra saw a bright silvery flashing like a heliograph signal, repeated again and again The Tanya sped toward it.
Across the morning drifted a dim, wild skreeling that increased to an almost unbearable clamor as the flashing resolved itself into an immense cloud of sea gulls--frenetic thousands, screeching, wheeling, diving, rising in the sun that struck silver from their wings. They were feasting on the helpless herring beneath.
The "flipping" herring covered an area two miles wide, and stretched as far south as the eye could see. Millions of close-packed silver bodies, constantly surging up, diving, crossing and re-crossing.
The Tanya came to a stop a short distance from this spectacle of Nature in the raw, which for magnitude and diversity of appetites has no equal on earth today.
For the gulls were not alone in their gorging. Everywhere on the water sat colonies of feeding birds -loons, grebes, cormorants, merganser ducks--all, in greedy haste, up-ending tails, diving under, popping up with fish in their beaks, and gulping their struggling prey.
Meanwhile, the vast surface of the school was broken by explosions of fear - maddened herring which chased by salmon and larger fish, shot three and four feet into the air before falling back. And, gliding at express-train speed through this finny turmoil, hundreds of huge hair seals pursued the salmon that pursued the herring.
Sondra, watching, felt as if she had been carried back on the wings of time to a primordial world of frenzied appetites. Death rampant in a school of herring. What chance had they for survival, with gulls attacking from above, huge fish from below, diver tribes in between? And man, deadliest enemy of all, making ready to strike from every side.
Chris, gone from the bridge, was already on his way to "sound" the school. From the stern of a big red skiff, he directed a boat-puller who rowed at a snail's pace into the thick of the herring flip. Between thumb and forefinger, Chris gripped the "fiddler" a long line with a chunk of lead at the end-slowly playing it up and down in the water. By the vibrations which came up the taut line, as it was struck by the swimming fish, his trained fingers were reading the secrets of the teeming depths.
The skiff circled back alongside, and Chris climbed aboard shaking his head. "School's not ten feet deep, and milling right on top of the water, Cap'n," he reported."If they ever struck one of those hundred-foot nets of ours, it'd start 'em straight down for the under side of China. They'd be scattered in no time."
The Captain's face fell. "No set just yet, then?
"Not until tide turns. Cap'n There's a strong ebb for another couple of hours. After that, they'll school deeper. I think--if nothing happens to disturb 'em."
"Nothing could happen-except whales, Chris. And we haven't had whales in this vicinity for over ten years. We'll wait.'"
Sondra was making her way along the narrow deck: space outside the cabin, when she chanced to glance astern.
Over the sun-bright swells, Kemp's blue-gray dispatch boat was speeding toward the Tanya, pushing a feather of white before its bows.
Sondra's spirits rose at the prospect of company to break the monotony of waiting. She raised the cry. "The Blue Dragon's coming!"
All hands were on deck when the Dragon rounded in alongside.
Sondra and Liane waved and called their welcome.
Kemp sprang aboard eagerly. "Am I too late for the big round-up?"
"Too early." replied Captain O'Moore. "But you're just in time for breakfast, me lad. You too, Ikeda." A shade grudgingly he included the tall Japanese who stood at Kemp's shoulder.
"So-o-o happy, Miss." Ikeda bent low before Sondra, hissing politely through bared, white teeth. "So-o-o happy to find excellent company on lonely fishing ground"
Breakfast, shared with the crew at the long galley table, was merry and unusually prolonged. Ikeda, who somehow had the seat next to Sondra, was so obsequiously attentive to her that he came near to being a nuisance before the meal was over. And when she went out on deck again, he followed close on her heels. But she forgot her annoyance immediately, in the unwelcome surprise that greeted everyone aboard the Tanya.
Coasting silently into the midst of the herring flip were Reynall's Baltic and Katlean's battered Scundoo.
Chris snarled. "Reynall luck! The first time in months the weather's been calm enough for a boat like the Scundoo to venture out here-and he's grabbed it!"
Captain O'Moore, grimly silent, was scrutinizing every move of the invading craft, now half a mile away among the flipping herring.
The Baltic drifted idly: but in the Scundoo's lowered skiff an Indian was making fast the free end of the little trawler's purse seine.
Everyone on the Tanya was familiar with the procedure called "making a set"-the free end of the seine's cork-line held by the stationary skiff; the trawler dropping web from its revolving turntable, as it circled swiftly back to the skiff to create the enclosure that hung from floating corks, like a wall in the water; the "pursing up" of the seine's bottom, to imprison the impounded fish,
"The man's a fool-makin' a set out here with that outfit!" snorted the Captain. "The fish will dive under his shallow net before he can begin to purse 'em in. He won't get " He broke off, to hastily focus his marine glasses on Katlean's Scundoo.
"Now, what - in- blazes The Indian boat was not following the usual procedure. Instead of moving swiftly in a wide circle, it was barely creeping, laying its net in a straight line. A canoe had put off. In it sat two native boys with poles, on the ends of which something bright shone in the sun.
Chris laughed. "Katlean's got his old dodo of a great-uncle with him old Ish. Looks like they're trying a trick the Thlingets used before the white man came."
"What d'ye mean?"
"He's laying his net straight across the strong ebb current. As the weighted bottom edge falls, the cork-floated top edge carries off on the tide so the seine slants at an angle, sort of under the fish instead of hanging straight. He's going so slow they won't scare much, and his web's too shallow to start 'em divin' deep. Watch now, till he's paid out half the net. Then he'll turn sharp, makin' a narrow oval instead of a circle as he doubles back toward his skiff. Those kids in the canoe with the open-ended cans on poles will move in, punching the cans up and down in the water, and-
"What on earth for?" interrupted Sondra.
"Makes a thundering noise under water, Miss Sondra. Stampedes the fish right into the net."
The Captain let out a roar "Well! What are ye standin' here for? Are ye goin' to let Reynall's blasted Indians make monkeys of the O'Moore fleet?"
Chris, amazed at O'Moore's sudden heat, stammered. "Why-er- it's only a fluke chance that lets him make a set out here at all. Cap'n. He'll get only a handful. There'll be millions of barrels left, when we get ready to drop our nets.'
"I'm not carin' how many barrels are left!" rasped the Captain. "I'm tellin' ye, no Reynall boat brails a herring out of this school, or any other this season, if I can keep 'em from it. Get busy! Break up that set, d'ye hear?"
"I hear. But-how would you have me do it?"
"Hell's anchors!" O'Moore pounded the deck with his crutch. "Must I tell ye not only what I want done, but how to do it?"
For a moment Chris studied the Scundoo through narrowed eyes. Then he said tersely, "How's this: We'll make a set ourselves, laying our net at an angle toward his, and in such a way that our cork-line will drift down and cut off his return to his skiff. His boat hasn't the power to cut through our seine, even if he has the nerve."
"Good! That will do it!'
Chris turned and bawled through cupped hands to his crew. "Tumble out, you summer tourists. We're makin' a set!" He leaped into the wheelhouse.
Amid a jangle of bells and a roar of Diesels the Tanya, her net unreeling swiftly behind her, headed obliquely for the line of corks that marked Katlean's set,
The Captain stood braced outside the open window of the pilothouse, where he could both see ahead and talk to Chris at the wheel. The Tanya's whistle shrilled twice. Instantly, from up ahead, came an answer in a series of imperative, jerky blasts.
Kemp craned his neck to look. "Holy jumped-up!" he exclaimed The Baltic, bearing down from starboard, was heading full speed across the Tanya's bow. Liane screamed. "He's crazy! He's going to smash into us! O-o-oh!" She grabbed at Kemp, and hid her face in his shoulder.
"Crazy-like a fox!" retorted Kemp, disengaging himself to watch the approaching boat. "He's out to keep Chris from breaking up Katlean's set."
Sondra darted forward to stand beside her grandfather. The Captain, eyes narrowed on the Baltic, was gripping the pipe rail with an intensity that made his knuckles white. Chris, head and shoulders out of the wheelhouse window, gauged the speed of Reynall's boat, and cursed the problem that confronted him. If he changed his course to avoid collision, Katlean would complete his set. If he didn't change, the Baltic would strike the Tanya head-on, about amidships.
Angrily, he started to swing the Tanya's head to starboard, but O'Moore stopped him. "Steady, there! What the divil are ye do-ing?"
Chris steadied the wheel, but with an anxious eye on the narrowing gap between the two vessels. "By the rules, he's got the right of way, Cap'n."
"A boat with fishing gear out takes right of way over any vessel running free." snapped O'Moore, "Whistle him again for a port passing, and hold your course and speed."
Reluctantly, Chris complied. The Baltic not only ignored the signal, but seemed to increase its speed.
Chris's jaw bulged. The sweat of strain started out on his face. Almost imperceptibly, he began to ease off again,
"Steady!" O'Moore ordered grimly. "Hold her steady!'
(To be continued)
Copyright by Barrett Willoughby. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.