Polar Star [antikvár]

1 Like a beast, the net came steaming up the ramp and into the sodium lamps of the trawl deck. Like a gleaming pelt, mats of red, blue, orange strips covered the mesh: plastic 'chafing hair' designed to ease the net's way over the rocks of the sea bottom. Like rank breath, the exhalation of the sea's cold enveloped the hair in a halo of its own colours, brilliant in the weepy night. Water hissed from the net's plastic hair onto the wooden boards that provided footing on the deck. Smaller fish, smelts and herring, fell free. Starfish dropped like stones. Uprooted crabs, even dead, landed on tiptoe. Overhead, gulls and shearwaters hovered at the outer glow of the lamps. As the wind shifted the birds broke into a swirl of white wings. Usually the net was tipped and disgorged headfirst into the forward chutes to begin with, then ass-end into the rear. Either end could be opened by releasing the knot of a 'zipper', a nylon cord braided through the mesh. Though the men stood by with shovels ready for work, the trawlmas-ter waved them off and stepped into the water raining from the net's plastic 'hair' and stared straight up, removing his helmet the better to see. The coloured strips dripped like running paint. He reached and spread the 'hair' from the mesh, then looked into the dark to find the other, smaller light riding the ocean swells, but already fog hid the catcher-boat the net had come from. From his belt the trawlmaster took a double-edged knife, reached through the dripping plastic hair and sawed the belly of the net dovm and across.