smell that) with condensed milk.  Did I want my tea?  I noticed there were two men between me and the exit, and no room to pass.  The room was hot.  The bench was rising and falling.  My soul felt pale and faintly apprehensive, compelling me, now I was beset, to take hold of it firmly, and to tell it that this was not the time to be a miserable martyr, but a coarse brute; and that, whether it liked it or not, I was going to feed at once on fish, ham, and sickly liquor, and heaven help us if it failed me before these sailors.  It made no response, being a thin nonconformist soul, so I had to leave it, and alone I advanced on the food.  As so often happens, the conquest was a little less hard than it appeared to be.  I progressed, though slowly, and at last was sufficiently disengaged from my task to count the minutes moving at their funeral pace to the end of the meal.  The heat of the room mounted.  The movements of the ship continued to throw my stomach against the edge of the table.

My companions, however, were in no hurry to move.  They discussed, among other things, Hull, and its unfortunate system of sanitation.  While this gossip, which was explicit with exuberant detail, was engaging us, I summoned my scientific mind, which is not connected with my soul, to listen to what was being said, and the rest of me was deaf.  They went on to tell each other about other trawlers and other crews.  Other ships and men, I heard, had most of the luck.  “The fish follow some of ’em about,” complained the skipper.  “I should like to know how it’s done.”

“They ought to follow us,” replied the second engineer.  “When I went down to take over this morning, Mac was singing Scotch songs.  What more could we do below?”

“It’s a grand life,” nodded his superior’s polished bald head.  “Aye, there’s guid reason for singing.  Sing to yon codfish, y’ken.”

The skipper looked at the engineer in doubtful innocence.  “Well, I wish singing would do it,” he said gravely.  “I don’t know.  How do you account for some fellows getting most of the luck?  Their ships are the same, and they don’t know any more.”

Mac shook his head.  “The owners think they do.  There’s their big catches, y’ken.  Ye’ll no convince owners that the sea bottom isna’ wet and onsairten.”

The rosy face of the skipper became darker, and there was a spark in his eyes.  This was unfair.  “But dammit, man, you don’t mean to say the owners are right?  Do these chaps know any more?  Look at old Rumface, old Billy Higgs.  Got enough women to make him hate going into any port.  Can’t be happy ashore unless he’s too drunk to know one woman from another.  What does he do?  Can’t go to sea without taking his trawler right over all the fish there is.  Is that his sense?  Ain’t God good to him?  Shows him the fish every time.”

The engineer stood up, bending his head beneath a beam, crooking an elbow to consider one hairy arm.  “Ah weel, I wouldna call it God.  Ye canna tell.  Man Billy has his last trip to make.  Likely he’ll catch fish that’d frighten Hull.  Aye.”