A flash of yellow caught her eye and she looked up to see Seth Skinner leaning over the rail to catch the next triad of buoys with a boat hook, a long pole with a sharp, curved hook on one end. He hauled in the sopping line hand over hand and when he had enough caught a length of it in the block. Line whipped through the winch, piling up on deck. Minutes later the pot's bridle broke the surface, followed immediately afterward by the pot. It was full of crab, loaded with crab, brimming with crab, overflowing with crab, and Kate didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Seth Skinner, lean, lanky and imperturbable and who looked like Jimmy Stewart without the horse, pulled the ties that opened the pot door and the crab cascaded down to the deck. For a moment Kate stood still, looking at him speculatively. Seth Skinner, too, had been on board the Avilda the night Alcala and Brown had disappeared.

He raised his head suddenly and caught her looking at him. She met his gaze and held it, more curious than embarrassed. Seth's eyes were a clear gray and vacant of an identifiable expression, oddly peaceful. He smiled at her, a small smile that didn't touch his eyes and barely dented the corners of his mouth, and pulled on the pot, swinging it to one side.

"Shugak!" The shout was snatched out of the mouth of the deck boss and blew past her. She looked around.

"You're on sorting!"

She nodded to show she understood. Waiting for the next swell, she caught the roll of the deck and slid to a position between pot launcher and hold, up to her knees in every kind of crab known to populate the bottom of the Bering Sea. Bending over, she began to sort through them mechanically. There were a few Dungeness, a couple of blue kings and one small and indignant squid, but mostly the pot was filled with tanners, Chionoecetes bairdi and Chionoecetes opilio. They were both thin, pale crab, with a light brown carapace and a yellowish under-shell, their legs long, slender and slightly flattened.