"Seven." Captain Imrie accepted the judgement as unhesitatingly as if an oracle had spoken and poured himself another drink: I thanked whatever gods there be for the infinitely reassuring presence of Smithy, the mate, on the bridge. "You see, Mr. Gerran? Nothing." As Gerran was at that moment clinging frantically to a table that was inclined at an angle of thirty degrees, he made no reply. "A storm? Dearie me, dearie me. Why, I remember the very first time that Mr. Stokes and I took the Morning Rose up to the Bear Island fishing grounds, the very first trawler ever to fish those waters and come back with full holds, 1928, I think it was?'

"1929," Mr. Stokes said.

1929." Captain Imrie fixed his bright blue eyes on Gerran and Johann Heissman, a small, lean, pale man with a permanently apprehensive expression : Heissman's hands were never still. "Now, that was a storm! We were with a trawler out of Aberdeen, I forget its name?

"The Silver Harvest," Mr. Stokes said.

"The Silver Harvest. Engine failure in a Force 10. Two hours she was broadside to the seas, two hours before we could get a line aboard. Her skipper-her skipper-"

"MacAndrew. John MacAndrew."

"Thank you, Mr. Stokes. Broke his neck. Towed his boat-and him with his broken neck in splints-for thirty hours in a Force 10, four of them in a Force 11. Man, you should have seen yon seas. I tell you, they were mountains, just mountains. The bows thirty feet up and down, up and down, rolling over on our beam ends, hour after hour, every man except Mr. Stokes and myself coughing his insides up-" He broke off as Heissman rose hurriedly to his feet and ran from the saloon. Is your friend upset, Mr. Gerran?"

"Couldn't we heave to or whatever it is you do," Gerran pleaded. "Or run for shelter?"

"Shelter? Shelter from what? Why, I remember-"

"Mr. Gerran and his company haven't spent their lives at sea, Captain ," I said.