So we made Filey Brigg with sober faces, took a turbot each for our wives and sweethearts, and sold some to the inns and some to the merchants.
We thought our luck was in. We were wrong, though it took a while to learn.
* * *
Working the new ground was hard. The skipper had us out every chance he could, always leaving harbour with the dawn and heading south east, then turning north again when the sea lanes were empty. Two days journey there and back, two days of trawling on the bank until the ship was so crammed with fish we could hardly move. It was easier on some than others.
We were on our third trip when we saw the boat. The trawl was ready to drop, the sea was calm, and there it was in the eastern gloom.
“What is that feller there?” Henrikssen squinted.
“Our marker-boat,” said the skipper. “Pay no heed.”
“What if he is in trouble? I do not see a sail.”
“Get to your work,” was the only answer.
Henrikssen, Bill and I shared a look; the boy was fiddling with one of the otter-boards, checking the links. Single-boaters didn't have markers.
“I've seen it before,” said Bill. “Low and handy. Allus when we're trawling this bank, mind.”
Perhaps I had as well, but I'd marked it as a shadow on the water. I went back to the job.
The catch that night was heavier than usual, the cod-end packed with wriggling brown and silver. I thought the winch would burn out as it strained to bring the weight in. Cod in abundance, but better than that—turbot, which was always called prime and fetched a rare price at the markets. Hardly a dogfish, witch or megrim in there.
“It's money dancing.” Charlie grinned as he helped me pack fat turbot into the crates. The live fish flopped and slithered around his boots, waiting for our knives.
What did fish feel? Maybe nothing. Less than the pigs I'd seen slaughtered on my uncle's farm. I could never have done that.
The skipper paid us our share for that trip, prompt as always, and said we would wait a day or so. He'd know when 'things were right' to go out again. We were glad for the break.
It surprised me that we hadn't been followed—there was plenty of talk about the weight of fish we were landing, and the quality. I'd have thought the Sprite or Jed Barton's Swordfish would have trailed us just to find the general area where we trawled, but no. We never had company.
As if thinking made it so, I met Jed next morning, coming out of the Star. He'd had a pint or two, by the smell of him, but nothing that stopped his legs from working or stilled his lips.
“Harry.”
We touched our caps, mocking. We'd been close enough once, at least to share a slate at the Star. Then Jed had hired out to the fleet, and the Swordfish spent most of her time on the Dogger, making better money than the Gull. He fell in with the company people, and like herring-nets, we drifted.
“Your skipper's done well.”
He was testing me, I thought. There were plenty who wanted to know where we'd been.
“Aye. He knows his way around out there.”
Jed nodded.
“I tried after you last Thursday, you know.” he said, tugging at his moustache. “Wondered where you were fishing, doing so fine.”
“Did you, now?”
“Followed the Gull out, and saw you turn, north nor’ east.”
“I didn't see you.”
He frowned. “No. Couldn't have spotted a whale in that bloody fog, damn your luck. We were surprised you didn't turn back yourselves.”
I forced a smile. “A good skipper and a good compass. That's all you need.”
We talked shop and nonsense for a minute or two, asked after each other's families, and went our ways.
Thursday? It had been cold, with clear skies all day, not a touch of fog. It was always possible that the Swordfish had hit a sea-fret, coming in off the waters, but still…
Putting it aside, I went shopping. I bought Elsie a new dress, paid off the last of our debts, and peered into the tailor's window on the High Street, admiring a length of tweed. A new Sunday suit might soon be in order. With extra brass in my pockets, I stopped off the Ship Inn for a pint or two afterwards.
I hadn't expected to find anyone I knew at the Ship, but the skipper was there in one shadowed corner, sitting on his own. A bottle of whisky stood on the table, a third down.
“Skipper.”
“Harry.”
No invite to join him, no word I should leave. So, I sat down. I told him about meeting Jed and mentioned the fog.
“Sea-fret,” he said. It was more of an echo than any thought of his, I felt.
“Ullins Bank's been good to us,” I said between mouthfuls of beer.
“Aye.” His eyes were redder than usual, which I put down to the drink.
“How did you find it?” I tried to sound casual.
“Find what?”
“The bank. Our pot at the end of the rainbow.”
“Word came to me.”
I watched the way he gripped the bottle.
“It didn't come to any of the other skippers.”
He didn't like being pressed.
“I met someone in the know, all right?” He poured out more whisky.
“So the Devil walked into the Old Ship, and bought you a pint?” I laughed; he didn't.
“Weren't the Devil.” A mutter, the clank of glass against tobacco-yellowed teeth.
“Then who was it?”
“Just someone who knows the waters.” He looked up and smiled at me then, a smile that didn't ring true. “I've been thinking.”
I waited.
“Might be time to get a second boat. There's a small steam-trawler up for auction next month. Handy enough. Thought you might skipper it. Under my watch—at first.”
This had never occurred to me. I was as near as God his first mate, but on a boat the size of the Gull there wasn't much rank outside of him.
“You interested?” he asked, blunt.
“I…yes, like as not.” I couldn't think of what else to say.
“Good.”
And that was it.
Afterwards I sat outside our cottage with Elsie in the late afternoon sun. Onions and cabbage; parsnips and something else. I was no gardener, but she'd set out rows aplenty before the money had started coming in. Before Ullins Bank. She was a practical lass.
“Others'll find it soon, Charlie. The wives talk. Aggie Barton looks askance at me—her Jed's boat took mostly dogfish last time they went out.”
“I saw him. They'll eat,” I said, uncomfortable.
She looked at my hands.
“And this.” She made to touch the sores there, but I flinched.
“That'll pass, love. The skipper's a fair man. He'll see he's working us to the bone and back off. Besides, we've probably taken the best for this season.”
The sun caught her tip-tilted nose, her brown eyes.
“So you say. But what man stops when he smells his fortune.”
And some of her look at that moment was meant for me.
* * *
We went out again a day later. The weather was beginning to bother me. I supposed that Jed Barton had started it, with his talk of fog, but the truth was, we had never had bad weather on the Ullins Bank. Whatever the sea was like going to it, or coming from it, the water there was placid and the air still. Cloud aplenty, but none of the North Sea blows, no lashing rain. I was a fool to miss a storm, but I did. This had begun to feel wrong.
The marker boat was there the evening we arrived, further east by our reckoning, and the skipper told us where to trawl. So we did. We came up with sole so big the fish-kettle hadn't been made to take them, but we were tired. Bill was cursing, not his usual way, and Henrikssen cut himself with his own knife. I took him aft to bind it, a nasty gash on one arm.
“You see it?” he said as I tied the ends of the linen.
I followed his gaze. The marker-boat, nearer than usual. With his free hand, he reached into the
deck locker from which I'd had the bandages. He held out a spyglass, which must have been far older than the Gull.
“Go on, tell me what you see.”
I shrugged and lifted the glass. It took some adjusting, but I managed to focus on our companion. Or our shadow. Moonlight and a scatter of stars caught the low shape, higher at prow and stern. It looked clinker-built and wrong. There was no mast, and no engine housing I could see. A figure stood forward, eyes on the sea, not us. A tall, thin figure, wrapped in oil-skins or a heavy cloak, with a sliver of his face visible from the side.
I told Henrikssen what I saw.
“My father came from Norway,” he said, when I'd finished.
That was hardly news.
“Aye, and...”
“These men, these boats, they are not good. The Folk, my grandfather called them. Finnfolk. They are not like us.”
“You mean they're foreign?”
He pulled the sleeve of his gansey down, covering the bandaged arm. “You will joke at me.”
I heard the Scandinavian in his voice, always a sign of Henrikssen being serious. He was worried.
“No,” I said, “I don't think I will. Not tonight.”
“They are dark men. They say that each of the Finnfolk has a thing, a certain bone, marked with Godless words, which moves their boats. They can call the weather, raise or calm the waters, if they wish.”
“Ullins Bank.” I spoke soft, so as Charlie couldn't hear me over the engine.
“Yes.” Henrikssen looked to where the skipper stood by the winches, checking them.
“It's only a story,” I said, but my mind was back in the Ship Inn, thinking about talk of 'someone in the know'.
When we got back to the hold, Charlie sat on its edge, using a spike to get that glistening weed from the trawl net. It was obvious that he was trying not to touch it.
“Is it worse?” I asked, and crouched next to him, having a go at the weed myself.
He knew what I meant and held up his hands. They were blotched with red sores, and the palm of the left one was cracked open, weeping.
“Go below and get a cup of tea. We'll all have a mug, eh?”
He left eagerly, and Henrikssen joined me on the net.
“This weed, or sponge—whatever it is...” I shook my head.
“It is from them, the Folk.”
“Another of your grandfather's stories?”
“No. But it is only here on this bank.”
I pried free a slippery mass, about twelve inches long, and sliced into it. My blade hit something firmer inside. I twisted the knife, opening it up.
“Chalk,” I said. “Like coral, inside.”
My voice was steady, but my hand was not. Thin, chalky lengths formed some sort of core to the protrusions from the main stem. White fragments, each about the length of a finger-bone might be when flesh and sinew had rotted away. Which it couldn't be, of course.
Henrikssen took the weed from me, tossing it into the sea.
“Dead-man's fingers.”
* * *
We worked the bank—we were trawler-men and didn't know what else to do. Nearly a month had passed, and we were rich, by local standards, but fit to drop. I wanted Charlie at least to set back from the job for a while, but I knew why he pressed on. Since his father had gone down on the Swallow, six months back, he had his family to support.
There was word among the crew, even down to Bill Cabett, a cheery soul in all weather. No one liked the black marker-boat or the stillness of the sea, however easy it made the work. No one liked the dead-man's fingers, which came up with every trawl.
Worst was the quiet. The Gull always had gulls, waiting for entrails and slop, or resting on the crosstrees for a moment before scudding on their way. On Ullins Bank, no seabird flew. I'd heard it told that the cries of gulls were the voices of dead sailors, watching over the living. Whatever watched us on the bank was something else.
With the new moon coming round again, the skipper wanted us out again. The forecast wasn't good; we were tired, making mistakes. We almost had mutiny, if you can have such a thing on a small trawler. One of the fore gallows was bent out of kilter, barely fit after such heavy use, and there were holes in the trawl net. Even the thick trawl-warp, steel rope, was showing wear. Bill Cabett wouldn't pledge for the engine getting us back in, even if it got us out.
The skipper took me into the cabin while we were in harbour. It was a rough morning, dawn on its way. Waves broke twenty feet high on the Brigg, where the land dared to thrust into the sea; beyond the harbour itself we could see a serious swell, enough to keep most boats moored.
“This'll be the last time on the bank. I promise you.” His face was pale in the cabin lights. “Harry, I'm paying off the…marker-man. Him. It's time.”
“Good.”
“Tell the lads we need this last one. Please.”
He'd never said please to me in seven years. I nodded.
“As you say, skipper.”
It took some arguing with the lads. Word was the big fleets were out, but they had their carriers and their hospital ships from the Seaman's Mission. They watched out for each other and could take more of a blow than a single boat with no hope of quick relief. I checked the signal flares and had Bill make sure the life-jackets were sound.
And out we went, the Gull pitching and rolling, spray hissing on the funnel. It gave me no pleasure that the closer we got to Ullins Bank, the calmer it became. By dusk, we were there, and yet again the sea was smooth, too smooth. I thought of Finnfolk, and of ways that shouldn't be. I thought of Elsie, and her complaints that I'd missed church service too often this last month.
The marker-boat was nearer than usual, and even in the gloom, I could see the figure standing in it now. I shivered, said nothing. We fed out the gear, and crossed the bank, nice and slow. When we brought it in, it was heavy as ever.
Work took over. As we gutted, Henrikssen stood by me.
“Here.” He reached under his smock and passed me something. It was a cross, a simple iron one hung on an old leather bootlace.
I frowned.
“Wear it,” he said, and went back to the catch. I watched as he slid his knife up through the belly of a huge cod, almost losing his grip on it. Awkward, I slipped the thong around my neck and shoved the cross under my gansey.
We were three-quarters full after the first trawl, which would have been unthinkable a month ago. I thought the skipper would push us to one more, but this time was different.
“That's it. The bank's about done for now, and we've earned some serious shore time.”
He stood by the larboard rail, his sou'wester in his hand.
“Harry, take the lads below. There's a half bottle of whisky behind the stove. We'll have hot tea, and a good measure before we head back.”
I did what he said, but when the tea was brewed, I went up, quiet like, for I wanted to know what was going on. The hatch was just aft of the funnel, and it was easy to slip into cover. The skipper was by the rail, and the boat out there was coming closer. It had no lights, no sail. I listened hard, but couldn't hear an engine.
“Gull.” A voice across the water.
“Aye,” called back the skipper.
The strange vessel came into the gleam of our own lights, its gunnels hardly above the water. A dull thud, and its occupant was onto our deck.
Elsie says I'm no great judge of men, but this one had me cold. Taller than the skipper, which was a good height, with long dark hair and some sort of oilskin wrapped around narrow shoulders. It trailed to his booted feet, scraping the deck planks.
The skipper stood uneasy, one hand on the rail.
“We're done,” he said. “I have what we agreed.” He held out a leather satchel, heavy by the way he handled it. “A full weight in silver.”
The dark man stared. Sallow is the word for his look, I think—a lean, sallow face with thin lips, and eyes that were darker than the night. He moved to a heap of dead-men's fingers, bendi
ng to pick a handful up. They had lost their gelatinous look, and now seemed even more like their namesakes.
“And a little more.” The dark man's voice was a wicked thing—like the slither of a shark from the deeps, an eel from its lair. His hand moved on the weed like you would stroke a dog—almost a caress—before he lay it down.
“Aye. I added extra good silver coin,” said the skipper.
“Who have the dead-men marked?”
The skipper stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
“We take a tithe, and the dead-men know their own. There will be one of you they have marked, and he is ours. There is always one—that is the bargain. Silver and a little more, for the fair fortune we gave you.”
“No.” The skipper's eyes were wide, shocked. My only comfort was that at least he hadn't known. That would have been too much.
“Did we keep our word?”
The skipper shuddered. “You did, but you didn't tell me...”
“Now you are told, and now you are wiser.” The other peeled back thin lips. His teeth were small and sharp and as yellow as the skipper's, but not, I think, from tobacco.
There was a scuffle behind me, and Charlie was there in the hatchway, hauling himself on deck.
“What's going on, Mr. Kell?”
The dark man turned, and I knew that he saw those hands and arms. I smelled his cold greed, like it was in the air between us, his eyes on the weeping sores that ran from fingertip to elbow. I kicked at Charlie's shoulder, and with a surprised yelp, he tumbled back down the ladder, out of sight.
“See?” It was a hiss on the night air. “He is marked, and there is the rest of the bargain. And a runtling, no loss to you. The dead-men have chosen who will join them.”
“You can't have him,” I said, standing forward. Even from here, the stranger smelled of mildew and sea-rot, like tarpaulin left in the hold too long.
The skipper swore, pressing the leather bag into the dark man's hands.
“I'll find more silver, if I must. Leave the lad alone.”
“You break oath with us. We will have all, or you will have nothing.”
If there'd been a gun on board, even a rusty shotgun, I would have grabbed for it. Instead, I pulled Henrikssen's cross from under my gansey, and held it up on its thong. It was all I could think to do.
Fearful Fathoms: Collected Tales of Aquatic Terror (Vol. I - Seas & Oceans) Page 40