Wreckers Must Breathe Read Online Free Page B

towards Cadgwith, and I scrambled to my feet.
    â€˜How are you feeling?’ he asked.
    â€˜Unpleasantly wet, but otherwise all right.’ But I was a bit shaken and had to sit on the thwart. ‘Does this sort of thing often happen?’ I asked him. I glanced up and surprised a rather puzzled look on his face.
    â€˜Never known it to happen afore, sir,’ he replied.
    â€˜What was it?’ I persisted. ‘An outsize in pollock, a tunny fish, a shark—or what?’
    â€˜Well, it might have been a tunny or a shark,’ he said, a trifle doubtfully I thought. ‘You had a mackerel on that line, didn’t you?’
    I nodded. ‘And I saw something break the surface of the water just beside the boat,’ I said. ‘It was in the trough of a wave and moving fast in the direction of the mackerel. Would it have been the fin of a shark, do you think? Do you get sharks round this coast?’
    â€˜Sometimes. You get ’em on most coasts.’ He shook his head. ‘It must have been a pretty big one,’ he murmured. ‘You should have seen the state of the sea after you’d taken your header. It was as though a whale had submerged.’
    He rolled a cigarette for me and we fell silent, smoking thoughtfully. I was beginning to feel pretty cold by the time we reached Cadgwith. As soon as we had landed he took me straight up to the pub, where I was introduced to the landlord, given a pair of old trousers and a jersey, and my wet clothes hung up to dry. I ordered a hot rum and lemon. Big Logan and the landlord joined me with whiskies and then fell to an interminable discussion of the whole business. I had already decided it was a shark and I was not interested. Sitting in front of the warm kitchen range I soon began to feel sleepy.
    Big Logan had to shake me awake in order to tell me that he would take me back to Church Cove by boat. I could hear the wind howling in the chimney and I shook my head. ‘I’ll walk,’ I said.
    â€˜Your clothes aren’t dry yet and you’re tired,’ he said. ‘Much better let me run you back. There’s still a little light left and the sea isn’t too bad yet.’
    But I shook my head. ‘Honestly, I’d like the walk,’ I told him. ‘It’ll warm me up. That is, if you don’t mind my hanging on to these clothes until tomorrow?’ I asked the landlord.
    â€˜That’s all right,’ he said. ‘You’re welcome. And if you’ll come over tomorrow we’ll have your own clothes dry for you by then.’
    I thanked him and got to my feet. I tried to pay Big Logan for the fishing trip, but he said he didn’t accept money for nearly drowning people. And when I tried to insist, he thrust the pound note back into the pocket of my jacket, which I had put on, wet though it was, because it contained my wallet and my keys. He even offered to accompany me along the cliffs, but by this time I was feeling sufficiently wide awake and buoyed up by the drink to insist that I should enjoy the walk.
    As he came out of the pub with me, he called to two fellows in the bar to come and help him in with his boat. The evening light was still sufficient for me to be able to see it bobbing about at its moorings. The wind was rising still and already the waves were beginning to sound noisily on the shingle beach as they tumbled into the inlet. I climbed the roadway to the cliffs and met the full force of the growing gale. I was more than ever glad then that I had not accepted Logan’s offer to run me back to Church Cove.
    The heat of exertion made the jersey and the rough serge trousers most uncomfortable. I had nothing on underneath them and my skin was sensitive to the rough material. Moreover, my shoes, which were still wet, squelched at every step. I found the farmyard, and climbing the stone stile, reached the path that skirted the Devil’s Frying Pan. The flashing of the