A SHRIMP AT SEA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23108, 6 February 1937, Page 9

A SHRIMP AT SEA

RUSKIN RECONSIDERED By W. W. Bridgman "Rough work, honourable or not, takes the life out of us; and the man who has been heaving clay out of a ditch all day, or driving an express train against the north wind all night, Sr holding a collier's helm in a gale on lee-shore, or whirling white-hot iron at a furnace mouth, that man is not the same at the end of his day or night as one who has been sitting in a quiet room, with everything comfortable about him, reading , books, or classing butterflies, or painting pictures." The words are Ruskin's, and when they slipped suddenly into my mind I was lying in the bows of a small fishing boat and feeling very much like the shrimps we were pursuing a few miles off the Belgian coast, near Ostend. The boat bore no name, but only a number., and three Flemish sailors, gifted with a fine natural courtesy and an uncanny faculty for doing their appointed tasks- quietly, efficiently, and unobtrusively, were all its crew. The night was calm, and there was but little prospect of wind or storm. As the mast swung pointer-fashion to the sky, all life, all time, all eternity seemed to be symbolised by the rhythmic dancuig of this cockleshell on a sea so utterly in harmony with swaying boat and wheeling stars. My thoughts turned, to -the human element, part and parcel also of this unmistakable drama. " Rough work, honourable or not." This heavy, slippery task, dangerous at times, undertaken, no doubt, purely in order to earn a living, what was its place in a world of machinery, Fascism, Communism, and revolution? As if impatient at my foolish questioning, the winch suddenly rattled, the heavy bonm to which the net was attached rose, and the boat swung round to begin in earnest her slow march over the waves. The net was funnel-shaped, perhaps 20ft in length, and ,15ft wide at the mouth, which was kept open by means df a long beam, supported at the end/by iron runners. The last 10ft of the net formed a kind of purse closed by a draw-rope at the end, and as the boat slackened speed, hundreds of shrimps were drawn into the mouth of their triangular prison. The lights of Middelkerke gleamed along the shore; nearer still, other boats were hastening to the fishing ground. Gradually they seemed to encircle us. It was almost like the story of Grenville—the one and the 53—and I half expected the Spaniards to open fire at any moment. Always there remained this.sense of an unseen adversary silently watching the efforts of man. ready to* challenge, or even perhaps to destroy him. fret Ruskin, I began to feel, had rather missed the point. Whatever a man's occupation may be, there is something to be gained from this struggle with the elements, something which reading books, or chasing butterflies, or painting pictures cannot possibly give. It is not a question of how much you are fatigued at the end of your day's work, but rather of what the labour has brought to you and to the community for which you toil. Also, there is a balance in things. Let the writer give of his best, the fisherman will still have much to teach him; let the fisherman pit his knowledge and skill against the worst that Nature can contrive, lie will still need the writer and the artist to ex-

press for him the innermost secret - of the eternal struggle with wind and weather. The lack of such a balance in the life of a community may have much to do with our present troubles. Little wonder that our world is torn apart, striving to keep pace with the tremendous ad- . vance in thought, and turning in desperation towards the life of the jungle and the savage. And out of this conflict arises inevitably the need for authority; but no man, be he Communist or Fascist, can give as yet'the right answer to a problem born of continual fear and confusion. Half an hour passed, perhaps an hour. Then came the signal to raise the net. Once again the stern of the boat swung round, the boom rose to the surface of the water, hooks grappled with the: net and lifted it on to the thwarts, whence is slithered over the deck, the end of the funnel one mass of captured shrimps. It rose again, and the je-king of a cord liberated the spoils, which spread over the unfriendly boards. Green crabs scuttled this „vay and that, flounders gave convulsive leaps and subsided, star-fish moved inquisitively over the glistening heap, the net sank once more into the sea, and the work of sorting out the fish occupied all hands. The process was simple but effective. A shovel scooped the shimps unceremoniously into a sieve, and a few vigorous movements left the crabs stranded high, though not by any means dry. It was a moment vhen one would have given anything to be a crab, and to be hurled over the side into the soft kindliness ■of familiar waves. As for the unfortunate shrimps that had passed through such tribulation, they had to undergo still further suffering, for once again they were riddled in a sieve, the smaller fry being, like the crabs, swiftly rejected. Flounders and soles had, of course, already been put aside, but the sifting process was nevertheless not yet complete, for there still remained small fish that had perforce to be picked out by hand. When the fashionable- world grows tired of the delicate perfume of lavender and Eau-de-Cologne, I recommend by way. of variation an hour of shrimp-sorting, a task calculated to satisfy the most exacting connoisseur. Lest the reader should become uneasy at the mere suggestion of fishy aromas, I hasten to provide an antidote by passing on to the next stage. A small boiler had meanwhile been roused into action, and from its chimney-pipe the flames were already leaping, adding a vivid touch of colour to an otherwise, murky scene. In a few minutes the aristocracy of the shrimp community were passing to their doom, and soon, red and steaming, were being spread out to cool before being finally packed into baskets for the market. I peeled a shrimp and tasted him, and he was

very good indeed. It was now about 3 o'clock in the morning, and again and again, as we neared Ostend, the process was repeated, fresh loads of shrimps changing their translucent grey for a more brilliant, if less natural, red. Sic transit gloria maris. Of the political tendencies of the shrimp but little account seems to have been taken. Naturally, he might be suspected of being a true Socialist, fulfilling his duty, humble or otherwise, for the good of mankind. Perchance, for all we know, the shrimp bows down to authority, esteeming it an honour to die for his community, for it is an undoubted fact that the most healthy-looking shrimp will be among the first to find his way into the cooking-pot—a solemn reflection for the Hitlers and Mussolinis of our time. Just exactly what Ruskin would have thought about the shrimp might be difficult to say. Perhaps he would have endeavoured to make him realise the glories of his sandy state, and have taught him 1 to appreciate the beauty of light and colour at the bottom of the sea. Not that we wish to decry the efforts of Ruskin; on the contrary, we feel that his courageous fight for the masses has concentrated our attention on the fact that more and more the world must seek to restore the lost balance between hand and head, between the work of the philosopher and the labour of, those who go down to the sea in ships, or tend the machines which can either be, our masters or our servants.

Comparisons are proverbially odious, but here Ruskin, though his words are not altogether apt, has a definite sense of values. "If it is any comfort to you to be told that the rough work is the more honourable of the two, I should be sorry to take that much of consolation from you; . . . but when both kinds are equally well and worthily done, the head's is the noble work, and the hand's the ignoble." I like better the oft-quoted line of the poet, "All service ranks the same with God." It has a truer ring, and suggests cooperation rather than conflict. The morning's work was by now nearly done. Mist settled upon the water, but not so thickly as to make progress difficult. Afar off, the melancholy sound of the fog-siren was heard. The lights of the other boats showed mqre faintly, white like our own, for as soon as a boat starts fishing operations the red and green lamps are extinguished. A pale glimmer in the sky, a shadowy grey replacing the darker tones on the surface of the sea, and that was the only sign of approaching dawn. Soon all lights were dispensed with. Through the mist the buildings along the coast were just visible and no more, so that at times it was necessary to look long and steadily at the place where they ought to have been in order to make sure that they really were appearing and reappearing, and were not mere figments of the imagination. By now we were approaching the buoy that marks the entrance to the harbour of Ostend. For the sixth and last time the net had been raised and its contents emptied on to the deck. The last crab had been thrown back into the sea, and the last shrimp tipped into the last basket. On our way home we greeted once more the Ostend lighthouse, white and slender, whose rays shine nightly over land and, sea, illuminating now the twin turrets of the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, and now the masts of fishing boats making their way out of the harbour. A fascinating crawl along the wooden beams beneath the wharf, a cup of coffee at the nearest cafe, and the night's adventure was over. Where was Ruskin now? Still with us, undoubtedly, for there is one sentence of his that remains imperishably true. After all, it is justice that the world demands, equality, not iden-

tity, of opportunity, the privilege of pursuing those tasks for which we are best fitted, neither hampered by undue authority nor wholly left to the violence of our own desires, serving only those masters who have sufficient vision and sympathy to lead us out of the maze of selfseeking or repression, and looking always to that balance between mental and physical activities which is a better solution of our difficulties than many of the schemes of politicians. " Men will be taught," says Ruskin, and we dare not deny his words, "that an existence of play, sustained by the blood of other creatures, is a good existence for gnats and sucking-fish, but not for

men; that neither days nor lives can be made holy by doing nothing in them; that the best prayer at the beginning of a day is that we may not lose its moments, and the best ! grace before meat the consciousness that we have justly earned our dinner." And that can be applied also to our use of leisure, which is a trust, and not a gift, and to our international problems, which unceasingly demand that no one nation shall endeavour to live at the expense of another, and that justice rather than equality is still the burning need both of individuals within the State and of communities within the longed-for federation of mankind.