POACHERS SEEN OFF [320] Aphanistor continued: "A commercial diving firm called Underwaterwork has a 'sub like me, called Cetus [Latin for `whale', and a constellation]. 's never caught a poacher, he just leaves them to poach. And, quite often, when he's going with divers to a work site, they travel in him: in the water they use his side-hatch; but if the quay's high he puts his grab open on the quayside and the divers go in, and down his intake into his hull; and when he comes back he puts his grab on the quayside again, and they come up his intake and out onto the quay. Hanged if I'd let my `one-way road' become a two-way road quite so casually and often! My one-way road one-way! The way to avoid it, that works every time, in my sea area, is: Don't poach, no shellfish catching gear, keep away from pots and keepboxes, ask the acting harbourmaster first. Not many get the privilege to ride the wrong way! But once they did. It was a week ago. Those big foreign trawlers that sneak inshore scooping everything up with fine mesh nets and sailing through our driftnets. One of them, called San Juan del Mar, its name's saintliness clashing badly with its crew's unsaintly despoiling my men's fishing area, came again, and my sonar saw it. I got ahead of it, and as it went past I fouled its prop with a length of thick rope that I `brought up'. Then I extended my grab-arm over their side. They said the expected started remarks such as `Santa Maria!' and backed away. They hadn't seen a dredgersub before, my great steel `head and neck' like old sailors' seaserpent stories. They'd thought they were too high-sided to be easily boarded by anything we've got. Then five bulges came from my hull up my intake as I regurgitated onboard Pendane and his men in diving gear. They had aqualungs on this time, they'd been diving all together for scallops and I'd had time to pick them up before I went after the poacher; as I and Pendane advised them to, they always wore their helmets and sticks, and they had teargas cartridges [which they got in events in 269 etseq] wrapped in rubber to keep them dry. Pendane's men threw teargas into the crew's cabin and quickly overpowered and handcuffed the crew, who'd retreated into there. `Enough keep going through our gear!' #11, that's the new Mickelson, accused one of them, who they found later was called Juan. The louts strained at their handcuffs and acted thick and pretended not to know English. Their eyes streamed from the teargas. `No hablo - not speak -' Juan started. Suddenly #11, for no reason that he can remember, used knowledge picked up from one of his dark evening hobbies. `Saepe scindis transnavigans retia nostra Crabhavenensium! Debes pacare multum!' he said angrily to Juan in Latin. `Non piscabamus. Sole navig...' Juan denied angrily and falsely, then stopped with a jerk, too late to avoid revealing that he had the means of answering his interrogator's questions. Being addressed angrily in that language in an unexpected place sent his mind back with a jerk back home to ill memories of a convent-run school near Salamanca and endless drilling in Latin, which is nobody's birth speech, and endless theology and saints' lives, itself taught and discussed in Latin as often as not, instead of exam passes in higher maths and a science or two to get himself a good job on leaving school instead of labouring or unskilled clerking. In the end he'd rejected it: at Santiago de Compostela, when on a school pilgrimage there, he'd slipped out of another door of the cathedral and thrown away his schoolbooks with an angry oath and thumbed a lift to El Ferrol where he became a trawler deckhand. His head now filled with painful memories, not comforted by his interrogator's tough rubber suit and safety helmet with #11 numbers on, and hard round breathing mask with its small eyeholes, and riotsquad gear, and stylized dredgersub images on shoulder badges. `Et retium foramina multo illegaliter parva! Et in aquis nostris propriis! Appellamus coastguard - custodem maritimum - nunc! Satis furum! Hoc finit!' Mickelson continued, too angry to care whether or not he was saying exactly what a Roman would have said then. `OK, OK, I know English.' Juan admitted, `We come quietly. Small mesh of nets. Inside the fishing limit. Your nets everywhere, so no way except through them.'. `We are poor - sumus pauperi - somos poveros.' Juan whined. The old excuse for thieving down the ages. `So'll we be if you lot kill all the young fish so none left to grow up and breed!' Mickelson replied. In the meantime the police and some fisheries protection officers came in two vans. `Right, thieves, get in the blue van.' said one of them. `No hablo.' said one of the prisoners, trying the same trick again. `En el vehiculo de policia!' said Pendane angrily, stretching his knowledge of Spanish to the limit. They obeyed. `Leave their boat tied up here. We'll send a tug or a crew for it.' said a fisheries protection officer. San Juan del Mar's last known position and radio silence didn't go unnoticed among its own people. At 2.30am that night another Spanish trawler, named San Lorenzo del Escorial after Spain's main royal monastery and church affairs office, but with a crew as unsaintlike and prone to breaking the fishing laws as their fellows, thankful that there was plenty of moonlight, sneaked into Crabhaven with its lights out to rescue San Juan del Mar before anyone could seize its fishing gear or hold it to enforce payment of a fine. Suddenly their propeller stopped, and from its prop shaft drive clutch came a scorched smell and a nasty noise. I had used the same trick with a piece of thick rope as before. `Cut power now! Prop's foul!' someone on board shouted in Spanish. `Caca de Dios!' one of them swore, `We daren't call their coastguard, that fine-mesh net we've got, and all! Break out the diving gear and cut us loose!'. One of them put on scuba diving gear and went down a diving ladder. Their radio operator, overhearing me radioing the coastguard, ran out and called down after him: `Pedro! Forget it. Wait till daylight. Come up.'. Pedro climbed out of the sea back up the ladder and on board. Just in time, for I was alongside them, just submerged. Soon helicopters came. This time there could be no evasion from language, for the arrest team brought a Spanish-speaking interpreter with them. I unfouled both poachers' propellers. Fisheries protection men sailed them to Plymouth. The court later seized all of both culprits' fishing gear, but let their crews sail home to El Ferrol. ``El Escorial'.' said the interpreter, `That's a big monastery near Madrid. Odd choice of name, their king Philip the 2nd calling it [the Spanish for] `The Slagheap'!'. `Not mock. Was ironworks there before King Felipe build.' one of the prisoners complained as he got into a police van. `Con nosotros [= with us]!' one of the policemen, who knew some Spanish, ordered, `Get in! Been trying to avenge the Armada?'. `$#@ fine-mesh nets killing all the young fish! That's why there's laws about them!' said a fisheries protection officer. So this matter finished, and at Crabhaven life went on.". So Aphanistor finished his account of those events. "Well! That's a packet of news! La Parisienne gets a laparotomy! And the Second Armada seen off!" exclaimed Z.Penlane. "Laparo-what?" said Tregear. "Medicalese for any operation on the abdomen. Bang glug glug glug! Now that diving!" said Penlane, who had some of Captain Hurlock's naval ideas as to the correct place for diving. [322] "The surprise those Spaniards got!" said Tregear, standing on the quayside in his heavy long-duration mixture rebreather and work-and-combat type diving gear, "The way we got on board! To think we've been swallowed by Aphanistor and lived to tell of it! Not many get privilege! Poachers don't! Not often lets himself be used as a ferry by divers.". "Only my men, this time; and Smith & Malton's mechanic when he services me." said Aphanistor. "Yes. `But fate found them, flipper-dissolving, / cylinder-consuming, by sea waves hidden' [quoted from 196] - now underwater pleasure-seekers are wiser." said Pendane. "Yes. Not like that dredgersub `Cetus' belonging to that firm Underwaterwork. The only diving gear gets is what his firm throws out as old. `At first they sold it as scrap, and it turned up in shops as good nearly-new kit. Now I get it all.' he told me once, that, and drugs and porn and weapons and stuff that the police and the customs want destroying. If catch a thief, hanged if just let a landlubber court smack his bottom and let him do it again." said Aphanistor. Aphanistor continued: "As I said, some of you'll have to set fewer pots and dive for the rest of the shellfish. We've started to have those new big sea-woodlice that eat pot baits first. After one lot that the men warned off turned out to be all cops (Bristol police station diving club), we realized that we better leave them alone. We can't fight the whole world. Anyway, Peter Mickelson (that's him that came from the next village, I think he's Nick Mickelson's cousin) was attending to pots when a scuba diver surfaced by his boat and held up a polythene bag of small creatures and said ever so politely and trying to be helpful: `Excuse, if you've been finding pots empty and no bait left, I looked at two of the pots here and they were swarming with these things eating the baits. Some sort of isopod crustacean. They had an invasion of them round the Hebrides, they called them `wee beasties'.'. Mickelson snatched the bag and threw it away angrily, shouting: `#$%#%@ sea bees! That's #$% all we need! Now 've got them!', having as little liking for the messenger as for the message, and thought `Agh! What have Captain Hurlock and Affy fought for?, only for our livelihood to pay for all this to be kicked into touch by an enemy an inch long! Now we ruined.'. Mickelson turned towards the scuba diver and continued angrily: `I suppose we're supposed to set a lot fewer pots, so the creatures can't spread from one pot to another so easily! We can't! We must make a living! Sons won't go to sea but get jobs in towns. And I suppose I'll have to go diver myself!, as Affy's started to hint - I must go under or go under - diver or bankrupt! @#$ off!'. `Who's Affy?' the scuba diver asked, hearing my name which Mickelson had let slip in the wrong place. `He's someone that lives near here.' said Mickelson. `Does he scuba dive himself?' the scuba diver asked. `Sometimes, but he's always busy.' Mickelson replied, briefly reflecting on the likely outcome if that scuba diver nosying among pots had come up to me instead of him to pester and interrupt work. `Sorry, I thought I'd tell you they're here.' said the scuba diver. `And the foreigners are murdering the mackerel.' Mickelson complained, `Soon we'll have no living left. EEC quotas, restrictions, restrictions. Something kicked in the teeth by some dirty pest that doesn't belong here! I bet they came to England on some dirty ship's bottom! Potato blight came last century, and half Ireland starved to death or had to emigrate! Phylloxera insect came last century, and nearly every grapevine in Europe had to be pulled up and replanted on American roots! Slipper limpets and whelk tingle shells came last century, and now oyster growers have no peace! They even say that $#@ shipworms came a few centuries ago, and before then wood in the sea was mostly left alone! Ditto grey squirrels! They invented cars, and now the villages have no relief from trippers! That Cousteau invents frogmen's kit for the masses, and now we have you lot! And now these creatures! %$#@!'. `Not my fault.' the scuba diver self-excused, `I just came here to get away from work and the houses opposite.'. `As long as you don't poach our shellfish.' Mickelson warned. The scuba diver submerged and swam away. Mickelson reached into a compartment for something, then thought better of it. The news of the divers that turned out to be all cops has got round, and the diving clubs have got fond of suing us again. But the word's also got round to leave shellfish alone." said Aphanistor, "How much kit have you nine got?". "None." said Trelane, "Magistrate took our waterproofs and helmets, he called them `illegal uniforms used to masquerade as an official body in furtherance of crime'. Defending our livelihood and our sea areas, a crime! And of course he took all the weapons and the two- way radios.". "And that new cop keeps looking in our boats for Hurlock sonars and suchlike." said Aphanistor, "All your boats and pots are still here. And, as I said, now we've got those sea-woodlice that eat pot baits. There's several sets of diving gear here, if any of you want to use it. There's a big bed of scallops 3.5 miles SSW of Dobbits. Best dive for them. Dragging for scallops tears up the seabed life too much and there's less for the fish to eat, I don't hold with it.". "It still sounds like a wire's got loose and he's gone all for divers all of a sudden." said Trelane doubtfully. "No! Not for all divers." said Tregear, his voice sounding somewhat hollow and muffled through his hard round black breathing mask that showed only his eyes, "Only for us learning to dive for when jobs need doing underwater, and to keep fishing if we can't pot because pots keep getting robbed by trippers or creatures. And to go underwater after poachers!, like French diving sea police do, since our kit like I'm wearing's designed for it to be difficult for someone to damage it or me in a fight. Helmet, this mask, breathing tubes armoured and not looping right out like a sport diver's so handy to get hold of and pull, cylinder valves protected; pieces of hard plastic over particular places on our bodies; and us thoroughly commando-trained by Pendane and Affy. Affy's a good friend to us. He's still a strong defender, as much as he can get away with being - people have been asking questions, since that videotape found offshore from M.O.D. Hiddleston was shown on the telly. As that naval dredgersub DS2 was swallowing two scuba divers that it found nosing around something secret, one of them used and hid a videocamera, which someone found later. And those cops.". "Bang glug glug glug went La Parisienne! I wish I'd seen it!" said Trelane appreciatively. "Its crew got to land," said Tregear, "but they'd lost a great deal of business papers. I reckon they were too drunk to do anything to salvage them before abandoning ship.". "They were sober and sorry when they got to shore." said Aphanistor who was still floating awash alongside, lethal-looking grab-arm folded on roof, smoothly rounded bulky steel hull telling nothing of what happened inside it, "They'd `burnt up' all the drink for fuel for all that rowing. Drink. Once Big Jim [Conway and Red Wharf's grab dredgersub] went to Amlwch in Anglesey about something. Lucky he did. Five business types came out of a cabin cruiser to the pub and stayed there till it closed at 11pm, realized they should've gone straight to Barrow-in-Furness and not delayed. Big Jim heard them arguing. Then they tried to set off, but they couldn't, for he'd tied them by their prop-shaft to a mooring.". "The law says that fishing boats mustn't have drink on board. Quite right." said Tregear. Aphanistor continued: "One of them realized they were foul astern and looked overside and saw Big Jim and called overside to him: `Ahoy! Boat! Put your (hic) meddling frogmen back in and unhook (hic) ush ! Mosht important meeting.'. So drunk that they thought he was a boatful of scuba divers! (-full of scuba divers: that's a different matter ...) `You stay here till morning to sober up.' said Big Jim, `I'll not let you sail crosswind at night in this weather all hands drunk! I'll let you go in the morning.'. `Ohh, in the ming, when I'll be hung over to $#@.' the man moaned in unwelcome anticipation, `I'm not a `hand', I'm an imp(hic)ortant bizhnishman (hic).'. They emptied their cocktail cabinet and slept till nearly 11am next day. Heads so bad when someone offered them aspirins at £1 each, they paid! They threatened to sue for all sorts of damages, but nothing came of it.". "Examples in Rudyard Kipling's story `Captains Courageous' of what can happen when fishing boats take drink to sea." said Tregear. "Yes, I've read it." said Polwerran. "Yes, leave drink on land. Why must you fleshlings waste money poisoning yourselves with ethyl-alcohol, anyway?" said Aphanistor, and then, noticing some people on the quay: "What? Oh, just trippers.". "Look Mummy, there's a real one of the model you bought me in Plymouth for my birthday." came a child's voice from the quay. Aphanistor saw a two-foot-long model of himself in the arms of a boy of about 12. "Look, it's talking to those men and that scuba diver." the boy continued to his mother. Aphanistor gave a resigned brrrrm and said: "Boy's got a model of me. Toy and working models of us in shops, had to happen, I suppose. As soon as anything gets even a bit famous or notorious. Humans are like that.". He thought silently: "Too many eyes and cameras on us. We better `keep a low profile' for a while. Oh well, if any of my people here do get in trouble, that scuba diving magistrate won't try them. He celebrated his victory [see 195-206] over Captain Hurlock's Sea Patrol by diving at Dobbits Cleft without asking any of us for permission - diving alone is risky - I remember his lifejacket's inflation cylinder, luckily only a small explosion, I'd missed it. Those nine'll need new waterproofs and helmets. Some of them'll want to learn to dive, for purposes aforesaid, and wreck-picking also, I can't be in two places at once. Life goes on.".