Their poverty is apparent to all the world; the difficulty of getting even a bare living by the fisheries is bringing competition for employment even into the lifeboat. Lifeboatmen may earn 30s. in a winter's night by going out to a wreck, and may get as much as £10 per man in one haul if they recover salvage. That is "big money" to fishermen; so it comes to pass that even that business is tarnished with a sordid taint.
"The coastguard had no business to fire their rocket-line," said a fisherman to me, speaking of the wreck above described; "we was in the water first and was entitled to the pay. Besides," he continued, following up a train of thought which is horrible to pursue, "they needn't be in such a hurry to take the bread from us lifeboatmen: it's only half a crown each they'd get for firing the rocket."
I heard ugly hints of vessels purposely cast away to recover insurance; and I heard a well-dressed townsman, who spoke with considerable warmth, and evidently with knowledge, utter bitter sneers at the rapacity of certain boatmen who had "made salvage a business," and who "always won their actions-at-law against the owners because counsel artfully worked on the jurymen's feelings by glowing accounts of the men's pluck and perils."
"And do you deny the peril of the work?" I asked.
"No," he admitted, "it's risky enough, but it pays better than fishing, and that's about as risky."
"You would not care to do it yourself, I presume?"
"Not me!" he answered, with a chuckle; "I should hope I'd got a better mark on. But to make a ten-pound note, those beggars, why, they'd face hell!"
If there be a devil his name is Money.