Poor Man's Rock

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

Nearer shore another cluster of gill-netters was anchored, a Jap or two, and a Siwash Indian with his hull painted a gaudy blue. And in the middle of the Jew's Mouth, which was a scant six hundred yards across at its widest, the Folly Bay No. 5 swung on her anchor chain. A tubby cannery tender lay alongside. The crews were busy with picaroons forking salmon out of the seiner into the tender's hold. The flip-flop of the fish sounded distinctly in that quiet place. Their silver bodies flashed in the sun as they were thrown across the decks.

When the tender drew clear and passed out of the bay she rode deep with the weight of salmon aboard. Without the Jew's Mouth, around the Blackbird and the fish boats and the No. 5 the salmon were threshing water. Klop. A flash of silver. Bubbles. A series of concentric rings that ran away in ripples, till they merged into other widening rings. They were everywhere. The river was full of them. The bay was alive with them.

A boat put off from the seiner. The man rowed out of the Jew's Mouth and stopped, resting on his oars. He remained there, in approximately the same position. A sentry.

The No. 5 heaved anchor, the chain clanking and chattering in a hawsepipe. Her exhaust spat smoky, gaseous fumes. A bell clanged. She moved slowly ahead, toward the river's mouth, a hundred yards to one side of it. Then the brown web of the seine began to spin out over the stern. She crossed the mouth of the Solomon, holding as close in as her draft permitted, and kept on straight till her seine was paid out to the end. Then she stopped, lying still in dead water with her engine idling.

The tide was on the flood. Salmon run streams on a rising tide. And the seine stood like a wall across the river's mouth.

Every man watching knew what the seiner was about, in defiance of the law. The salmon, nosing into the stream, driven by that imperative urge which is the law of their being, struck the net, turned aside, swam in a slow circle and tried again and again, seeking free passage, until thousands of them were massed behind the barrier of the net. Then the No. 5 would close the net, tauten the ropes which made it a purse, and haul out into deep water.

It was the equivalent of piracy on the high seas. To be taken in the act meant fines, imprisonment, confiscation of boat and gear. But the No. 5 would not be caught. She had a guard posted. Cannery seiners were never caught. When they were they got off with a warning and a reprimand. Only gill-netters, the small fry of the salmon industry, ever paid the utmost penalty for raids like that. So the fishermen said, with a cynical twist of their lips.

"Look at 'em," one said to MacRae. "They make laws and break 'em themselves. They been doin' that every day for a week. If one of us set a piece of net in the river and took three hundred salmon the canners would holler their heads off. There'd be a patrol boat on our heels all the time if they thought we'd take a chance."

"Well, I'm about ready to take a chance," another man growled. "They clear the bay in daylight and all we get is their leavings at night."

The No. 5 pursed her seine and hauled out until she was abreast of the Blackbird. She drew close up to her massive hull a great heap of salmon, struggling, twisting, squirming within the net. The loading began. Her men laughed and shouted as they worked. The gill-net fishermen watched silently, scowling. It was like taking bread out of their mouths. It was like an honest man restrained by a policeman's club from taking food when he is hungry, and seeing a thief fill his pockets and walk off unmolested.