Kate filled the last bait jar, tightened the lid down and waited for the deck beneath her feet to heave in the right direction. It did, but this time the swell was too big and she slid fight past the stacked pots and into the pot launcher. It caught her just beneath her breasts, square across the diaphragm, knocking the breath out of her. Kate caught her breath just in time to hold it beneath the wave of spray that swept over the rail and poured ice-cold water inside her collar and down her spine.

Gasping, she shook her head. When her eyes cleared she saw Seth Skinner grinning at her, his teeth a white slash in his bearded face. "Nice day!" he shouted. It was the longest sentence she'd ever heard him speak.

"Couldn't ask for nicer!" she shouted back, and fought her way over to where Andy was baiting. Together they baited the last pot, and Kate began coiling the twenty-five-fathom shots of five-eighth-inch polypropylene line while Andy checked the buoys. Each pot had three, one Styrofoam buoy and two air-filled plastic buoys, all painted a painfully fluorescent orange and each with the boat's name and registration number lettered on it in sloppy but legible black paint. Finishing with the buoys, he set his shoulder to the pot at the end of the row and reached around for the line fastening the pot down.

"No," Kate shouted, "wait for the next swell."

"What?" His usually fresh face was exhausted and uncomprehending.

He bent to shove and she grabbed his arm. "No," she shouted again, "wait. Wait."

The word penetrated, and dumbly, he waited.

The next swell was a big one, the biggest one yet.

When she'd rolled as far as she was going to, the Avilda's portside gunnel was again awash, the water boiling over the railing. She hesitated there for a long, long moment.

Kate knew enough of the old girl's construction to know that they'd loaded enough crab so that the Avilda was carrying sufficient ballast. Kate hoped. Just the same, she strained against the list of the deck, as if by pulling hard enough against the pot she could right the boat by her efforts alone. It was entirely involuntary, a human rebellion against this unnatural tilting of the world, and if she'd been able to took around she would have seen the rest of the crew, their faces screwed into similar fearful grimaces, straining just as hard against the nearest available surface.

The Avilda hesitated a moment longer, and then the swell passed beneath her keel and she heeled over with a rush. "Now!" Kate shouted. "Shove! Hard!"

Together, she and Andy shoved, hard, and the pot screeched across the deck, to be caught by Seth, who in a few deft movements had it attached to the hoist.