Only he had a problem, because half a dozen other drifters had crowded round him, their engines idling, making no effort to move out of the way.

Kate caught the barest glimpse of all this on her way back to the Freya, as she was preoccupied with dodging hatch-cover water-skiers and fireworks. Dewey Dineen tossed another cherry bomb that came a little too close for comfort, dousing Kate with water. She altered course to come alongside the Priscilla and share her feelings on the subject. He was half in the bag, so she let it go with a few pithy remarks that were received with a wide, unfocused grin and the offer of a beer.

Old Sam was standing in the bow of the Freya, and came down on deck to catch her line. She came up on deck and said, "What's going on?"

Old Sam grinned the grin that made him look like a cross between Lucifer and Linda Lovelace. "It's better than a Hollywood movie, Kate. Come watch."

She followed him up to the bow, from where they had an excellent view of the altercation shaping up off the port bow. On board the no-name drifter, Meany's son was pulling in the last of the gear, where it sat in a green pile of mesh on deck forward of the reel. Meany himself was at the controls on the flying bridge, trying to make way without much success, because he was being matched move for move by the half-dozen drifters surrounding him.

With immense enjoyment, Old Sam said, "He just took delivery from his beach site, and the rest of 'em won't give him sea room."

Kate eyed him, one eyebrow raised. Old Sam was maybe five feet, two and a half inches when he stood on tiptoe and weighed maybe 125 pounds after a nine-course mealmaybe. With the passage of timehe wouldn't say how muchthe flesh of his face had wrinkled like a mass of contour lines on a well-worn map, but his step was firm, his eye sharp and his grin just nasty enough to make the people he turned it on feel for their wallets. "What are you grinning about, old man? If the fleet's on strike, so are we. This situation isn't putting any butter on our bread, either."

"Yeah, well, was I fishing instead of tendering, I don't know's how I'd be risking a new drift net for fifty cents a pound myself."

"I guess Meany doesn't think so."

Old Sam spat over the side, an eloquent assessment of his opinion of the fisherman in question.

Kate looked over at the drifter, still surrounded. "He trying for us, or for town?" Beneath the green mesh of the net, the deck of the drifter was awash in a slippery pile of salmon, while her trim line was riding dangerously close to water level. If a squall blew up, the drifter could founder in an instant. It had happened before, when a skipper's greed overshadowed considerations of safety of ship and crew. It would happen again.