He looked from her face to the faces of the other three. They were impassive. He looked back at her. "Well, sure," he said slowly. "I've got needles, and twine, too."

"I've got a spare case in the focsle," Old Sam put in, and looked at Kate. Kate, nursing her scraped shin, sighed heavily and went back to the focsle.

Auntie Vi gave a decisive nod. "Good. We fix."

"I don't know," Doug began, and Auntie Vi said, patience gone, "Freya not going nowhere. We hang the cork line from the bow, one end from Tanya, other end our dory, use Samuel's skiff to mend from, work toward middle." Doug opened his mouth and she beat him to it. "We reef the net to cork line as we mend."

Doug still looked doubtful, but Jim slapped him on the back. "Sure, it'll work. There's no chop or swell, and with all of us working we'll get it done in no time. Maybe even before the period's over." He knew, and Doug knew it, too, that this was an offer they couldn't refuse. The four old women between them had more net-mending experience than the rest of the fleet combined.

Doug was a proud man, with an innate disinclination for accepting handouts and an even stronger dislike for being beholden to anyone. Kate, watching him, saw him bite back that pride and bow his head to necessity and, perhaps, to the generosity of age and experience as well. With their years on the river, the four aunties had probably torn up their share of gear. They knew what it was like to watch impotently as the year's catch passed them by, and they knew, too, what a hungry winter was like. "Thanks, Viola. IThanks."

She shrugged. "We helping each others. You help us sometime."

And that was that. In less time than it took to tell it, they had the gear draped over the bow of the Freya, Auntie Edna and Auntie Balasha mending toward the center from the dory, Doug and Jim mending toward the center from the Tanya, and Auntie Vi and Auntie Joy darting back and forth in the Freya-, plastic needles flashing in the sun, talking and laughing nonstop.

It isn't easy, mending a wet net, but they did it. The task was made easier by the fact that the gear was fifteen mesh, or fifteen feet deep from cork line to lead line, for fishing the shallower waters near shore. Still, it was fifty feet long, and mending a net on water was a tricky business at best, swell or no swell, and it was two hours before the eight of them manhandled the mended net back to the Tanya s deck and Doug and Joe rewound it on the reel in the bow.

"Hold it," Jim said as Doug prepared to cast off, and vaulted the gunnel to the Freya s deck. He slipped and almost fell in the gurry and blood left from the halibut that Kate and Old Sam had been butchering out as the others mended the Tanya's gear. Before she could nip out of the way he had scooped Auntie Vi up in his arms, bent her over backwards and thoroughly kissed her. He pulled back and grinned down at her. "Thanks, Viola. I'd propose but I'm already married. Want to shack up instead?"