‘And the Scottish boats, owned on the old family basis, won’t stand up in the long run against the English boats, based on shore syndicates or capitalism?’

‘Well—I don’t know. English capitalism is feeling the draught. Make no mistake about that. And the trawlers, from poaching inshore here, right to the Arctic—they’re no longer paying, not as a body. The best of the trawler companies was down thousands last year.’

With line fishing and drift nets, a reasonable balance in nature was kept. Beyond that, some sort of order seemed necessary. A man can take great crops off virgin soil, but not indefinitely. We manure our land and breed our stock. The fishing industry was still pretty much in the early hunter stage. We have been treating the sea as a jungle.

A vast and fascinating subject, with skill and luck and courage and constant danger behind it.

When we were up the eight locks, the skipper of the Invernairne hung on to our bow rope. ‘Save you bothering with your engine,’ he cried cheerfully.

Just before then, the Mate heard him entertaining some of the crew of The Gleaners. In the midst of the process, his face had disappeared and reappeared with a mask on, a grotesque ‘false face’, that had increased the merriment. The Gleaners had been seine-netting from Ayr and, unlike their neighbour, had done fairly well. But they were all the brethren of adven ture, good luck or bad.

For the seven or eight miles up to Gairlochy we got an exciting tow, countering the swing of the bends with strong pressure on our tiller, the tow rope taut as a fiddle string. The dinghy was heavy with rain water and in the narrow passage through a swing bridge yawed a couple of inches short of smashing herself against the stone work.

The banks were wooded and very green in the rain. Distant prospects were half-veiled—in the way a figure in a photograph, thrown very slightly out of focus, may have depth added to its beauty. We wondered if any canal in the world was so beautiful as this one in the same moment as we wondered what might happen to us should the Invernairne slacken speed too suddenly on entering the lock for which she was now blowing. The Mate suggested we might get them to cast us off, but I was banking on the skipper—and not without reason, for he reduced speed so smoothly that our rope never even sagged as we pulled to his quarter inside the lock. Then off again, and soon we were in Loch Lochy, with the mate of the drifter standing by to let go. When I gave him the signal, he cast us off, and we waved our farewells.

‘Not only the salt of the sea, but the salt of the earth,’ said our Mate.

Let me confess (with some difficulty) that we were impulsively moved by all this kindness and friendliness. Whitman seems the poet to quote, though an Indian visionary has achieved the word disinterestedness. And not consciously on the part of these fishermen as a decent or moral thing to do, but naturally as one might tell a joke or pass the time of day. Should they ever read these words, they will smile.