And The Sea Shall give up it's Dead

Over the Tears of the Fallen Part 3

We were fishing people and linked to the sea and what the sea gave us, it took a toll in return. For every fish caught, for every Herring, Haddock, Whiting, Cod and Scaith that were in our nets; a toll must be paid. We had always known that, it was nothing other than a part of life. For all that the sea gave us, it took a little from us. The health and years from the fishermen that plied these shores, the beauty from the trawler men that ventured farther and shocked people with their scarred and ravaged visages. You paid your toll to be a fisherman, even one such as I that ran the creels collecting lobster and crab to be shipped off to the likes of Glasgow and London, even Japan. I am told by the merchant that visits once in a while regarding yield and prices that our lobster and cruben; a large pink crab easy to find and catch off the shores of Argyll that our yield is worth much though I have never been wealthy.

In some cases, the toll is greater still than our livelihood. Sometimes the toll is paid in lost limbs and more often still with your life or that of one you know. There was not a fisherman that I listened to in the small pubs of the town that had not a tale to tell of a lost friend, shipmate or relation. Worse still many told of lost sons and lost fathers, brothers and some, thankfully few, that told of the loss of whole families as it was still very much a family business in my day and still is to a lesser extent.

I am losing the thread of the tale here talking of so much disaster and gloom for it is one tale alone that I am here to tell you even if it is interwoven with many others, and it started on the night of the storm.

The night was redolent with thunder and lightning the skies dark and the waves thrashing the shore. The spray from the breakers carrying hundreds of feet in the whistling wind. The sound near the waves was tremendous, the crashing of the thunder barely heard above it even if through the grey skies were sheeting rain, the lightning could still be seen, jagged, forked and splitting the sky with a force that simple humans such as I found both spectacular and intimidating. The wind stung your face with salt and spume, raised from the crap that we had put into our seas.

There was a storm coming.

On this night, I thought the storm was already here, the wind howling around the house, I could even hear the whistle of the wind as the odd slate strained against its nails upon the roof of my house, the lid of my bin crashed against its rim with regular abandon and i saw pebbles washed across the yard by the force of the wind and the sea. The sea spay washed my small house with salt water, the crashes against the rocks spraying fifty feet into the air and coming down in torrents upon my front door and windows.