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forty-five-foot converted steamer named
Queen of the Dart
pulled in through the Gaps. From the bows of the boat Tacker leapt onto the Town Quay and secured her fore and aft.
    ‘Where’d ’ee steal that to, Tack?’ called Tommy Treneer from the Bench.
    ‘The future’s in pleasure craft!’ said Tacker, parroting the words of his brother.
    ‘Nonsense. Even Pig knows visitors have no money now’ days.’
    But day-trips on the
Queen of the Dart
– renamed the
Polmayne Queen
– proved popular. It was the winters that were long for the Garretts. Rumours that they pulled others’ pots had been circulating for some time but until Croyden and Jack saw them that night, no one was quite sure.
    When Jack Sweeney drew his pots the following day hedid not replace the gurnard baits. Instead he stuck pigs’ trotters onto the stakes of the first two pots. He left the pots out for two days then reverted to gurnard. Within a week he was beginning to catch again, and his catches were good and he said to himself for the first time: perhaps this way of life really is possible.
    Towards the end of April he received a letter from his solicitors in Bridport. The final lot of the farm had been sold, but a sum of remained outstand £236.35.6
d
remained outstanding. So that was it. He didn’t have that sort of money, nor could he earn it pulling a few strings of crab pots. Only when he read the letter a third time did he realise that the money was not owed
by
him but
to
him.
    Two days later he started to look into the possibility of buying a bigger boat.
    ‘
What?
’
    Maggie Treneer was lying in bed. Her two-week-old daughter lay beside her. Croyden was standing in the doorway and he was telling her that Jack Sweeney was buying a boat and was offering him a crew’s share. He was going with him, he was going back to sea.
    Maggie looked at him not with anger but with a calm hatred. ‘What makes you think you can do any better this time?’
    Croyden was holding his beret, toying with it.
    ‘What’s happened to you, Croyden?’
    He shrugged and looked away. ‘Nothing.’
    ‘You yourself said this man Sweeney knows nothing of fishing.’
    Croyden looked at her again and said, ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
    ‘Understand what?’
    ‘He’s lucky.’
    First they went to Mevagissey. They found an old friendof Croyden’s called Sydney Bunt who offered them a black-hulled tosher that was much too small for their purposes. ‘There’s plenty more selling,’ he pointed along the harbour. ‘Try the
Howard.’
But the
Howard
was in very poor condition.
    Two days later Jack and Croyden took the train down to St Erth and from St Erth to St Ives where they saw a suitable-looking driver going for a good price. The man selling leaned back against the bulwarks and watched them as they inspected his boat. ‘From Polmayne, is ’ee? You’d know the man I bought her from. Jimmy Garrett?’
    They thanked him and left and went to see a very talkative man named Edgar Pearce who owned a lugger named the
New Delight.
They looked at her closely and afterwards they stood on the sand and Croyden said: ‘Seems sound enough.’
    Edgar Pearce shook his head. ‘She might look all right to you, but she’s no good.’
    In her early days, he explained, she had been worked with a full lug-sail and a mizzen but in 1910 they’d put a steam engine in her and of course that meant drilling a hole there, out through the stern for the propeller but not central, on account of the deadwood bolts, and then so that the propeller spun free the rudder had to have a bit of a cut in her and then the stern-tube forced the crew’s quarters up for’ard and that meant the mainmast had to be restepped and that made the hold hard to get at, and then he’d put in a petrol-paraffin engine, and there was a knock she’d had the previous summer –
    ‘Wait,’ interrupted Jack. ‘Why are you telling us all this? Don’t you want to sell?’
    He looked at them sheepishly.