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After a while I began to move south, parallel to the distant shore. I
travelled for about a mile, then stopped and allowed the wind to carry
me. I might have drifted all the way to land, but I began to feel cold,
so I started to paddle again. I was now so tired that, even with the
wind behind me, the sea felt lumpy and stiff.
About three miles from the coast I passed two brown guillemots,
dipping their beaks in the water, occasionally standing up to flutter
their wings. As I paddled past them, they held their heads in the air,
watching me from the corners of their eyes, but not leaving the sea.
Soon afterwards I felt a sharp, unmistakable tug against my knee. I
yanked the line, then pulled it in, hand over hand. I could almost hear
the electric twanging on the cord. As the tackle approached the boat
it jinked about crazily. I saw a white flash far down in the green, and
soon afterwards pulled the fish into the boat. It bounced around on
the deck, then drummed on the plastic with rapid shivers. I broke its
neck.
The mackerel's back was the same deep emerald as the water,
slashed with black stripes, which swirled and broke across the head.
The belly was white and taut, narrowing to a slim wrist and the crisply
forked tail of a swift. Its eye was a disc of cold jet. My fellow preda-
tor, cold-blooded daemon, brother disciple of Orion.
After another mile I felt the lightest tap on the line. I picked it up
and pulled, but there was nothing. I pulled again and it was almost
wrenched from my hand. Whatever had tugged before had come back
when it saw the lures rise. This felt different: heavier and less jagged.
The white flash showed me that I had three ish - a full hand. I hauled
them in, trying to hold the line clear as they landed on the boat and
threw themselves about: a moment's inattention would leave me with
a twenty-minute tangle. As soon as I had stowed them I turned the
boat and paddled back to where I had hooked them. I circled the
water but could not find a shoal.
I ate the chocolate and tramped on. The sun flickered for a moment
and the sea turned to fresh-cast lead. Then the clouds closed and the
rain came down again.
Half a mile from the coast I hit a small shoal and pulled in half a
dozen mackerel. Then I found myself in a strand of jellyfish so dense
that in places it scarcely seemed to contain water. They poured under
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