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and some Japanese, they were primarily sardine fishers. They didn’t even approve of fishermen who fished for other kinds of fish. They frankly didn’t believe in the activities of the land—road-building and manufacturing and brick-laying. This was not a matter of ignorance on their part, but of intensity. All the directionalism of thought and emotion that man was capable of went into sardine-fishing; there wasn’t room for anything else. An example of this occurred later when we were at sea. Hitler was invading Denmark and moving up towards Norway ; there was no telling when the invasion of England might begin ; our radio was full of static and the world was going to hell. Finally in all the crackle and noise of the short-wave one of our men made contact with another boat. The conversation went like this:

    “This is the Western Flyer. Is that you, Johnny?”

    “Yeah, that you, Sparky?”

    “Yeah, this is Sparky. How much fish you got?”

    “Only fifteen tons; we lost a school today. How much fish you got?”

    “We’re not fishing.”

    “Why not?”

    “Aw, we’re going down in the Gulf to collect starfish and bugs and stuff like that.”

    “Oh, yeah? Well, O.K., Sparky, I’ll clear the wave length.”

    “Wait, Johnny. You say you only got fifteen tons?”

    “That’s right. If you talk to my cousin, tell him, will you?”

    “Yeah, I will, Johnny. Western Flyer’s all clear now.”

    Hitler marched into Denmark and into Norway, France had fallen, the Maginot Line was lost—we didn’t know it, but we knew the daily catch of every boat within four hundred miles. It was simply a directional thing; a man has only so much. And so it was with the chartering of a boat. The owners were not distrustful of us; they didn’t even listen to us because they couldn’t quite believe we existed. We were obviously ridiculous.

    Now the time was growing short and we began to worry. Finally one boat owner who was in financial difficulty offered his boat at a reasonable price and we were ready to accept when suddenly he raised the price out of question and bolted. He was horrified at what he had done. He raised the price, not to cheat us, but to get out of going.

    The boat problem was growing serious when Anthony Berry sailed into Monterey Bay on the Western Flyer. The idea was no shock to Tony Berry; he had chartered to the government for salmon tagging in Alaskan waters and was used to nonsense. Besides, he was an intelligent and tolerant man. He knew that he had idiosyncrasies and that some of his friends had. He was willing to let us do any crazy thing that we wanted so long as we (1) paid a fair price, (2) told him where to go, (3) did not insist that he endanger the boat, (4) got back on time, and (5) didn’t mix him up in our nonsense. His boat was not busy and he was willing to go. He was a quiet young man, very serious and a good master. He knew some navigation—a rare thing in the fishing fleet—and he had a natural caution which we admired. His boat was new and comfortable and clean, the engines in fine condition. We took the Western Flyer on charter.

    She was seventy-six feet long with a twenty-five-foot beam; her engine, a hundred and sixty-five horsepower direct reversible Diesel, drove her at ten knots. Her deckhouse had a wheel forward, then combination master’s room and radio room, then bunkroom, very comfortable, and behind that the galley. After the galley, a large hatch gave into the fish-hold, and after the hatch were the big turn-table and roller of the purse-seiner. She carried a twenty-foot skiff and a ten-foot skiff. Her engine was a thing of joy, spotlessly clean, the moving surfaces shining and damp with oil and the green paint fresh and new on the housings. The engine-room floor was clean and all the tools polished and hung in their places. One look into the engine-room inspired confidence in the master. We had seen other engines in the fishing fleet and this perfection on the