The boat is at the start of the mainline, about one hundred miles outside Canada's territorial limit. You generally set into the Gulf Stream and haul into the Gulf Stream, so the previous afternoon they'd set the gear while steaming west into the warm four-knot current. Then they'd turned around and headed east again, back to the start of the mainline. That gives the entire string the same amount of time in the water, and also keeps the boat from losing too much ground to the eastward currents. Billy has hunted down the beginning of the mainline with the radio beacon signals and now sits, bow toward America, ready to haul.
Haulback is less dangerous than setting-out because the hooks are coming inboard rather than going outboard, but the mainline still gets pulled at considerable velocity out of the water. The hooks can whiplash over the rail and snag people in all kinds of horrible ways; one crewman took a hook in the face that entered under his cheekbone and came out his eye socket. To make matters worse, the boat is rarely a stable platform, and rarely dry. Keeping one's feet while eighteen inches of deck slop pour out the scuppers can require the balance of an ironworker in a sleet storm.
Nevertheless, you're hauling up your lottery ticket, and even the most jaded deckhand wants to know what he's hit. The line has been unhooked from the stern guide ring and now comes onboard through a cutout in the starboard rail and into the overhead block. The captain steers the boat from an auxiliary helm on deck and runs up to the wheelhouse from time to time to check the radar for other boats in their path. The man at the line is called the hauler, and it's his job to unclip the gangions and hand them back to the coiler, who pulls the bait off and wraps them around the leader cart. Being a hauler is a high-stress job; one hauler described having to pry his fingers off the hydraulic lever at the end of the day because he was so tense. Haulers are paid extra for the trip and are chosen because they can unclip a gangion every few seconds for four hours straight.
A hooked swordfish puts a telltale heaviness in the line, and when the hauler feels that, he eases off on the hydraulic lever to keep the hook from tearing out. As soon as the fish is within reach, two men swing gaff hooks into his side and drag him on board. If the fish is alive, one of the gaffers might harpoon him and haul him up on a stouter line to make sure he doesn't get away. Then the fish just lies there, eyes bulging, mouth working open and shut. If it's a good haul there are sometimes three or four half-dead swordfish sloshing back and forth in the deck wash, bumping into the men as they work. A puncture wound by a swordfish bill means a severe and nearly instantaneous infection. As the fish are brought on board their heads and tails are sawn off, and they're gutted and put on ice in the hold.
Mako shark eat pretty much what swordfish do, so occasionally longliners haul mako up as well. They're dangerous, though: A mako once bit Murph so badly that he had to be helicoptered back to shore. (Touching even a severed mako head can trigger it to bite.) The rule for mako is that they're not considered safe until they're on ice in the hold. For that reason some boats don't allow live mako on board; if one is caught, the gaffer pins him against the hull while another crew member blows his head open with a shotgun. Then he's hauled on board and gutted. "We fish too far out to take any chances," says a former crew member of the Hannah Boden. "You're out of helicopter range, and help is two days' drive to the west'ard. If you're still alive when we get there, we'll take you to a Newfoundland hospital. And then your troubles have just begun."
A longliner might pull up ten or twenty swordfish on a good day, one ton of meat. The most Bob Brown has ever heard of anyone catching was five tons a day for seven days—70,000 pounds of fish. That was on the Hannah Boden in the mid-eighties. The lowest crew member made ten thousand dollars. That's why people fish; that's why they spend ten months a year inside seventy feet of steel plate.