72
“Peter!” she cried. “I knew there was some scheme. When I get back––”
But the rest was lost, for distance had overcome her voice. Ellinwood stood and grinned benignly at his goddess. Then he slapped his thigh with an eleven-inch hand and made a noise with his mouth like a man clucking to his horse.
“Sprightly as a gal, she is,” he allowed. “Dummed if she ain’t!”
73CHAPTER VIIIJIMMIE THOMAS’S STRATEGY
On a chart the island of Grande Mignon bears the same relation to surrounding islands that a mother-ship bears to a flock of submarines. Westward her coast is rocky and forbidding, being nothing but a succession of frowning headlands that rise almost perpendicularly from the sea. It is one of the most desolate stretches of coast in moderate latitudes, for no one lives there, nor has ever lived there, except a few hermit dulce-pickers during the summer months.
Along the east coast, that looks across the Atlantic, are strung the villages, nestled in bays and coves. And it is out from this coast that the dozen little islands lie. First, and partially across the mouth of the bay where the fishing fleet lies, is Long Island. Then comes High Duck, Low Duck, and Big Duck. Farther south there are Ross’s, Whitehead, and Big Wood islands, not to mention spits, points, and ledges of rock innumerable and all honored with names.
It was the fact of so many treacherous ledges and74reefs to be navigated safely in a four-knot tide that was agitating the half-dozen “guests” at Mis’ Shannon’s boarding-house. It need hardly be said that Mis’ Shannon was a widow, but her distinction lay in being called mis’ instead of ma.
She made a livelihood by putting up the “runners” who made periodical trips with their sample cases for the benefit of the local tradesmen, and took in occasional “rusticators,” or summer tourists who had courage enough to dare the passage of the strait in the tiny steamer.
The principal auditor of the harrowing tales that were flying about the table over the fish chowder was Mr. Aubrey Templeton, the young lawyer from St. John’s who had arrived on the steamer that afternoon. Just opposite to Mr. Templeton at the table sat Jimmie Thomas, who, being a bachelor, had made his home with Miss Shannon for the last three years. And it was Jimmie who had held the table spell-bound with his tales of danger and narrow escapes.
He had just concluded a yarn, told in all seriousness, of how a shark had leaped over the back of a dory in Whale Cove and the two men in the dory had barely escaped with their lives.
“And I know the two men it happened to,” he concluded; “or I know one of ’em; the other’s dead. Ol’ Jasper Schofield never got over the scare he got that day.”
75
The lawyer sat bolt upright in his chair.
“Do you know the Schofields?” he demanded of Thomas.
“Guess I ought to. I’ve been dorymate with Code when the old man was skipper. A finer young feller ain’t on this island.”
“Do you happen to know where he is?” asked Templeton. “I came to Grande Mignon on several important matters, and one of them was to see him. I’ve tried to locate the fellow, but he seems to have disappeared.”
“Why, I seen him to-day myself in Castalia!” cried Thomas. “He’s up there hirin’ men to ship with him. Said he was goin’ to stay all night. I know the very house he’s in.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think I could get there to-night?”
“You might.” Jimmie looked at his watch. “The Seal Cove mail-wagon’s gone long ago, but I’ll take you down in my motor-dory if you’ll come right now.”
Templeton did not even wait to finish his supper, but went out with Thomas immediately. A few minutes’ walk brought them to the little beach where the dory was drawn up and they were soon on their way. But before they left, Templeton scribbled a message on a piece of paper and left it76with Mrs. Shannon to be given to Nat Burns, who, he said, was to call for him at half-past seven.
Thomas kept the nose of his dory pointed to the lights of several houses that gleamed across the bay. They were not, however, the lights of Castalia, which were almost invisible farther south. But Templeton, who had never been on Grande Mignon before, sat blissfully ignorant of this circumstance.
Later, however, he remembered that his accommodating guide had chuckled inexplicably during most of the trip.
Twenty minutes’ ride in the chill night air brought them to a long, low pier that extended out into the black water. Above on the hillside the windows of the big fishing settlement on Long Island gleamed comfortable and yellow.
Thomas ran his dory close to the landing-stage and then reversed the engine so that at the time most convenient for Templeton to step off the boat had lost all motion. The lawyer landed, but Jimmie did not shut off his engine. Instead he turned it on full speed and backed away from the dock.
“Hey, you, where are you going?” called Templeton, vaguely alarmed for the first time.
“Back to the village,” answered Thomas, sending his motor into the forward speed. “I got something very important to do there.”
77
“But in which house is Schofield?” cried the other. “You said you would show me.”
There was no reply, and it is possible that, due to the noise of the engine, Thomas had not heard the protest at all.
Nat Burns arrived at Shannon’s boarding-house slightly in advance of the time named, and read Templeton’s note saying that he had gone to Castalia to nab Code while he had the chance.
“Who did Templeton go with?” he asked fearfully of the landlady.
“Mr. Thomas,” replied that worthy.
“My God!” rapped out Burns in such a tone of disgust and defeat that she shrank from him with uplifted hands. But he did not notice her. Instead he rushed out of the house and along the road toward Freekirk Head.
The boarding-house was a full half-mile from the wharfs of the village, and after a hundred yards Burns slowed down into a rapid walk.
“The fool took the bait like a dogfish,” he snarled. “Lord knows where he is by this time. I’ll bet Schofield is at the bottom of this.”
He had not as yet found out where Code was, and his first step when he reached the village was to go to the Schofield cottage and verify Templeton’s note.
78
Josie, the orphan girl, was there alone, and was on the point of tears with having been left alone so long with night coming on.
When questioned the girl admitted readily enough that Mrs. Schofield had taken a bundle of Code’s clothing and gone to Castalia in the afternoon, she having overheard the conversation that took place between her mistress and Pete Ellinwood.
When he had gained this information Burns hurried from the house and toward the spot on the beach between the wharfs where his dory lay.
He had not the remotest idea what had become of Templeton, but he was reasonably sure that if Thomas had taken him to Castalia, Schofield was no longer there.
What Thomas had really done did not occur to him, and his one idea was to get to the neighboring village as soon as possible and ascertain just what had taken place.
His dory was beached alongside the pier where theCharming Lasshad lain for the past week. Now, as he approached it, he suddenly stopped, rooted in his tracks.
TheCharming Lasswas gone.
79CHAPTER IXON THE COURSE
“All dories aboard? All hands set tops’ls! Jimmie Thomas, ease your mainsheet! Now, boys, altogether! Yo! Sway ’em flat! Yo! Once more! Yo! Fine! Stand by to set balloon jib!”
It was broad daylight, and the early sun lighted the newly painted, slanting deck of theCharming Lassas she snored through the gentle sea. On every side the dark gray expanse stretched unbroken to the horizon, except on the starboard bow. There a long, gray flatness separated itself from the horizon––the coast of southern Nova Scotia.
There was a favorable following wind, and the clean, new schooner seemed to express her joy at being again in her element by leaping across the choppy waves like a live thing.
While the crew of ten leaped to the orders, Code Schofield stood calmly at the wheel, easing her on her course, so as to give them the least trouble. Under the vociferous bellow of Pete Ellinwood, the crew were working miracles in swiftness and organization.
80
The sun had been up two hours, and now, as Schofield glanced back at the wake that foamed and bubbled behind them, his eyes fell upon the white sails of a vessel far astern. Even at the distance, it was plain that she was of schooner rig, and probably a fisherman.
“Wonder who she is?” asked Code, pointing her out to Ellinwood.
“Don’t know. Thought perhaps you’d seen her before, skipper. I’ve had my eye on her for an hour. Fisherman, likely; you’ll see ’em in all directions every day afore we’re through.”
The explanation was simple and obvious, and it satisfied Schofield. He promptly forgot her, as did every one else aboard theLass. And reason enough. The cook, sticking his head out of the galley, bawled:
“Mug-up! First ta-a-able!” and the first table made a rush below.
When the five men sat down it was the first time they had been able to relax since the evening before, when, without lights, and under headsails only, theCharming Lasshad stolen out between the reefs of Freekirk Head to sea.
“Wal, boys, I cal’late we’re safe!” ejaculated Ellinwood with great satisfaction. “TheLassis doin’ her ten knot steady, an’ I guess we’ll have left Cape Sable astern afore the sleepy heads at home find out what’s become of us.”
81
“You saved the day, Pete. If it hadn’t been for you I would never have got beyond St. John’s.” It was Code who spoke.
“And you pretty near spoiled what Ididdo,” rumbled Pete.
“How’s that?” interrupted Thomas interestedly. “I don’t know everything that happened to you fellers. I was busy at the time givin’ a friend of ours a joy-ride. Tell me about it!”
“It wasn’t me that nearly broke up the show, Pete,” protested Code. “It was mother. Of course, when Jimmie was taking her over to Castalia in his dory he told her what was in the wind. They found me at the Pembroke place, and we all went into Pembroke’s ice-house, where I was to stay until after dark. Then ma started in to find out everything.
“She allowed it wasn’t honorable for me to run away when the officer or lawyer was after me. She said it proved that I was guilty, and thought I ought to stay and be served with his paper. If I wasn’t guilty of anything, it could be proven easily enough, she said. Poor, honest mother! She forgot that the whole matter would take weeks, if not months, and that all that time I would be idle and discontented, and spending most of my time before boards of inquiry.
“I suppose itwilllook queer to a lot of people at82the Head because I’ve gone. They’ll say right off: ‘Just as we thought! All this talk that has been going around is true,’ and put me down for a criminal that ought to go to jail. That’s what mother said, and the worst part of leaving her now is that she will have to stay and face the talk––and the looks that are worse than talk.
“But, Jimmie, I couldn’t do it. Grande Mignon is in too bad a hole. She needs every man who owns a schooner or a sloop or a dory to go out and catch fish and bring ’em home. The old island’s got her back against the wall, and I felt that when all the trouble and danger were over for her I would go to St. John’s, and let those people try and prove their case.
“They can’t prove anything! But that doesn’t say they won’t get a judgment. I’m poor and unknown, and ignorant of law. The company is a big corporation, with lawyers and plenty of money. If somebody there is after me I haven’t a chance, and they will gouge me for all they can get. You, Jimmie, and Pete know that this is so, and it was for all these reasons that I wouldn’t stand my ground and let that feller serve me.
“Ma is dependent on me, and when I have sold fifteen hundred quintals of fish she will have enough to carry her along until that trouble is over. So I’m going out after the fifteen hundred quintals. Now,83that’s my story. We’ve heard Jimmie’s; but how did you manage everything so well, Pete?”
Ellinwood was flattered and coughed violently over the last of his victuals.
“Hey!” yelled some hungry member of the second half. “If you fellers eat any more you’ll sink the ship. Get up out o’ there an’ give yer betters a chance!” Ellinwood rolled a forbidding eye toward the companionway.
“Some clam-splitter on deck don’t seem to know that in this here packet the youth an’ beauty is allus considered fust,” he rumbled ominously. No reply being forthcoming, he turned to Code.
“When ol’ Bige Tanner come to me shakin’ like a leaf an’ said they was a feller on the steamer that would attach yer schooner an’ all that ye had, because of some business about the sinkin’ of the ol’May, I says to myself, sez I:
“‘Pete,’ I sez, ‘we don’t allow nothin’ like that to spoil our cruise an’ keep the skipper ashore.’ Now, Mignon isn’t very big, an’ I knew he would git you in a day or two if you didn’t go back into the forest and hide. But I cal’lated you wouldn’t want to do that, an’ so I figgered the only way to beat that lawyer was to fool him before he got fair started on his search.
“I knowed you was in Castalia, an’ so I thought your mother better get you some clothes an’ bring84’em there. I found out that Nat Burns had taken the feller to Mis’ Shannon’s boardin’-house, an’, knowin’ that Jimmie was livin’ there, I got an idee. Jimmie’s told about that already. The feller bit, an’ that was the end of him.
“But that wasn’t the wust of it. I knew we had to get out the same evenin’ if we was to git out at all, so what did I do but get Bill Rockwell here to hitch up his big double buckboard an’ go out after the five men that weren’t on the job.
“He had to drive clear to Great Harbor for one, but he got back with all hands about seven o’clock. Everybody in town was at supper, an’ didn’t see us when we clumb aboard theLass. When it was pitch-black we cast off the lines, an’ she drifted out on the ebb tide, which just there runs easy a knot an’ a half. Then we got up our headsails so as to get steerage-way on her, and bless my soul if the blocks made a creak! Might have been pullin’ silk thread through a fur mitten, for all the noise.
“I was afraid fer a minute that the flash of Swallowtail Light would catch her topm’sts, but it didn’t, and after an hour we were outside and layin’ in sixteen fathom off Big Duck. The tide there runs three knot, and, with our headsails an’ the light air o’ wind, we just managed to hold her even.
“Of course, you fellers know the rest. As soon as Jimmie landed his passenger on Long Island he85came out an’ straight south to where we was. I had told Jimmie to tell Code in the afternoon where to meet us; and so, when it was black enough, the skipper got into his motor-dory and came out, too.
“When they climbed aboard we got up sail and laid a southwest course to round Nova Scoshy; an’ here we are, nearin’ Cape Race already, and dummed proud of ourselves, if I do say it.”
“Proud of you, Pete, you old fox,” said Schofield, getting up from the table with a sigh of immense relief. “Come on; let the second half in.”
“All right, skipper,” said Pete, rising to his great height and wiping his mouth with the back of his huge hand. “But wait! I almost fergot this!”
He unpinned the pocket of his waistcoat and drew forth the flimsy sheet of paper that he had picked up when Templeton had mistakenly tried to serve him.
Briefly he told the skipper its history and handed it to him. Schofield’s eyes opened wide as he saw that the paper was that of the Dominion Cable office in Freekirk Head, and he read:
“To A. TEMPLETON,“Marine Insurance Company,“St. John’s, N.B.“Come at once with summons for Cody Albert Schofield and attachment for schooner Charming Lass, as per former arrangements.“BURNETT.”
“To A. TEMPLETON,“Marine Insurance Company,“St. John’s, N.B.
“Come at once with summons for Cody Albert Schofield and attachment for schooner Charming Lass, as per former arrangements.
“BURNETT.”
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For a moment the signature puzzled him, and Ellinwood, grinning, stood watching his puzzled efforts to solve it.
“Skipper, if it was a mule it would kick you in the face,” he remarked. “If you can’t see Nat Burns in that, I can. And now you’ve got an idea just who’s at the bottom of this thing.”
Code Schofield went aft to his cabin companionway, and prepared to go below and open his log. Kent took the wheel, and Ellinwood lurched about with a critical eye upon the lashings, sheets, and general appearance of the deck.
Schofield, remembering the schooner that had attracted his eye before, looked astern for her. She had gained rapidly upon them in the half-hour he had been below. Now he could see her graceful black hull, the shadows in the great sails, and the tiny men here and there upon her deck.
“What a sailer!” he cried in involuntary admiration. “She must be an American!”
It was clear that the other schooner, even in that moderate breeze, must be making the better side of twelve knots. Schofield gave her a final admiring glance and went below.
87CHAPTER XA MYSTERY
“AUGUST 29:
“Clear. Wind W.S.W., canting to W. Moderate breeze. Knots logged to twelve, noon, 153. Position, 20 miles south, a little east of Cape Sable. End of this day.”
Code closed the dirty and thumb-worn, paper-covered ledger that was the log of the Charming Lass and had been the log of the old May Schofield for ten years before she went down. It was the one thing he had saved. He had been on deck, taken his sextant observation, and just completed working out his position.
As he closed the old log his eye was caught by a crudely penned name near the bottom of the paper cover. The signature was Nellie Tanner’s, and he remembered how, a dozen years ago, while they were playing together in the cabin of the old May, she had pretended she was captain and owned the whole boat, so that Code would have to obey her orders.
As he looked he caught the almost obliterated88marks of a pencil beneath Nellie’s name, and, looking closer, discovered “Nat Burns” in boyish letters.
For a moment he scowled blackly at the audacious words, and then, laughing at his foolishness, threw the book from him. Then slowly the scowl returned, and he asked himself seriously why Nat hated him so.
That there had always been an instinctive dislike between them as boys, everybody in Freekirk Head knew, and several vicious fights to a finish had emphasized it.
But since coming to manhood’s estate Code had left behind him much of the rancor and intolerance of his early youth, and had considered Nat Burns merely as a disagreeable person to be left heartily alone.
But Burns had evidently not arrived at this mature point of self-education. In fact, Burns was a good example of a youth brought up without those powers of self-control that are absolutely necessary to any one who expects to take a reasonable position in society even as simple as that of Freekirk Head.
Code remembered that Nat and his father had always been inseparable companions, and that it was due to this father more than any one else that the boy had been spoiled and indulged in every way.
Michael Burns had risen to a position of considerable89power in the humble life of the island. From a successful trawler he had become a successful fish-packer and shipper. Then he had felt a desire to spread his affluent wings, gone in for politics, and been appointed the squire or justice of the peace.
In this position he was commissioned by the Marine Insurance Company of St. John’s as its agent and inspector on Grande Mignon Island. In his less successful days he had been a boat-builder in Gloucester and Bath, and knew much of ship construction.
For more than half a year now Code had been unable to think of Michael Burns or the oldMay Schofieldwithout a shudder of horror. But now that Nat was suddenly hot on the trail of revenge, he knew he must look at matters squarely and prepare to meet any trap which might be laid for him.
It seemed evident that the first aim in Nat’s mind was the hounding of the man who had been the cause of his father’s death; for that death had occurred at a most opportune time for the Schofields.
The heavy insurance on the fifty-year-oldMaywas about to run out, and it was almost a certainty that Burns would not recommend its renewal except at a vastly increased premium.
As a matter of fact, on a hurried trip that Code had taken, he had picked up Burns himself at St. John’s, the inspector coming for the purpose of examining90the schooner while under sail in a fairly heavy seaway.
All the island knew this, and all the island knew that Code was the only one to return alive. The inference was not hard to deduce, especially as the gale encountered had been one such as theMayhad lived out a dozen times.
Had not all these things been enough to fire the impulsive, passionate Burns with a sullen hatred, the next events would have been. For Code received his insurance without a dispute and, not long afterward, while in Boston for the purpose, had picked up the almost newCharming Lassfrom a Gloucester skipper who had run into debt.
Code now saw to what Nat’s uncontrolled brooding had brought him, and he realized that the battle would be one of wits.
He got up to go on deck. He had only turned to the companionway when the great voice of Pete Ellinwood rumbled down to him.
“Come on deck, skipper, an’ look over this schooner astern of us. There’s somethin’ queer about her. I don’t like her actions.”
Code took the steps at a jump, and a moment later stood beside Ellinwood. TheLasswas snoring along under full sail.
The stranger, which at eight o’clock had been five91miles astern, was now, at noon, less than a mile away.
Code instinctively shot a quick glance at the compass. The schooner was running dead east.
“What’s this, Ellinwood?” demanded the skipper sharply. “You’re away off your course.”
“Yes, sir, and on purpose,” replied the mate. “I’ve been watchin’ that packet for a couple of hours back and it seemed to me she was a little bit too close on our track for comfort. ‘What if she’s from St. John’s?’ I sez to myself. ‘Then there’ll be the devil to pay for the skipper.’
“So, after you’d got your observation and went below I just put the wheel down a trifle. I hadn’t been gone away from her five minutes when she followed. It’s very plain, Code, that she’s tryin’ to catch us.”
A sudden feeling of alarm took possession of Schofield. That she was a wonderful speed craft she had already proven by overhauling theLassso easily. The thought immediately came to him that Nat Burns, on discovering his absence, had sent the lawyer with the summons to St. John’s, hired a fast schooner, and set out in pursuit.
“Maybe it was only an accident,” he said. “She may be on the course to Sable Island. Give her another trial. Come about and head for Halifax.”
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“Stand by to come about,” bawled Ellinwood.
Two young fellows raced up the rigging, others stood by to prevent jibing, and the mate put the wheel hard alee. The schooner’s head swung sharply, there was a thunder and rattle of canvas, a patter of reef points, and the great booms swung over. The wind caught the sails, theCharming Lassheeled and bore away on the new course.
The men in the stern watched the movements of the stranger anxiously.
Ten minutes had hardly elapsed when she also came about and headed directly into the wake of theLass. Schofield and Ellinwood looked at each other blankly.
“Are you goin’ to run fer it, skipper?” asked the mate. “I’ll have the balloon jib and stays’l set in five minutes, if you say so.”
Code thought for a minute.
“It’s no use,” he said. “They’d catch us, anyway. Let ’em come up and we’ll find out what they want. Take in your tops’ls. There’s no use wasting time on the wrong course.”
Under reduced sail theLassslowed, and the pursuing vessel overhauled them rapidly. With a great smother of foam at her bows she ducked into the choppy sea and came like a race horse. In half an hour she was almost abreast on the port quarter. A man with a megaphone appeared on her poop deck93and leveled the instrument at the little group by the wheel.
“Heave to!” he bawled. “We want to talk with ye.”
“Heave to!” ordered Code, and theCharming Lasscame up into the wind just as the stranger accomplished the same maneuver. They were now less than fifty yards away and the man again leveled his megaphone.
“Is that theCharming Lassout of Freekirk Head?” he shouted.
“Yes.”
“Captain Code Schofield in command?”
“Yes.”
“Bound to the Banks on a fishin’ cruise?”
“Yes.”
“All right; that’s all I wanted to know,” said the man, and set down the megaphone. He gave some rapid orders to the crew, and his vessel swung around so as to catch the wind again.
Code and Ellinwood looked at one another blankly.
“Hey there!” shouted Schofield at the top of his voice. “Who are you and what do you want?” The skipper of the other schooner paid no attention whatever, and Schofield repeated his question, this time angrily.
He might as well have shouted at the wind. The94stranger’s head fell off, her canvas caught the breeze, and she forged ahead. A minute later and she was out of earshot.
“Look for her name on the stern,” commanded Code. He plunged below into the cabin and raced up again with his glasses. The mysterious schooner was now nearly a quarter of a mile away, but within easy range of vision.
Code fixed his gaze on her stern, where her name should be, and saw with astonishment that it had carefully been painted out. Then he swung his glasses to cover the dories nested amidships, and found that on them, too, new paint had obscured the name. He lowered the glasses helplessly.
“Do you recognize her, Pete?” he asked. “I know most of the schooners out of Freekirk Head and St. John’s, but I never saw her before.”
“Me neither,” admitted the mate, with conviction. “I wonder what all this means?”
Code could not answer.
95CHAPTER XIIN THE FOG BANK
“SQUID ho! Squid ho! Tumble up, all hands!”
Rod Kent, the old salt who had for the past hour been experimenting over the side, leaned down the main cabin hatch and woke the port watch. Behind him on the deck a queer marine creature squirmed in a pool of water and sought vainly to disentangle itself from the apparatus that had caught it.
The shout brought all hands on deck, stupid with sleep, but eager to join in the sport.
The squid is a very small edition of the giant devilfish or octopus. It has ten tentacles, a tapered body about ten inches long, and is armed with the usual defensive ink-sac, by means of which it squirts a cloud of black fluid at a pursuing enemy, escaping in the general murk.
“How’d ye ketch him?” cried all hands, for the advent of squid was the most welcome news the men on theCharming Lasshad had since leaving home four days before. It meant that this favorite and96succulent bait of the roaming cod had arrived on the Banks, and that the catches would be good.
“Jigged him,” replied Kent laconically. He disengaged the struggling squid from the apparatus and examined the latter carefully. It was made of a single cork, through the lower edge of which pins had been thrust and bent back like the flukes of an anchor. To it was fastened a small shred of red flannel, the whole being attached to a line with a sinker.
In five minutes Code had unearthed from an old shoe-box in his cabin enough jigs to supply all hands, and presently both rails were lined with men hauling up the bait as fast as it was lured to close proximity by the color of the red flannel. Once the creatures had wrapped themselves around the cork a sharp jerk impaled them on the pins, and up they came.
But not without resistance. Just as they left the water they discharged their ink-sacs at their captors, and the men on the decks of theLasswere kept busy weaving their heads from side to side, to avoid the assault.
It was near evening of the second day after the mysterious schooner had hailed them and sailed away. Since that time they had forged steadily northeast, along the coast of Nova Scotia. At last they had left Cape Breton at the tip of Cape Breton Island behind them and approached the southern97shores of Newfoundland and that wonderful stretch of shoals called the Grand Banks.
Southeast for three hundred miles from Newfoundland extends this under-sea flooring of rocky shelves, that run from ninety to five fathoms, being most shallow at Virgin Rocks.
In reality this is a great submarine mountain chain that is believed at one time to have belonged to the continent of North America. The outside edge of it is in the welter of the shoreless Atlantic, and from this edge there is a sheer drop into almost unsounded depths. These depths have got the name of the Whale Hole, and many a fishing skipper has dropped his anchor into this abyss and earned the laughter of his crew when he could find no ground.
Along the top and sides of this mountain range grow vegetable substances and small animalcules that provide excellent feeding for the vast hosts of cod that yearly swim across it. For four hundred years the cod have visited these feeding grounds and been the prey of man, yet their numbers show no falling off.
To them is due the wealth of Newfoundland, the Miquelon Islands, Nova Scotia, Labrador, and Prince Edward Island.
The first manifestation of the annual visit is the arrival of enormous schools of caplin, a little silvery fish some seven inches long that invades the bays and98the open sea. Close upon them follow the cod, feeding as they come. The caplin last six weeks and disappear, to be superseded in August by the squid, of which the cod are very fond.
Up until fifty years ago mackerel were caught on the Banks, and large quantities of halibut, but the mackerel disappeared suddenly, never to return, and the halibut became constantly more rare, until at last only the cod remained.
Aboard theCharming Lassthe squid “jigging” went on for a couple of hours. Then suddenly the school passed and the sport ended abruptly.
But the deck of the schooner was a mass of the bait, and the tubs of salt clams brought from Freekirk Head could be saved until later.
Rockwell, who had been looking out forward, suddenly called Code’s attention to a flock of sea-pigeons floating on the water a mile ahead. As the skipper looked he saw the fowl busily diving and “upending,” and he knew they had struck the edge of the Banks; for water-fowl will always dive in shoal water, and a skipper sailing to the Banks from a distance always looks for this sign.
An hour later, when the cook had sent out his call for the first half, Code made Ellinwood stay on deck and bring the schooner to an anchorage after sounding.
The sounding lead is a long slug, something like a99window-weight, at the bottom of which is a saucer-shaped hollow. The leadsman, a young fellow from Freekirk Head, took his place on the schooner’s rail outside the forerigging. The lead was attached to a line and, as the schooner forged slowly ahead, close-hauled, the youth swung the lead in ever-widening semicircles.
“Let your pigeon fly!” cried Pete, and the lead swung far ahead and fell with a sullenplopinto the dark blue water. The line ran out until it suddenly slackened just under the leadsman. He fingered a mark.
“Forty fathoms!” he called.
Five minutes later another sounding was taken and proved that the water was gradually shoaling. At thirty fathoms Pete ordered the anchor let go and a last sounding taken.
Before the lead flew he rubbed a little tallow into the saucer, and this, when it came up, was full of sand, mud, and shells, telling the sort of bottom under the schooner.
Pete called Code, and together they read it like a book––favorable fishing ground, though not the best.
While the second half ate, the first half took in all canvas and reefed it with the exception of the mainsail. This was unbent entirely and stowed away. In its place was bent on a riding sail, for until100their salt was all wet there would be very little occasion for any sort of sailing, their only progress being as they ambled leisurely from berth to berth.
“Dories overside!” sung out Code. “Starboard first.”
A rope made fast to a mainstay and furnished with a hook at its end was slipped into a loop of rope at one end of the dory. A similar device caught a similar loop at the other end.
One strong pull and the dory rose out of the nest of four others that lay just aft of the mainmast. A hand swung her outboard and she was lowered away until she danced on the water.
Jimmie Thomas leaped into her, received a tub of briny squid, a dinner-horn, and a beaker of water, besides his rectangular reels with their heavy cord, leads, and two hooks.
“Overside port dory!” came the command, and Kent was sent on his way. Thus one after another the men departed until on board theLassthere remained only the cook and a boy helper. Code, as well as Ellinwood, had gone out, for they wished to test the fishing.
These dories were entirely different propositions from the heavy motor-boats that the men used almost entirely near the island. They were light, compact, and properly big enough for only one man, although they easily accommodated two.
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The motor dories of Thomas and Code were on board, nested forward, but they were of little use here, where only short distances are covered, and those by rowing.
The nine dories drew away from the schooner, each in a different direction, until they were a mile or more apart.
Code threw over his little three-fluked anchor. Then he baited his two hooks with bits of tentacle and threw them overboard. With the big rectangular reel in his left hand, he unwound as the leads drew down until they fetched bottom and the line sagged. Unreeling a couple more fathoms of line, he cast the reel aside.
Then he hauled his leads up until he judged them to be some six feet off the bottom and waited.
Almost instantly there was a sharp jerk, and Code, with the skill of the trained fisherman, instantly responded to it with a savage pull on the line and a rapid hand-over-hand as he looped it into the dory. The fish had struck on. The tough cord sung against the gunnel, and at times it was all the skipper could do to bring up his prize, for the great cod darted here and there, dove, rushed, and struggled to avert the end.
Thirty fathoms is a hundred and eighty feet, and, with a huge and desperate fish disputing every inch of the way, it becomes a seemingly endless labor.102But at last Code, straining his eyes over the side, caught a glimpse of quick circles of white in the green and reached for the maul that was stuck under a thwart.
Two more heaves and the cod, open-mouthed, thrashed on the surface. A smart rap on the head with the maul and he came into the dory quietly. There were little pink crabs sticking to him and he did not seem as fat as he should, although he topped the fifty-pound mark.
“Lousy!” said Code. “Lousy and hungry! It’s good fishing.”
With a short, stout stick at hand he wrenched the hook out of the cod’s mouth, baited up, and cast again. The descending bait was rushed and seized. This time both hooks bore victims.
When there were no speckled cod on the hooks there were silvery hake, velvety black pollock, beautiful scarlet sea-perch that look like little old men, and an occasional ugly dogfish with his Chinese jade eyes.
When the dogfish came the men pulled up their anchors and rowed a mile or so away, for where the dogfish pursues all others fly. He has the shape and traits of his merciless giant brother, the tiger-shark, with the added menace of a horn full of poison in the middle of his back instead of a dorsal fin; an evil,103curved horn, the thrust of which can be nearly fatal to a man.
The bottom of the dory became covered with a flooring of liquid silver bodies that twined together and rolled with the roll of the dory.
At five o’clock Code wound his line on the reel (he usually used two at a time, but one had been plenty with such fishing), and started to pull for the distantCharming Lass. He was now fully five miles from her, and his nearest neighbor was Bill Kent, three miles away. All hands were drawing in toward her, for they knew they must take a quick mug-up and then dress down until the last cod lay in his shroud of salt.
The schooner lay to the northeast of Schofield, and as he bent to his work he did not see a strange, level mass of gray that advanced slowly toward him. From a distance to the lay observer this mass would have looked like an ordinary cloud-bank, but the experienced eyes of a fisherman would have discerned its ghastly gray hue and its flat contour.
All the afternoon there had been a freshening breeze, and now Schofield found himself rowing against a head sea that occasionally slapped over the high bow of the dory and ran aft over the half ton of fish that lay under his feet.
He had not pulled for fifteen minutes when the104whole world about him was suddenly obscured by the thick, woolly fog that swirled past on the wind. It was as though an impenetrable wall had been suddenly built up on all sides, a wall that offered no resistance to his progress and yet no egress.
He immediately stopped rowing and rested his oars, listening. No sound came to him except the slap of the increasing waves and the occasional flap of a wet fish in its last struggles.
He carried no pocket compass, and the light gave no hint of the direction of the sun. In the five minutes that he sat there the head of his dory swung around and, even had he known the exact compass direction of theCharming Lassbefore the fog, he would have been unable to find it.
The situation did not alarm him in the least, for he had experienced it often before. Reaching into the bow, he drew out the dinner-horn that was part of the equipment of the dory and sent an ear-splitting blast out into the fog.
It seemed as though the opaque walls about him held in the sound as heavy curtains might in a large room; it fell dead on his own ears without any of the reverberant power that sound has in traveling across water.
Once more he listened. He knew that the schooner, being at anchor, would be ringing her bell; but he hardly hoped to catch a sound of that. Instead,105he listened for the answering peal of a horn in one of the other dories. Straining his ears, he thought he caught a faint toot ahead of him and to starboard.
He seized his oars and rowed hard for several minutes in the direction of the sound. Then he stopped, and, rising to his feet, sent another great blast brawling forth into the fog. Once more he listened, and again it seemed as though an answering horn sounded in the distance. But it was fainter this time.
A gust of wind, rougher than the others, swirled the fog about him in great ghostly sheets, turning and twisting it like the clouds of greasy smoke from a fire of wet leaves. The dory rolled heavily, and Code, losing his balance, sprawled forward on the fish, the horn flying from his hand overboard as he tried to save himself.
For a moment only it floated; and then, as he was frantically swinging the dory to draw alongside, it disappeared beneath the water with a low gurgle.
The situation was serious. He was unable to attract attention, and must depend for his salvation upon hearing the horns of the other dories as they approached the schooner. Rowing hard all the time, with frequent short pauses, he strained his ears for the welcome sound.
Sometimes he thought he caught a faint, mellow106call; but he soon recognized that these were deceptions, produced in his ears by the memory of what he had heard before. Impatiently he rowed on.
After a while he stopped. Since he could not get track of any one, it was foolish to continue the effort, for every stroke might take him farther and farther out of hearing. On the other hand, if he were headed in the right direction, another dory, trying to find the schooner, might cross his path or come within earshot.
He was still not in the least worried by the situation. Men in much worse ones had been rescued from them without thinking anything of them.
But the rising wind and sea gave him something to think of. The waves found it a very easy matter to climb aboard the heavily laden dory, and occasionally he had to bail with the can in the bows provided for the purpose.
An hour passed, and at the end of that time he found that he was bailing almost constantly. There was only one thing to do under the circumstances. The gaff lay under his hand. This is a piece of broom-handle, to the end of which a stout, sharp hook is attached, and the instrument is used in landing fish which are too heavy to swing inboard on the slender fishing-line.