s 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 the _Lass_ were 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 southern shores 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 and the 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superseded in August by the squid, of which the cod are very fond.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 c