st easy on that."

"That's fine," said Code gently; "and I don't know what I'd do without
you, Pete."

"You ain't supposed to do without me. What in thunder do you suppose I
shipped with you fer if it wasn't to look after you, hey?"

The men had finished dressing down and were cleaning up the decks.
Several of them, noticing that something momentous was being
discussed, were edging nearer. Pete observed this.

"Skipper," he said, "we've got four or five shots of trawl-line to
pick. Suppose you and I go out an' do the job? Then we can talk in
peace. Feel able?"

"Never better in my life. Get my dory over."

"That blue one? Never again! That's bad luck fer you. Take mine."

"All right. Anything you say."

Several hands made the dory ready. Into it they put three or four tubs
or half casks in which was coiled hundreds of fathoms of stout line
furnished with a strong hook every two or three feet. Each hook was
baited with a fat salt clam, for the early catch of squid had been
exhausted by the dory fishing. There was also a fresh tub of bait,
buoys, and a lantern.

A youth aboard clambered up to the cross-trees, gave them the
direction of the trawl buoy-light, and they started. It was a clear,
starlit night with only a gentle sea running and no wind to speak of.
There was not a hint of fog.

The _Charming Lass_ lay now in the Atlantic approximately along the
forty-sixth parallel, near its intersection with the fifty-fifth of
meridian; or eighty to a hundred miles southwest of Cape Race,
Newfoundland, and almost an equal distance southeast of the Miquelon
Islands, France's sole remaining territorial possession in the New
World.

Code and Ellinwood easily found their trawl buoy by the glimmer of the
light across the water. They immediately began to plant the
trawl-lines in the tubs aboard the dory. The big buoy for the end of
the line they first anchored to the bottom with dory roding.

Then, as Ellinwood rowed slowly, Code paid the baited trawl-line out
of the tubs. As there are hooks every few feet, so are there big
wooden buoys, so that the whole length of the line--sometimes
twenty-five hundred feet--is floated near the surface.

When the last had been paid out, a second anchor and large buoy was
fixed, and their trawl was "set." Next they turned their attention to
picking the trawl already in the water.

As the line came over the starboard gunnel Code picked the fish off
the hooks, passing the hooks to