ood with the glasses to his eyes and watched the mysterious
schooner and the pursuing vessel disappear.

CHAPTER XIX

ELLINWOOD TAKES A HAND

There were two things for Code to do. One was to sail north into
Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, set seines, and catch the herring that
were then schooling. The other was to run sixty miles or so northeast
to St. Pierre, Miquelon, and buy bait.

Under ordinary circumstances he would not have hesitated. It would
have been Placentia Bay without question. But his situation was now
decidedly out of the ordinary. He was in a hurry to fill his hold with
cod before the other men out of Freekirk Head; first, for the larger
prices he would get; and secondly, because he yearned to come to
grapples with Nat Burns.

To seine for herring would lose him upward of a week; to buy it would
take less than three days, including the round trip to St. Pierre.

But the money?

Code knew that in the French island herring seldom went below three
dollars a barrel, and that the smallest amount he ought to buy would
be twenty-five barrels. Later on, if the fishing was good, he might
send out a party to set the seines, but not now. He must buy. But the
money!

Then he thought of the packet of money Elsa Mallaby had sent him. The
cash was meant for any sailor who came to need it.

And the men with him were willing to fight to the last ditch and to
take their lot ungrumblingly as fishermen early learn to do.

If he starved, they starved. So he decided he would not hesitate to
use Elsa's money when a dozen men and their families were dependent
upon him and the success of the cruise.

Thus the matter was settled and the order roared down the decks:

"Set every stitch for St. Pierre; we're going to bait up there.
Lively, now!"

St. Pierre, Miquelon, is one of the quaintest towns in all of
picturesque French Canada. It is on the island of the same name (there
are three Miquelon islands), which is in itself a bold chunk of
granite sticking up out of the ocean at a distance of some ten miles
southwest of May Point, Newfoundland.

Rough and craggy, with few trees, sparse vegetation, and a very thin
coating of soil, there is no agriculture, and the whole glory of the
island is centered in the roaring city on its southeast side.

It is a strange city, lost in the midst of busy up-to-date Canada,
with French roofs, narrow tilting streets, and ever the smell of fish.
There is a good harbor, and t