ry. In the holds
the layers of salted fish rose steadily under the phenomenal fishing.
The salt-barrels were emptied and crowded out by the cod, hake, and
pollock. It was these boats that Ellinwood watched with the eye of a
hawk, for back in Freekirk Head he knew that Bill Boughton stood ready
to pay a bonus for the first cargo to reach port. Now was the time
when the advance orders from the West Indies were coming up, and,
because of the failure of the season on the island itself, these
orders stood unfilled.

One or two of the smallest sloops had already wet their salt and
weighed anchor for home, taking letters and messages; but these, Pete
knew, could only supply an infinitesimal portion of the demand. What
Boughton looked for was a healthy load of fifteen hundred to two
thousand quintals all ready for drying.

Night and day the work went on. With the first signs of daylight the
dories were swung outboard and the men took their positions. A catch
of two hundred good-sized cod was now considered the usual thing for a
handliner, and night after night the piles of silver fish in the pens
amidships seemed to grow in size.

Now they dressed down under lantern light, sometimes aided by the
moon, and the men stood to the tables until they fell asleep on their
feet and split their fingers instead of the fish. Then, after buckets
of hot coffee, they would fall to again and never stop until the last
wet body had been laid atop of its thousands of brothers.

The men were constantly on the trawls. Sometimes they did nothing all
day but pick the fish and rebait, finding, after a trip to the
schooner to unload, that a thousand others had struck on the long
lines of sagging hooks while they were gone.

It was fast and feverish work, and it seemed as though it would never
end.

The situation had resolved itself into a race between the schooners,
and Ellinwood was of no mind to come off second best. Like a jockey
before a race, he watched his rivals.

He knew that foxy Bijonah Tanner, who sometimes looked like an old
hump-backed cod himself, was his most dangerous rival. Tanner said
nothing, but his boats were out early and in late, and the lanterns on
his deck over the dressing pens could sometimes be seen as late as ten
o'clock at night.

Visits among the fleet had now ceased, both because there was no time
for it, and because a man from another schooner was looked upon as a
spy.

At the start of the season it had bee