“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 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 97 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 98 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 constantly more rare, until at last only the cod remained.