But still Billy Topsail was determined to have the body of the squid. Notwithstanding Bobby's pleading and protestation, he would not abandon his purpose. He was only the more grimly bent on achieving it. Bobby would not hear of again approaching nearer than the boat then floated, nor did Billy think it advisable. But it occurred to Bobby that they might land, and approach the squid from behind. If they could draw near enough, he said, they could cast the grapnel on the squid's back, and moor it to a tree ashore.
"Sure," he said, excitedly, "you can pick up a squid from behind, and it can't touch you with its arms! It won't be able to see us, and it won't be able to reach us."
So they landed. Billy carried the grapnel, which was attached to twelve fathoms of line. It had six prongs, and each prong was barbed.
A low cliff at the edge of the tickle favored the plan. The squid lay below, and some twenty feet out from the rock. It was merely a question of whether or not Billy was strong enough to throw the grapnel so far. They tied the end of the line to a stout shrub. Billy cast the grapnel, and it was a strong, true cast. The iron fell fair on the squid's back. It was a capture.
"That means a new punt for me," said Billy, quietly. "The tide'll not carry that devil-fish away."
"And now," Bobby pleaded, "leave us make haste home, for 'tis growin' wonderful dark—and—and there might be another somewhere."
So that is how one of the largest specimens of Architeuthis princeps—enumerated in Prof. John Adam Wright's latest monograph on the cephalopods of North America as the "Chain Tickle specimen"—was captured. And that is how Billy Topsail fairly won a new punt; for when Doctor Marvey, the curator of the Public Museum at St. John's—who is deeply interested in the study of the giant squids—came to Ruddy Cove to make photographs and take measurements, in response to a message from Billy's father, he rewarded the lad.
