IN THE FOG BANK
"SQUID ho! Squid ho! Tumble up, all hands!"
Rod Kent, the old salt who had for the past hour been experimenting
over the side, leaned down the main cabin hatch and woke the port
watch. Behind him on the deck a queer marine creature squirmed in a
pool of water and sought vainly to disentangle itself from the
apparatus that had caught it.
The shout brought all hands on deck, stupid with sleep, but eager to
join in the sport.
The squid is a very small edition of the giant devilfish or octopus.
It has ten tentacles, a tapered body about ten inches long, and is
armed with the usual defensive ink-sac, by means of which it squirts a
cloud of black fluid at a pursuing enemy, escaping in the general
murk.
"How'd ye ketch him?" cried all hands, for the advent of squid was the
most welcome news the men on the _Charming Lass_ had had since leaving
home four days before. It meant that this favorite and succulent bait
of the roaming cod had arrived on the Banks, and that the catches
would be good.
"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 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 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.
Aboard the _Charming Lass_ the squid "jigging" went on for a couple of
hours. Then suddenly the school passed and the sport ended abruptly.
But the deck of the schooner was a mass of the bait, and the tubs of
salt clams brought from Freekirk Head could be saved until later.
Rockwell, who had been looking out forward, suddenly called Code's
attention to a flock of sea-pigeons floating on the water a mile
ahead. As the skipper looked he saw the fowl busily diving and
"upending," and he knew they had struck the edge of the Banks; for
water-fowl will always dive in shoal water, and a skipper sailing to
the Banks from a distance always looks for this sign.
An hour later, when the cook had sent out his call for the first half,
Code made Ellinwood stay on deck and bring the schooner to an
anchorage after sounding.
The sounding lead is a long slug, something like a window-weight, at
the bottom of which is a saucer-shaped hollow. The leadsman, a young
fellow from Freekirk Head, took his place on the schooner's rail
outside the forerigging. The lead was attached to a line and, as the
schooner forged slowly ahead, close-hauled, the youth swung the lead
in ever-widening semicircles.
"Let your pigeon fly!" cried Pete, and the lead swung far ahead and
fell with a sullen _plop_ into the dark blue water. The line ran out
until it suddenly slackened just under the leadsman. He fingered a
mark.
"Forty fathoms!" he called.
Five minutes later another sounding was taken and proved that the
water was gradually shoaling. At thirty fathoms Pete ordered the
anchor let go and a last sounding taken.
Before the lead flew he rubbed a little tallow into the saucer, and
this, when it came up, was full of sand, mud, and shells, telling the
sort of bottom under the schooner.
Pete called Code, and together they read it like a book--favorable
fishing ground, though not the best.
While the second half ate, the first half took in all canvas and
reefed it with the exception of the mainsail. This was unbent entirely
and stowed away. In its place was bent on a riding sail, for until
their salt was all wet there would be very little occasion for any
sort of sailing, their only progress being as they ambled leisurely
from berth to berth.
"Dories overside!" sung out Code. "Starboard first."
A rope made fast to a mainstay and furnished with a hook at its end
was slipped into a loop of rope at one end of the dory. A similar
device caught a similar loop at the other end.
One strong pull and the dory rose out of the nest of four others that
lay just aft of the mainmast. A hand swung her outboard and she was
lowered away until she danced on the water.
Jimmie Thomas leaped into her, received a tub of briny squid, a
dinner-horn, and a beaker of water, besides his rectangular reels with
their heavy cord, leads, and two hooks.
"Overside port dory!" came the command, and Kent was sent on his way.
Thus one after another the men departed until on board the _Lass_
there remained only the cook and a boy helper. Code, as well as
Ellinwood, had gone out, for they wished to test the fishing.
These dories were entirely different propositions from the heavy
motor-boats that the men used almost entirely near the island. They
were light, compact, and properly big enough for only one man,
although they easily accommodated two.
The motor dories of Thomas and Code were on board, nested forward, but
they were of little use here, where only short distances are covered,
and those by rowing.
The nine dories drew away from the schooner, each in a different
direction, until they were a mile or more apart.
Code threw over his little three-fluked anchor. Then he baited his two
hooks with bits of tentacle and threw them overboard. With the big
rectangular reel in his left hand, he unwound as the leads drew down
until they fetched bottom and the line sagged. Unreeling a couple more
fathoms of line, he cast the reel aside.
Then he hauled his leads up until he judged them to be some six feet
off the bottom and waited.
Almost instantly there was a sharp jerk, and Code, with the skill of
the trained fisherman, instantly responded to it with a savage pull on
the line and a rapid hand-over-hand as he looped it into the dory. The
fish had struck on. The tough cord sung against the gunnel, and at
times it was all the skipper could do to bring up his prize, for the
great cod darted here and there, dove, rushed, and struggled to avert
the end.
Thirty fathoms is a hundred and eighty feet, and, with a huge and
desperate fish disputing every inch of the way, it becomes a seemingly
endless labor. But at last Code, straining his eyes over the side,
caught a glimpse of quick circles of white in the green and reached
for the maul that was stuck under a thwart.
Two more heaves and the cod, open-mouthed, thrashed on the surface. A
smart rap on the head with the maul and he came into the dory quietly.
There were little pink crabs sticking to him and he did not seem as
fat as he should, although he topped the fifty-pound mark.
"Lousy!" said Code. "Lousy and hungry! It's good fishing."
With a short, stout stick at hand he wrenched the hook out of the
cod's mouth, baited up, and cast again. The descending bait was rushed
and seized. This time both hooks bore victims.
When there were no speckled cod on the hooks there were silvery hake,
velvety black pollock, beautiful scarlet sea-perch that look like
little old men, and an occasional ugly dogfish with his Chinese jade
eyes.
When the dogfish came the men pulled up their anchors and rowed a mile
or so away, for where the dogfish pursues all others fly. He has the
shape and traits of his merciless giant brother, the tiger-shark, with
the added menace of a horn full of poison in the middle of his back
instead of a dorsal fin; an evil, curved horn, the thrust of which
can be nearly fatal to a man.
The bottom of the dory became covered with a flooring of liquid silver
bodies that twined together and rolled with the roll of the dory.
At five o'clock Code wound his line on the reel (he usually used two
at a time, but one had been plenty with such fishing), and started to
pull for the distant _Charming Lass_. He was now fully five miles from
her, and his nearest neighbor was Bill Kent, three miles away. All
hands were drawing in toward her, for they knew they must take a quick
mug-up and then dress down until the last cod lay in his shroud of
salt.
The schooner lay to the northeast of Schofield, and as he bent to his
work he did not see a strange, level mass of gray that advanced slowly
toward him. From a distance to the lay observer this mass would have
looked like an ordinary cloud-bank, but the experienced eyes of a
fisherman would have discerned its ghastly gray hue and its flat
contour.
All the afternoon there had been a freshening breeze, and now
Schofield found himself rowing against a head sea that occasionally
slapped over the high bow of the dory and ran aft over the half ton of
fish that lay under his feet.
He had not pulled for fifteen minutes when the whole world about him
was suddenly obscured by the thick, woolly fog that swirled past on
the wind. It was as though an impenetrable wall had been suddenly
built up on all sides, a wall that offered no resistance to his
progress and yet no egress.
He immediately stopped rowing and rested his oars, listening. No sound
came to him except the slap of the increasing waves and the occasional
flap of a wet fish in its last struggles.
He carried no pocket compass, and the light gave no hint of the
direction of the sun. In the five minutes that he sat there the head
of his dory swung around and, even had he known the exact compass
direction of the _Charming Lass_ before the fog, he would have been
unable to find it.
The situation did not alarm him in the least, for he had experienced
it often before. Reaching into the bow, he drew out the dinner-horn
that was part of the equipment of the dory and sent an ear-splitting
blast out into the fog.
It seemed as though the opaque walls about him held in the sound as
heavy curtains might in a large room; it fell dead on his own ears
without any of the reverberant power that sound has in traveling
across water.
Once more he listened. He knew that the schooner, being at anchor,
would be ringing her bell; but he hardly hoped to catch a sound of
that. Instead, he listened for the answering peal of a horn in one of
the other dories. Straining his ears, he thought he caught a faint
toot ahead of him and to starboard.
He seized his oars and rowed hard for several minutes in the direction
of the sound. Then he stopped, and, rising to his feet, sent another
great blast brawling forth into the fog. Once more he listened, and
again it seemed as though an answering horn sounded in the distance.
But it was fainter this time.
A gust of wind, rougher than the others, swirled the fog about him in
great ghostly sheets, turning and twisting it like the clouds of
greasy smoke from a fire of wet leaves. The dory rolled heavily, and
Code, losing his balance, sprawled forward on the fish, the horn
flying from his hand overboard as he tried to save himself.
For a moment only it floated; and then, as he was frantically swinging
the dory to draw alongside, it disappeared beneath the water with a
low gurgle.
The situation was serious. He was unable to attract attention, and
must depend for his salvation upon hearing the horns of the other
dories as they approached the schooner. Rowing hard all the time, with
frequent short pauses, he strained his ears for the welcome sound.
Sometimes he thought he caught a faint, mellow call; but he soon
recognized that these were deceptions, produced in his ears by the
memory of what he had heard before. Impatiently he rowed on.
After a while he stopped. Since he could not get track of any one, it
was foolish to continue the effort, for every stroke might take him
farther and farther out of hearing. On the other hand, if he were
headed in the right direction, another dory, trying to find the
schooner, might cross his path or come within earshot.
He was still not in the least worried by the situation. Men in much
worse ones had been rescued from them without thinking anything of
them.
But the rising wind and sea gave him something to think of. The waves
found it a very easy matter to climb aboard the heavily laden dory,
and occasionally he had to bail with the can in the bows provided for
the purpose.
An hour passed, and at the end of that time he found that he was
bailing almost constantly. There was only one thing to do under the
circumstances. The gaff lay under his hand. This is a piece of
broom-handle, to the end of which a stout, sharp hook is attached, and
the instrument is used in landing fish which are too heavy to swing
inboard on the slender fishing-line.
[Illustration: By this time the wind was a gale]
Code took the gaff and commenced to throw the fish over the side one
at a time. He hated the waste of splendid cod, but things had now got
to a pass where his own comfort and safety were at stake. Once the
fish were gone, with the cleanliness of long habit, he swabbed the
bottom and sides of the dory with an old rag and rinsed them with
water which he afterward bailed out.
The dory now rose high and dry on the waves; But Code found it
increasingly difficult to row because the water tended to "crab" his
oars and twist them suddenly out of his hands.
To keep his head to the wind he paddled slowly, listening for any
sound of a boat.
Another hour passed and darkness began to come down. The pearly gray
fog lost its color and became black, like smoke from a burning
oil-tank. He knew the sun was below the horizon. He wondered if any of
the other men had been caught. If none were gone but himself, he
reasoned, the schooner would have come in search of him.
So, from listening for the horn of a dory, he tried to catch the
hoarse voice of a patent fog-horn that would be grinding on the
forecastle head.
By this time the wind was a gale, and he knew it was driving him
astern, despite his rowing. The waves were no longer the little choppy
seas that the _Lass_ had encountered since leaving Freekirk Head, but
hustling, slopping hills that attacked him in endless and rapid
succession. His progress was a continuous climb to one summit,
followed by a dizzying swoop into the following depth.
Each climb was punctuated at the top by a gallon or so of water slopped
into the dory from the crest of the wave. These influxes became so
frequent that he was obliged to bail very often. Consequently he
unshipped one oar and, crawling to the stern, shipped the other in the
notch of the sternboard.
Here he sculled with one hand so as to keep the dory's head to the
wind, and bailed with the other. Being aft, his weight caused the
water to run down to him, and he could thus perform the two operations
at the same time.
When pitch-blackness had come he knew that he was out of reach of the
schooner's horn. His only chance lay in the fog's lifting or the
passing of some schooner.
His principal concern was for the wind. It was just the time of year
for those "three-day" nor'-easters that harry the entire coast of
North America. When the first excitement of his danger passed he was
assailed by the fierce hunger of nervous and physical exhaustion, but
there was no food aboard the dory. He had, of course, the breaker of
water that was part of his regular equipment; but this was more for
use during a long day of fishing than for the emergency of being lost
at sea.
He took a hearty drink and prepared for the long watch of the night.
By a wax match several hours later he found that it was midnight. His
struggle with wind and sea had now become unequal. He found it
impractical to remain longer in the stern attempting to scull. So very
cautiously he set about his last defensive measure.
Taking the two oars and the anchor, as well as the thwarts, he bound
them together securely with the anchor roding. This drag he hove from
the bow of the dory, and it swung the boat's head into the wind.
Schofield, with the bailer in one hand, lay flat in the bottom.
With the increasing sea, water splashed steadily over the sides so
that his exertions never ceased. The chill of the night penetrated his
soaked garments, and this, with his exhaustion, produced a stupor. The
whistle of the wind and the hiss of foaming crests became dream
sounds.