devil-fish.

[Illustration: "'TIS THE DEVIL-FISH!" SCREAMED BOBBY.]

Billy Topsail did not know what a cephalopod was; but he did know a
squid when he saw its picture, for Ruddy Cove is a fishing harbor, and
he had caught many a thousand for bait. So when he found that to the lay
mind a squid and a cephalopod were one and the same, save in size, he
read the long article from beginning to end, doing the best he could
with the strange, long words.

So interested was he that he read it again; and by that time he had
learned enough to surprise him, even to terrify him, notwithstanding the
writer's assurance that the power and ferocity of the creatures had
generally been exaggerated.

He was a lad of sound common sense. He had never wholly doubted the
tales of desperate encounters with devil-fish, told in the harbor these
many years; for the various descriptions of how the long slimy arms had
curled about the punts had rung too true to be quite disbelieved; but he
had considered them somewhat less credible than certain wild yarns of
shipwreck, and somewhat more credible than the bedtime stories of
mermaids which the grandmothers told the children of the place.

Here, however, in plain print, was described the capture of a giant
squid in a bay which lay beyond a point of land that Billy could see
from the window.

That afternoon Billy put out in his leaky old punt to "jig" squid for
bait. He was so disgusted with the punt--so ashamed of the squat,
weather-worn, rotten cast-off--that he wished heartily for a new one all
the way to the grounds. The loss of the _Never Give Up_ had brought him
to humiliating depths.

But when he had once joined the little fleet of boats, he cheerfully
threw his grapnel into Bobby Lot's punt and beckoned Bobby aboard. Then,
as together they drew the writhing-armed, squirting little squids from
the water, he told of the "big squids" which lurked in the deep water
beyond the harbor; and all the time Bobby opened his eyes wider and
wider.

"Is they just like squids?" Bobby asked.

"But bigger," answered Billy. "Their bodies is so big as hogsheads.
Their arms is thirty-five feet long."

Bobby picked a squid from the heap in the bottom of the boat. It had
instinctively turned from a reddish-brown to a livid green, the color of
sea-water; indeed, had it been in the water, its enemy would have had
hard work to see it.

He handled it gingerly; but the ugly little creature managed somehow to