ash it shot towards the boat,
writhing as it came.

Billy struck blindly--and struck nothing. The tentacle had fallen short.
The boat was out of danger!

* * * * *

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[G] Reprinted by special permission from "The Adventures of Billy
Topsail." Copyright, 1906, by Fleming H. Revell Company.

[1] "The early literature of natural history has, from very remote
times, contained allusions to huge species of cephalopods, often
accompanied by more or les