repeated his question, this time
angrily.

He might as well have shouted at the wind. The stranger's head fell
off, her canvas caught the breeze, and she forged ahead. A minute
later and she was out of earshot.

"Look for her name on the stern," commanded Code. He plunged below
into the cabin and raced up again with his glasses. The mysterious
schooner was now nearly a quarter of a mile away, but within easy
range of vision.

Code fixed his gaze on her stern, where her name should be, and saw
with astonishment that it had carefully been painted out. Then he
swung his glasses to cover the dories nested amidships, and found that
on them, too, new paint had obscured the name. He lowered the glasses
helplessly.

"Do you recognize her, Pete?" he asked. "I know most of the schooners
out of Freekirk Head and St. John's, but I never saw her before."

"Me neither," admitted the mate, with conviction. "I wonder what all
this means?"

Code could not answer.

CHAPTER XI

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 jig