matically became the
skipper of the schooner, and he selected Jimmie Thomas as his mate. By
nightfall they had picked up the fleet, and early the next morning the
dories were out. Then for eight days it had been nothing but fish,
fish, fish.

Never in all his experience had Pete seen such schools of cod. They
were evidently herding together in thousands, and had found but scanty
food for such great hosts, for they bit almost on the bare hook.

Now, as he looked around the still sea, the white or yellow sails of
the fishing fleet showed on all sides in a vast circle. Not five miles
away was the _Rosan_, and to the southward of her the _Herring Bone_
with mean old Jed Martin aboard. Bijonah Tanner had tried his best to
shake Martin, but the hard-fisted old skipper, knowing and recognizing
Tanner's "nose" for fish, had clung like a leech and profited by the
other's sagacity.

Nor was this all the Grande Mignon fleet.

There were Gloucestermen among it, the champion fishers of the world,
who spent their spare time in drifting past the English boats and
hurling salty wit--at which pastime they often came off second best.

There were Frenchmen, too, from the Miquelon Islands, who worked in
colored caps and wore sheath-knives in belts around their waists. Pete
often looked over their dirty decks and wondered if his late enemy
were among them. There were also vessels called "toothpicks" that did
an exclusive trawling business, never using dories except to underrun
the trawls or to set them out. These vessels were built on yacht lines
and, because they filled their holds quickly, made quick runs to port
with their catches, thus getting in several trips in a season.

Also, there were the steam trawlers, the most progressive of the
fleet, owned and operated by huge fish firms in Boston or Portland.
These were not dependent on the vagaries of the wind and steamed
wherever their skippers divined that fish might be.

Last of all were the seiners after herring and mackerel, schooners
mostly, and out of Gloucester or Nova Scotia ports, who secured their
catch by encircling schools of fish that played atop of the water with
nets a quarter of a mile long, and pursued them in by drawstrings much
as a man closes a tobacco-pouch.

This was the cosmopolitan city that lived on the unmarked lanes of the
ocean and preyed upon the never-failing supplies of fish that moved
beneath.

Among the Grande Mignon boats there was intense rival