"Any canvas
that comes off this vessel between here and Freekirk Head blows off,
unless we have passed all those schooners ahead of us. Haven't raised
any of 'em, have you?"

"Not yet, skipper; but we ought to by night," said Ellinwood as though
he felt he was personally to blame. "But let me tell you somethin',
skipper. It's all right to carry sail, but if you get your sticks
ripped out you won't be able to get anywhere at all."

"If my sticks go, let 'em go, I'll take my medicine; but I'll tell you
this much, Pete, that nobody is going to beat me home while I've got a
stick to carry canvas, unless they have a better packet than the
_Charming Lass_--which I know well they haven't."

"That's the spirit, skipper!" yelled Ellinwood, secretly pleased.

There is no telling exactly what speed certain fishing schooners have
made on their great drives from the Banks. Some men go so far as to
claim that the old China tea clippers have lost their laurels both for
daily runs and for passages up to four thousand miles.

One ambitious man hazards his opinion (and he is one who ought to
know) that a fishing schooner has done her eighteen knots or upward
for numerous individual hours, for fishermen, even on record passages,
fail to haul the log sometimes for half a day at a time.

Schofield, however, took occasion to have the log hauled for one
especially squally mile, and the figures showed that the _Lass_ had
covered fifteen knots in the hour--seventeen and a half land miles.

She was booming along now, seeming to leap from one great crest to the
next like a giant projectile driven by some irresistible force. She
was canted at such an angle that her lee rail was invisible under the
boiling white, and her deck planks seemed a part of the sea.

The course was almost exactly southwest, and that first day the _Lass_
roared down the Atlantic, passing the wide mouth of Cabot Strait that
leads between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia into the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. They passed one of the Quebec and Montreal liners, and took
pleasure shooting the schooner under her flaring bows.

The next morning at seven, twenty-four hours out, found them three
hundred and fifty miles on their course, but what was better than all,
showed three sails ahead. Then did the crew of the _Charming Lass_
rejoice, climbing into the spray-lashed rigging, and yelling wildly
against the tumult of the waters.

Nor did the wind subside. It had gone to forty-five