explain. "After a summer of yachting a fisherman will begin to
think that a winter of fishing is going to be a serious thing." She
was warmed up then and went on talking at a great rate. And listening
to her I could understand better why men took to her. She had warm
blood in her. If it were not for her weakness to be admired by men,
she would have been a great woman. "And they get so, that what seems
extraordinary work to you is only an every-day matter to them. Do you
remember that last schooner-yacht race across the Atlantic?--when two
or three reporters went along, and after they got back wrote all kinds
of stories of what a desperate trip it was--how rough it was and
dangerous! Well, that time there were three or four Gloucestermen
making the run to Iceland. Now, they were not as big as the racing
yachts and they were loaded down with all the stores for a long salt
trip--their holds full of salt, for one thing--and yet they made about
as good time to Iceland as that yachtsman made to Queenstown. And they
weren't driving their vessels either--they don't drive on the way out.
It's only coming home that they try to make passages. Now, they must
have got the same weather and yet nobody ever heard them in their
letters home report a word of bad weather, or ever afterward, either.
And yet--but were you to Iceland that time, Maurice?"

"No," said the skipper, "but you were, Tommie?"

"Yes," answered Clancy, "in the Lucy Foster. We made Rik-ie-vik inside
of fourteen days, carrying both tops'ls all the way. Wesley--Wesley
Marrs--wasn't hurrying her, of course. As Mrs. Miner says, the vessels
going to the east'ard don't hurry, except now and then when two of
them with records get together. And the Lucy was logy, of course, with
the three hundred and odd hogsheads of salt and other stuff in her.
If we'd been driving her going to Iceland that time we'd have had the
stays'l and balloon to her--and she'd have gone right along with them,
too."

Mrs. Miner looked around at her yachting friends to see if they were
getting all that.

"There was one day that passage it blew a bit," exclaimed Clancy. "And
that was the day we thought we saw a fellow to the east'ard. We had
men by the halyards all that day with splitting knives."

"Why?" asked Keith.

"Why, to cut before she could capsize."

"Oh!" said Keith and said it with a little click.

"But that's nothing. I've seen the gang with Tom O'Donnell standing
watch by the halya