else back. Of
course, everybody wanted to be in a good berth and to cross between
the guns; but the idea was to give the vessels such a try out as they
would get out to sea--as if they were making a passage in a breeze.
The course--forty-two miles or so--was very short for a fisherman,
for one great thing in a fisherman is her power to stand a long drag.
Day and night in and day and night out and driving all the time is the
way a fisherman wants it. Any sort of racing machine could be built to
stand a little hard going for a while. But that wouldn't be living
through a long hard winter's gale on the Banks--one of those blows
where wind and sea--and in shoal water at that--have a chance to do
their worst. Fishermen are built for that sort of work and on their
sea-worthiness depends not only the fortunes of owners but the lives
of men--of real men--and the happiness and comfort of wives and
children ashore. And so the idea in everybody's mind that day was to
make this test as nearly fair as could be and see who had the fastest
and most weatherly boat in the fleet. There were men to the wheel that
day who could handle big fishermen as if they were cat-boats, who
would have dared and did, later, dare to sail their vessels as close
to a mark in this sea as men sail a twenty-foot knockabout in the
smoothest of waters inshore--only with the fishermen a slip-up meant
the loss of a vessel, maybe other vessels too, and twenty-five or
fifty lives perhaps.

And so the skill of these men was not used to give anybody the worst
of it. A fair start and give everybody his chance was the idea. Thus
Tommie Ohlsen could have forced the Withrow outside the starting boat
and compelled her to come about and maybe lose a few minutes, but he
did not. He held up and let her squeeze through. O'Donnell in his turn
could have crowded Ohlsen when he let up on the Withrow, but he did
not. He, too, held up in turn and let Ohlsen have his swing going
across.

Across we went, one after the other. West-sou'west was the course to a
stake-boat, which we were told would be found off Egg Rock, fourteen
miles away. We had only the compass to go by, for at the start it was
rain and drizzle, as well as wind and a big sea, and you couldn't see
a mile ahead. On the way we shot by the New Rochelle, which had
started ahead with the intention of waiting for the fleet at the first
stake-boat. Now she was headed back, wabbing awfully. From Billie
Simms, who went ov