er part of the course in the Henry Clay Parker ahead
of the fleet, we got word of the trouble as we went by. The New
Rochelle was beginning to leak. "You c'n spit between her deck-planks
and into her hold--she's that loose," hollered Billie. I don't think
the fishermen aboard of her minded much so long as she stayed afloat,
but her captain, a properly licensed man, did, I expect, and so she
put back with some of them growling, I heard afterward, "and after
paying their little old three dollars to see only the start of the
race." Her captain reported, when he got in, that he didn't see
anything outside but a lot of foolish fishermen trying to drown
themselves.

The first leg was before the wind and the Lucy Foster and the Colleen
Bawn went it like bullets. I don't expect ever again to see vessels
run faster than they did that morning. On some of those tough passages
from the Banks fishing vessels may at times have gone faster than
either of these did that morning. It is likely, for where a lot of
able vessels are all the time trying to make fast passages--skippers
who are not afraid to carry sail and vessels that can stand the
dragging--and in all kinds of chances--there must in the course of
years of trying be some hours when they do get over an everlasting lot
of water. But there are no means of checking up. Half the time the men
do not haul the log for half a day or more. Some of the reports of
speed of fishermen at odd times have been beyond all records, and so
people who do not know said they must be impossible. But here was a
measured course and properly anchored stake-boats--and the Lucy and
the Colleen did that first leg of almost fourteen sea-miles in fifty
minutes, which is better than a 16-1/2 knot clip, and that means over
nineteen land miles an hour. I think anybody would call that pretty
fast going. And, as some of them said afterward, "Lord in Heaven!
suppose we'd had smooth water!" But I don't think that the sea checked
them so very much--not as much as one might think, for they were
driving these vessels.

XXXII

O'DONNELL CARRIES AWAY BOTH MASTS

We were next to the last vessel across the starting line. The Nannie
O--we couldn't see them all--about held the Lucy Foster and the
Colleen Bawn level. The Withrow showed herself to be a wonderful
vessel off the wind, too. Wesley Marrs was around the stake-boat
first. In the fog and drizzle the leaders did not find the stake-boat
at once. Wesley