et beam--was swinging from the ring-bolts under the windward rail
and throwing his feet out trying to touch with his heels the sea that
was swashing up on the Lucy's deck. And every once in a while he did
touch, for the Lucy, feeling the need of her ballast, was making
pretty heavy weather of it. Every time she rolled and her sheer poles
went under, Jim would holler out that he'd touched again.

We could hear him over on the Johnnie at times. Mr. Duncan, who
believed that nothing ever built could beat the Lucy Foster, began to
worry at that, and again he spoke to Clancy. He had to holler to make
himself heard.

"But what do you think of the Lucy's chances, Tommie?"

Clancy shook his head.

And getting nothing out of Clancy, Mr. Duncan called out then: "What
do you think of the Lucy, you, Captain Blake?"

The skipper shook his head, too. "I'm afraid it's too much for her."

And then--one elbow was hitched in the weather rigging and a half
hitch around his waist--the skipper swung around, and looking over to
the Withrow, he went on:

"I don't see, Mr. Duncan, why we don't stand a pretty good chance to
win out on Hollis."

"Why not--why not--if anything happens to the Lucy."

It jarred us some to think that even there, in spite of the great race
the Johnnie was making of it, she was still, in the old man's eyes,
only a second string to the Lucy Foster.

About then the wind seemed to come harder than ever, but Clancy at the
wheel never let up on the Johnnie. He socked it to her--wide and free
he sailed her. Kept her going--oh, but he kept her going. "If this one
only had a clean bottom and a chance to tune her up before going out,"
said somebody, and we all said, "Oh, if she only had--just half a day
on the railway before this race."

We were fairly buried at times on the Johnnie--on the Lucy Foster it
must have been tough. And along here the staysail came off the Withrow
and eased her a lot. We would all have been better off with less sail
along about that time. In proof of that we could see back behind us
where the Nannie O, under her trysail, was almost holding her own. But
it wouldn't do to take it off. Had they not all said before putting
off that morning that what sail came off that day would be blown
off?--yes, sir--let it blow a hundred miles an hour. And fishermen's
pride was keeping sail on us and the Foster. Hollis tried to make it
look that his staysail blew off, but we knew better--a knife to the