I was in Newport News when they launched her, and I
went out with her skipper on the trial trip. She's a long,
narrow-gutted craft, with engines aft, like a lake steamer."

"We'll play safe," Tiernan decided. "Go to it--both of you, and
may the best man win. She'll belong to you, Jack, if she's
thirteen hundred net and you get your line aboard first. If she's
as big as Dan says she is, you'll be equal partners----"

But he was talking to himself. Down the dock Hicks and Flaherty
were racing for the respective commands, each shouting to his
night watchman to pipe all hands on deck. Fortunately, a goodly
head of steam was up in each tug's boilers; because of the fog
and the liability to collisions and a consequent hasty summons,
one engineer on each tug was on duty. Before Hicks and Flaherty
were in their respective pilot houses the oil burners were
roaring lustily under their respective boilers; the lines were
cast off within a minute of each other, and the two tugs raced
down the bay through the darkness and fog.

Both Hicks and Flaherty had grown old in the towboat service and
the rules of the road rested lightly on their sordid souls. They
were going over a course they knew by heart--wherefore the fog
had no terrors for them. Down the bay they raced, the _Bodega_
leading slightly, both tugs whistling at half-minute intervals.
Out through the Gate they nosed their way, heaving the lead
continuously, made a wide detour around Mile Rock and the Seal
Rocks, swung a mile to the south of the position of the _Maggie_,
and then came cautiously up the coast, whistling continuously to
acquaint the _Yankee Prince_ with their presence in the
neighbourhood. In anticipation of the necessity for replying to
this welcome sound, Captain Scraggs and Mr. Gibney had, for the
past two hours, busied themselves getting up another head of
steam in the _Maggie's_ boilers, repairing the whistle, and
splicing the wires of the engine room telegraph. Like the wise
men they were, however, they declined to sound the _Maggie's_
siren until the tugs were quite close. Even then, Mr. Gibney
shuddered, but needs must when the devil drives, so he pulled the
whistle cord and was rewarded with a weird, mournful grunt, dying
away into a gasp.

"Sounds like she has the pip," Jack Flaherty remarked to his
mate.

"Must have taken on some of that dirty Asiatic water," Dan Hicks
soliloquized, "and now her tubes have gone to glory."

Immediately, both t