Eliot swung on behind him, warning him to hang on tight should the sail, once the jackropes were untied, flap out of control, warning him also not to look down at the waves—a sure way to turn his complexion the same color as the water. They got the ties undone and, as the sail unfurled, a part of it dropped down, forming a kind of hammock a foot or two below their dangling feet, the concavity becoming convex when an eddy of wind got under it and made it flog the air like a maddened ghost. Startled, Drew jerked away from the cracking canvas, shouted, “Whoaaa!” and came close to rolling off into the boil of bow wash; but Eliot held him by the back of his waistband and steadied him in his seat. They slid backward on the bowsprit and set the rebellious sail. As soon as it filled, Eliot felt the sensation Nat had described a few moments before—of Double Eagle surging forward like the thoroughbred she was. No trot now, but a strong steady canter.

He looked at Drew, who managed a small, victorious smile, but his eyes had become a little rheumy and his face a little tinged, whether from the pitching or the near dunking, Eliot couldn’t tell.

“Well, you know what to do,” he said.

“Go astern, stand at the rail, look at the horizon, and if I have to puke, puke to leeward.”

They sailed past the thorofare light, rising white and tall out of granite, wind-scoured of all green things, save scattered spruces, and into the blue space of Penobscot Bay. There, the smoky sou’wester struck them full force: over fifteen, rising toward twenty knots, and the fog rising also in the afternoon sun to be shredded like rotted cotton by the wind, whose pressure on the sails made the weather-side rigging hum. The woollies overhead were stampeding eastward, and Double Eagle was heeled well over, the two younger brothers clinging to the weather rail, their weight lending the ballast some little help.

Black Watch was a good two hundred yards ahead, and maybe two points off Double Eagle’s port bow, the vessels on parallel courses.

“I’m going to drive her hard, till we pass those yawl bums,” Nathaniel said.

“How do you know they’re racing us?” asked Eliot. “Maybe they’re only—”

“What the hell do you think all that hankie-waving back there was about?”

But, Eliot argued, Black Watch had a huge head start and a couple, three feet more than Double Eagle on the waterline. Plus, he added, plus, the wind was forward, and the yawl could sail faster close to the wind than their gaff-rigged schooner.

“Look at the clouds, Eliot! Look at the seas! Wind’s veering southwest to south. We’ll be on a beam reach right quick, and there’s nothing but a steamer can whip a Gloucester schooner on a beam reach.”