“It’s Will! It’s Will at their helm!”

Eliot looked. Yes, it was Will, and looking oh so nautical in white yachtsman’s cap and dark turtleneck sweater.

“Say, Will! Will Terhune!” Nat hailed, daring to let go the helm with one hand while he cupped the other alongside his mouth. “Got you now! Say, Will!”

Double Eagle’s stern soon swept past Black Watch’s bow, and with a clear wind, she sprang away. Eliot dashed forward and doused the staysail; if it stayed up, it could blow out.

“Now watch this,” he said to Drew, realizing from the breathlessness in his voice that he had become caught up in the contest, that the lust for triumph was in him, too, just a little more hidden. “Look at the yawl’s sails … luffing.… She’s losing way.… Will’s trying to point her up, but he can’t, on account of our sails are deflecting the wind into the backs of hers. We’re backwinding her.… We’re in the safe leeward position, because when you’re there, it’s darn near impossible for the boat behind you to pass you.… See?”

“Bye … bye, bye, Will.…” Nat, looking astern, waved prissily.

“Only one thing he can do,” Eliot said, resuming his commentary. “Wait till we’re far enough ahead not to backwind him anymore and then bear off … And there he goes.…”

Will’s crew gave chase, but on this point of sail, Double Eagle was the faster vessel, and if the wind did not swing forward and no dumb mistakes were made, the race was over.

With the tension released, Nat broke into a grin, which exploded into a hoarse laugh. And what was so funny? asked Eliot.

“You … falling on your arse twice … And then, when you got up, the way you shook your fist …” Nat choked, wiped his eyes. “When you yelled, ‘I am the risen Christ!’ Oh, I hope Will heard that. That was so rich. I am the risen Christ!”

The wind dropped, as it usually did late on summer afternoons. Under her cloud of canvas, Double Eagle pranced into North Haven harbor. The lowering sun burnished the waters, but the light did not seem to be shining on them but through them from below, as if gold were being minted down there, in some undersea alchemist’s forge. Around here, thought Nathaniel, even the water looked like a million bucks. Vinalhaven, so near that you could row to it across the thorofare, was an island of quarrymen, lobstermen, fishermen, and schoonermen, a place so rough and salty one breath of its air could make your nostrils rust; on North Haven, elegant gardens bloomed around rambling houses (their owners called them “cottages,” with a certain snooty understatement) where Philadelphia lawyers, New York industrialists, and Boston textile merchants parked wives and children for the summer, while they stayed in the cities, making the money that bought the houses and the yachts, great and small, crowding the harbor whose surface now glowed with that golden fire.