If Lockwood and Drew looked most like the old man on the outside, Nat was his twin on the inside. How many times, on the summer cruises, had Father spotted another yacht away off somewhere and gone straight toward her, promising to give her a run for her money, show her and her crew how a real vessel manned by real sailors could crack on? Had to win. Had to find something to run against, or be up against, and win. Made his living that way once. When the lookouts on Key West rang bells and shouted from towers, “Wreck ashore!” it was a footrace of skippers and crews to their vessels, and then a sailing race, a regular right smart regatta, Dad had said, sloops and schooners dueling, in barbarous seas and winds, to be first to the wreck and claim rights as salvage master, and the prize not a silver cup to sit gleaming in a trophy case but ten or twenty or thirty thousand dollars in saved cargo and whatever treasure awaited you in heaven for saving lives. Must have gotten into his blood, Eliot reckoned, so he just couldn’t stand fair winds and quiet seas, in any sense of the word; hell, he probably had a fine time, facing down the strikers in the Black Island pits two years ago, just him and his manager, the big Swede called Pedersen, against more than one hundred angry men armed with clubs and implements of their trade.

“Hey! I’ll do that,” he said to Drew, who had suddenly leapt onto the bowsprit.

Straddling it, and it pitching in the chop, Drew inched forward to unfurl the jib topsail.

“L’il brother, you don’t have to prove anything to him.”

“You can give me a hand, if you want.”

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.