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.”

He was focused now, he was pure concentration, all distraction distilled right out of him by the desire, the need, to win. Eliot had seen him get this way at Andover, on the football field, in the boxing ring. Nat wasn’t a stylish fighter, like Bob Fitzsimmons, but he would win on intentness alone, his eyes fixed on his opponent in a way that reminded you of Trajan’s eyes when he was poised to spring on vole or mouse.

“You and Drew get the fisherman’s staysail, have it ready to send aloft,” he said.

“The staysail!”—Eliot, incredulous, no, outraged. “Big brother, if we crowd on any more sail, if we fly a goddammed shirt right now, we’ll bust a topmast, for sure.”

“It’s not for now. It’s for just in case. You just have it ready and haul it up when I give the say-so. Get to it!”