They first got their ship to look respectable, beginning with the scrubbing of the deck. The main and foresail were laced with jack ropes, and Nathaniel liked how they looked, sandwiched between booms and gaffs in folds as sharp as those in a concertina. The whole ship shimmered in a halo of buttery light. Mine, he thought again, and with such an upwelling of prideful possession that he wondered—his mind hastening ahead three months—how he could bear to give her up when the time came.

Two to three strong pulls on the tender’s oars brought the victors alongside Black Watch. Will took the painter and tied the tender off to the stern.

“Captain Cyrus won’t be joining us?”

“Nope,” said Nathaniel, shaking hands.

“He’s been known to take a drink, now and then. Too young a crowd for him?”

This with a motion at his friends, all college men like himself.

“The old man isn’t aboard,” Nathaniel said, and looked into the face that appeared to have been assembled by a God unable to decide if He had wanted to make it handsome or ugly. From a distance of ten or fifteen feet, it was good-looking, in a spare, angular sort of way; closer, you noticed that the chin sheered to a point, the nose was a little crooked, like a prizefighter’s, the mouth had a cant that made Will look as if he were perpetually sneering—at life, at you—and the lips were thicker than they should have been, considering the leanness of his other features; a thickness that suggested an unhealthy sensuality.

“You don’t mean to tell me that we lost to you three?” he asked, as if some law of the universe had been overturned.

“That’s the size of it.”

Fishing a package of Duke’s out of his trouser pocket, offering one to Nat, who shook his head.

“They cut your wind,” he said.

“Stunt your growth, too. If I didn’t smoke, I would now be a giant instead of a mere six feet.” Tilting his head backward, exhaling, pursed lips compressing the smoke into a slender funnel. “You certainly cut ours, and on the leeward side. Nasty.”

With a glance, Will appeared to beg forgiveness from his college chums. Maybe he had bragged to them about his prowess. Like Nathaniel, he had been racing since childhood, first in dinghies, then in small sloops; he had crewed on many larger vessels and had been navigator in the Newport to Bermuda race last year, Portland to Gloucester the year before.

“Clever, Natters. Being a gentleman and gracious in defeat, I’ll offer you the hootch that would have gone to your old man, since you were skipper and all.” Turning to one of the others, a short fellow strongly built, like a middleweight wrestler: “Van Slyck, you’re designated steward for this voyage. Our grog ration, if you please, and sodee pops for the young ’uns.”