nd. Races, when a great deal is at stake, are
more or less chaotic: a close four miles in a college eight is a
succession of blurs with lucid but irrelevant intervals. The weary
months of hard work are forgotten, and you are quite as apt to think of
your first velocipede, or of the pie that is awaiting you in the
boathouse, as of victory and defeat. And a yacht race, with a pair of
rivals on your beam, is very much the same.

As I sat with my feet dangling over the washboard, I reflected, once or
twice, that we were engaged in a race. All I had to do was to twist my
head in order to make sure of it. I also reflected, I believe, that I
was in the position of a man who has bet all he owns, with large odds on
losing either way. But on the whole I was occupied with more trivial
matters a letter I had forgotten to write about a month's rent, a client
whose summer address I had mislaid. The sun was burning my neck behind
when a whistle aroused me to the realization that the tug was no longer a
toy boat dancing in the distance, but a stern fact but two miles away.
There could be no mistake now, for I saw the white steam of the signal
against the smoke.

I slid down and went into the cabin. The Celebrity was in the corner by
the companionway, with his head on the cushions and a book in his hand.
And forward, under the low deck beams beyond the skylight, I beheld the
crouching figure of my client. He had stripped off his coat and was busy
at some task on the floor.

"They're whistling for us to stop," I said to him.

"How near are they, old man?" he asked, without looking up.
The perspiration was streaming down his face, and he held a brace and bit
in his hand. Under him was the trap-door which gave access to the
ballast below, and through this he had bored a neat hole. The yellow
chips were still on his clothes.

"They're not two miles away," I answered. "But what in mystery are you
doing there?"

But he only laid a finger beside his nose and bestowed a wink in my
direction. Then he took some ashes from his cigar, wetted his finger,
and thus ingeniously removed all appearance of newness from the hole he
had made, carefully cleaning up the chips and putting them in his pocket.
Finally he concealed the brace and bit and opened the trap, disclosing
the rough stones of the ballast. I watched him in amazement as he tore a
mattress from an adjoining bunk and forced it through the opening,
spreading it fore and aft over the sto