best foot forward, taking the green water over her
bows in a smother of foam.

"Heavens! look at her go!"

The exclamation was one of pure delight in the speed.

"Maybe she's an American that's been caught inside the three-mile
limit, and is pullin' away from the gunboat," remarked Pete.

That she was pulling away there was little doubt. In the fifteen
minutes that elapsed after her discovery she had widened the gap
between herself and her pursuer. She was now within a mile of the
_Lass_.

"Why doesn't she shoot?"

As Code spoke a puff of white smoke thrust out from the blunt bows of
the cutter, and the ball ricochetted from wave-top to wave-top to fall
half a mile astern of the schooner.

"Out of range now, an' if the wind holds she'll be out of sight by
nightfall," said Pete, who was moved to great excitement and
enthusiasm by the contest. "Wonder who she is?"

He plunged down the companionway to the cabin and emerged a moment
later with Code's powerful glasses.

But Code did not need any glasses to tell him who she was. His eye had
picked out her points before this, and the only thing that interested
him was the fact that her wireless was down.

It was the mysterious schooner.

He had never seen her equal for traveling, and he knew that she must
be making a good fourteen knots, for the cutter was capable of
twelve.

She had reached her closest point of contact with Code's vessel and
had begun to bear away when Pete leveled his glasses. It was on
Schofield's tongue to reveal the identity of the pursued when
Ellinwood yelled:

"Good Heavens! Skipper! She has _Charming Lass_ printed in new gold
letters under her counter!"

"What?"

"As I live, Code. _Charming Lass_, as plain as day! What's happening
here to-day? What is this?" Code snatched the glasses from Pete's hand
and then leveled them, trembling, at the flying schooner.

For a time the foam and whirl of her wake obscured matters, but all
at once, as she plunged down into a great hollow between waves, her
stern came clear and pointed to heaven. There, in bright letters that
glinted in the sun and were easily visible at a much greater distance,
was printed the name:

CHARMING LASS
OF
FREEKIRK HEAD

"No wonder she's goin'!" yelled Pete, almost beside himself with
excitement. "No wonder she's goin'! But let her go! More power to her!
Yah!"

Code st