new you'd get home and be
all right with Tom O'Donnell. So be down after breakfast--the skipper
will be looking for you both. But say, let me tell you. What
d'y'think? Coming into the harbor a while ago who d'y' s'pose was
out in the stream with a lighter alongside his vessel? Who but Sam
Hollis and the Withrow. Yes, and the gang putting ballast back in
her."

"No?"

"Yes. And some one of them sees us going by in the dark. And we did go
by, too! 'Lord!' says somebody--'twas Withrow himself--'but if that
don't look like the ghost of Maurice Blake's vessel!' 'Yes,' hollers
back the skipper--and they must've been some surprised to hear
him--'and the ghost'll be with you to-morrow in the race. Yes,' the
skipper says, 'and we're all ready for it. Four weeks since we've been
on the ways and maybe a scrubbing wouldn't hurt her, but if it keeps
a-blowin' who'll mind that? Not the Johnnie.' Oh, Tommie, if you'd
seen her comin' across the Bay of Fundy yesterday afternoon and last
night. Did she come?--did she come? Lord--O Lord----"

"And so that's Withrow--got his vessel tuned up like a fiddle and
now he's putting extra ballast in her. Blast him and Hollis for
schemers!" said Clancy. "And that's how it comes they're so ready
to bet--stiffenin' her so stiff for to-morrow that they know
something'll happen to the others first. But the Johnnie's a bit
stiff, too--and there's no ballast out of her. And, as the skipper
says, maybe we ain't been on the ways for a few weeks now, but Lord,
the Johnnie ought to be able to drag a few little blades of sea-grass
on her hull in this breeze. And so we're in the race, heh? Dave, I
can't stop to give you the pledge now--

Oh, the Johnnie Duncan fast and able,
Good-by, dear, good-by, my Mabel."

And Clancy was the joyful man as he awoke the echoes in the gray of
that stormy morning.

XXX

THE MORNING OF THE RACE

I don't think that the people of Gloucester will ever forget the
morning of that race, which, they will still tell you, was the only
race ever sailed. Wind was what the fishermen wanted, and they got
it--wind, and sea with it. The admiral of the White Squadron, then at
anchor at Rockport Harbor, just around the Cape, stood on the bridge
of his flagship that morning and looked out to sea. Somebody told him
that the fishermen were going to race that day. He took another look.
"Race to-day? Pooh! they'll do well to stay hove-to to-day." Of
course, that ought to