Blake's shipped in her."

"Wow! She won't last out one good breeze on the Banks."

"That is just what Will said. And it's too bad, for I had a message
for him--a message that would make everything all right. I suppose you
can guess?"

"Guess? H-m-m--I don't know as I want to."

"Well, don't get mad about it, anyway. How would you feel if you saw
that horrid Minnie Arkell rush up and--Oh, you know what I mean.
However, I've been pleading with Alice since yesterday afternoon. For
two hours I was up in her room last evening, and poor Will walking the
veranda down below. I put Captain Blake's case as I thought a friend
of his would put it--as you would put it, say--perhaps better in some
ways--for I could not forget that he sailed the Johnnie Duncan
yesterday, and her winning meant so much to Will. Yes, and I'm not
forgetting Clancy and the rest of her crew--indeed, I'm not--I felt as
though I could kiss every one of them."

"Well, here's one of them."

"Don't get saucy because your mother is standing by. Go and find
Maurice Blake. Go ahead, won't you, Joe? Tell him that everything is
all right. She is proud."

"That's a nice sounding word for it--pride. Stuck on herself is what
I'd say."

"No, she isn't. You must allow a woman self-respect, you know."

"I guess so. And it must be her long suit, seeing she's always leading
from it."

"Oh, keep your fishermen's jokes for the mugging-up times on your
vessel. You go and get Maurice Blake--or find Mr. Clancy and have him
get him--if he hasn't gone on the Flamingo."

So I went out. On a cruise along the water front I found a whole
lot of people. I saw Wesley Marrs and Tommie Ohlsen--sorrowful and
neither saying much--looking after their vessels--Ohlsen seeing to a
new gaff. "I ought to've lost," said Ohlsen. "Look at that for a
rotten piece of wood." Sam Hollis was around, too, trying to explain
how it was he didn't win the race. But he couldn't explain to
anybody's satisfaction how his stays'l went nor why he hove-to when
that squall struck him--the same squall that shot the Johnnie
Duncan across the line. Tom O'Donnell was there, looking down on the
deck of the vessel in which he took so much pride. "Two holes in
her deck where her spars ought to be," he was saying when I came
along. I asked him if he had seen Maurice that morning, and it was
from him I learned for certain that Maurice had shipped on the
Flamingo. "I didn't see her leaving, boy, but Withrow him