As the weather was exceptionally warm, with a spicy salt breeze that seemed to bear the very germ of life in its midst, they had breakfast and luncheon on deck, dining below in the rosy little dining-room.
Thirty-six hours before they expected to catch the fishing fleet (it had been maneuvered so that Code should be restored to the Charming Lass after dark), Elsa opened the subject of Code’s trouble with Nat Burns. It was morning, and his recent 225 days of ease and mental refreshment had made him see things clearly that had before been obscured by the great strain under which he labored.
Code told her the whole thing from beginning to end, leaving out only that part of Nat’s cumulative scheme that had to do with Nellie Tanner. He showed Elsa how his enemy had left no stone unturned to bring him back home a pauper, a criminal, and one who could never again lift his head among his own people even though he escaped years in prison.
It was a brief and simple story, but he could see Elsa’s face change as emotions swept over it. Her remarks were few, but he suddenly became aware that she was harboring a great and lasting hatred against Nat. He did not flatter himself that it was on his own account, nor did he ask the reason for it, but the knowledge that such a hatred existed came to him as a decided surprise.
When he had finished his narrative she sat for some little time silent.
“And you think, then,” she asked at last, “that his motive for all this is revenge, because his father happened to meet death on the old May?”
“So far it has seemed to me that that can be the only possible reason. What else––but now wait a moment while I think.”
He went below into his room, secured the old 226 log of the M.C. Burns and the artificial horizon. Together they read the entries that Michael Burns had made.
“Now, Elsa,” said Code by way of explanation, “it was a dead-sure thing that Nat could never have beaten me in his schooner, and for two reasons: First, the May was a naturally faster boat than the old M.C., although Nat would never admit it. That is what really started our racing. Secondly, I am only telling the truth when I say that I can outsail Nat Burns in any wind from a zephyr to a typhoon.
“He is the kind of chap, in regard to sailing, who doesn’t seem to have the ‘feel’ of the thing. There is a certain instinct of forces and balance that is either natural or acquired. Nat’s is acquired. Why, I can remember just as well when I was eight years old my father used to let me take a short trick at the wheel in good weather, and I took to it naturally. Once on the Banks in a gale, when I was only eighteen, the men below said that my trick at the wheel was the only one when they got any sleep.