At Artimon Bank they switched their course to westward so as to pass inside of Sable Island and round Cape Sable in the shoalest water possible. Down across Western they roared, and almost to Le Have before midnight came.
Now it is one thing to sail like the Flying Dutchman 272 with the sun up and one’s eyes to use, but it is another to career through the night without taking in a stitch of canvas, trusting to luck and the Providence that watches over fishermen that the compass is good and that no blundering coasters will get in the way.
When dawn broke wild and dirty, the Charming Lass was reeling through the water less than a quarter of a mile astern of the Rosan and the Herring Bone. Through the murk Code could see the Nettie B. three miles ahead.
An hour and she had drawn abreast of her two rivals; another hour and she had left them astern. Day had fully broken now, and Code, grinning over his shoulder at the defeated schooners, gave a cry of surprise. For no longer were there two only. Another, plunging through the mist, had come into view; far back she was, but carrying a spread of canvas that gave indications enough of her speed.
But Code spent little time looking back. He gripped the wheel, set his teeth, and urged the Lass forward after the Nettie with every faculty of his power. After that terrible night the crew had lost their fear and worked with enthusiasm.
Some hands were always at the pumps, when they could be worked, for besides the brine from the fish gathering below, Code feared the vessel had spewed some oakum and was taking a little water forward. 273 Now, too, the horrible stench of riled bilge-water floated over all––compared to which an aged egg is a bouquet of roses.
At eight o’clock that morning they rounded Cape Sable at the tip of Nova Scotia, and laid a course a trifle west of north for the final beat home. There was a hundred miles to go, and Burns still held his three-mile lead.
By herself and loaded only with ballast, the Nettie was a better sailor in a beating game, for she was older and heavier than the Charming Lass. But now she had but a thousand quintal of fish compared to the sixteen hundred of her rival. This difference gave the Lass much needed stability without which she could never have hoped to win from the Burns schooner.
The two were, therefore, about equally matched, and it was evident that the contest would resolve itself into one of sail-carrying, seamanship, and nerve.
“That other feller’s comin’ up fast!” said Pete Ellinwood, and Code looked back to see the strange schooner looming larger and larger in his wake. He knew that no vessel in the Grande Mignon fleet could ever have caught the Lass the way he had been driving her, and yet she was not near enough for him to get a good view of her.