Nancy hardly stopped long enough to wave back at them. The turn in the course came at the end of the Point, and she hardly thought about it, so intent was she on speed, until all at once Polly came steadily up behind her, passed Ted and Sue, Kate, and the others, and made the tack with hardly any pause.
“That’s Polly’s best trick in yachting,” Ted thought, with a big throb of admiration. “She sees it coming, and is ready to let go her main sheet on the instant, and come about. And then she goes after the cup a-flying.”
It was true. In that last joyous spurt ahead, all thought of Nancy left her. There was only the beautiful stretch of sky, and wind and waves calling to her. Her cap fell off in the bottom of the cock pit, and she lost her hair ribbon. The wind caught her long curls and blew them about as it pleased, as she leaned forward, keen eyed, intent on every point that needed watching. And finally, away down the bay, she caught the sound of cheers and wondered what the matter was.
“It must be Nancy catching up with me,” she thought, but one name on the wind caught her ear, one name shouted over and over and over.
“The Tidy Jane, the Tidy Jane, the Tidy Ja-a-ane!”
How they shouted it, and dwelt on it, and hung to it, until the echoes flung it back from the big bluffs above the shore, but all at once something happened. Polly did not realize it herself, until she caught sight of Nancy’s face, brave and sweet, but deadly white.
Not twenty feet away from the Tidy Jane, the prow of the knockabout came about, as Nancy tried her best to overtake her rival. Down on the shore they could hear Tom’s voice shouting,
“Come along, Nance, come along in.”
To Nancy it was the final touch of the spur. She forgot Polly, forgot everything, except the fame of the Pirate, and the Junior Cup. She measured the end of the course with a steady, practiced eye, and her distance from the Tidy Jane. Nobody but Polly saw how she did it, and even she did not understand the craft of it. It had been a fragment of the Captain’s teaching long ago.
“When the wind and the tide’s agin your making a certain point, jam her down hard into the teeth of it, and give your tiller two sharp turns, hard to port then hard to starboard, and she’ll come up handsomely.”