“Go ahead!” said Eleanor.
Instantly Dolly, with a quick look at her sails, which were hanging limp again, since she had altered the course a trifle, became all attention.
“One–two–three–go!” called Miss Turner, clapping her hands at the word “go.”
And instantly Dolly shifted her helm once more, so that the wind filled the sails, and the Eleanor shot for the opening in the bar. Quick as she had been, however, she was no quicker than Gladys, and the Defiance and the Eleanor passed through the bar and out into the open sea together. Here there was more motion, since the short, choppy waves outside the bar were never wholly still, no matter how calm the sea might seem to be. But Bessie, who had been rather nervous as to the effect of this motion, which she had been warned to dread, found it by no means unpleasant.
For a few moments Dolly’s orders flew sharply. Although the wind was very light, there was enough of it to give fair speed, and the sails had to be trimmed to get the utmost possible out of it while it lasted. Both boats tacked to starboard, sailing along a slanting line that seemed likely to carry them far to one side of the lighthouse that was their destination, and Bessie wondered at this.
“We’re not sailing straight for the lighthouse,” she said. “Isn’t that supposed to be where we turn? Don’t we have to sail around it?”
“Yes, but we can’t go straight there, because the wind isn’t right,” explained Dolly. “We’ll keep on this way for a spell; then we’ll come about and tack to port, and then to starboard again. In that way we can beat the wind, you see, and make it work for us, even if it doesn’t want to.”
Half way to the lighthouse there was less than a hundred feet between the boats. The Defiance seemed to be a little ahead, but the advantage, if she really had one at all, was not enough to have any real effect on the race.
“Going out isn’t going to give either of us much chance to gain, I guess,” said Dolly. “The real race will be when we’re going back, with what wind there is behind us.”
But soon it seemed that Dolly had made a rash prediction, for when she came about and started to beat up to port, the Defiance held to her course.