“Well, she can do that if she wants to,” said Dolly. “Just the same, I think she’s going too far.”
“It looks to me as if she were pretty sure of what she’s doing, though, Dolly,” said Margery, anxiously. “Don’t you think you tacked a little too soon?”
“If I thought that I wouldn’t have done it, Margery,” said Dolly. “Don’t bother me with silly questions now; I’ve got to figure on tacking again so as to make that turn with the least possible waste of time.”
“Don’t talk to the ‘man’ at the wheel,” advised Eleanor, with a laugh. “She’s irritable.”
A good many of the nautical terms used so freely by the others might have been so much Greek for all Bessie could understand of them, but the race itself had awakened her interest and now held it as scarcely anything she had ever done had been able to do.
She kept her eyes fixed on the other boat, and at last she gave a cry.
“Look! They’re going to turn now.”
“Score one for Gladys, Margery,” said Dolly, quietly. “She’s certainly stolen a march on me. Do you see that? She’s going to make her turn on the next tack, and I believe she’ll gain nearly five minutes on us. That was clever, and it was good work.”
“Never mind, Dolly,” said Margery. “You’ve still got a chance to catch her going home before the wind. I know how fast the Eleanor is at that sort of work. If the Defiance is any better, she ought to be racing for some real cups.”
“Oh, don’t try to cheer me up! I made an awful mess of that, Margery, and I know it. Gladys had more nerve than I, that’s all. She deserves the lead she’s got. It isn’t a question of the boats, at all. The Defiance is being sailed better than the Eleanor.”