"We haven't caught them yet, you know," said Dolly.
"But we're catching them," said Bessie, exultingly. "Even I can see that. Look! They're just crawling along."
"Still, even at the rate they're going, ten minutes more will bring them to the finish," said Margery, anxiously. "Do you think she can make it, Dolly?"
"I don't know," said Dolly. "I've done all I can, anyhow. There isn't a thing to do now but hold her steady and trust to this shift of the wind to last long enough to carry us home."
Now the Eleanor was catching the Defiance fast, and nearing her more and more rapidly. It was a strange and mysterious thing to Bessie to see that of two yachts so close together—there was less than a quarter of a mile between them now—one could have her sails filled with a good breeze while the other seemed to have none at all. But it was so. The Defiance was barely moving; she seemed as far from the finish now as she had been when Margery spoke.
"They're stuck—they're becalmed," said Margery, finally, when five minutes of steady gazing hadn't shown the slightest apparent advance by the Defiance. "Oh, Dolly, we're going to beat them!"
"I guess we are," said Dolly, with a sigh of satisfaction. "It was about the most hopeless looking race I ever saw twenty minutes ago, but you never can tell."
And now every minute seemed to make the issue more and more certain. Sometimes a little puff of wind would strike the Defiance, fill her sails, and push her a little nearer her goal, but the hopes that those puffs must have raised in Dolly's rival and her crew were false, for each died away before the Defiance really got moving again.
And at last, passing within a hundred yards, so that they could see poor Gladys, her eyes filled with tears, the Eleanor slipped by the Defiance and took the lead. And then, by some strange irony of fate, the wind came to the Defiance—but it came too late. For the Eleanor, slipping through the water as if some invisible force had been dragging her, passed through the opening and into the still waters of the cove fully two hundred feet in the lead.
"That certainly was your victory, Dolly," said Eleanor. "If you hadn't found that wind, we'd still be floundering around somewhere near the lighthouse."