Under Sail

by Lincoln Colcord

I hailed the steamer again. "We need no assistance, thank you. Please report us all well, and inform the steamship company"

The Energie went on about her business, and soon passed out of sight ahead. Late in the afternoon a fresh breeze sprang up unexpectedly from a little to the eastward of north; a breeze that was destined to carry us all the way to harbour. We braced the yards around to starboard, set every rag of sail, and laid a course for Sandy Hook with the wind a couple of points free on the starboard quarter.

Throughout the next day we were running along the southern shore of Long Island, in smooth water, the breeze still fresh and steady, every stitch of canvas drawing, and the ship at her best point for sailing, logging some fifteen knots an hour. The days of the extreme clipper ship had long since gone by, at the time I'm telling of; but many a moderate clipper of the later years, with fuller cargo carrying capacity, but retaining many of the fine lines of the greyhound of the seas, and embodying all the best of their experience, could reel off a day's run that might astonish the nautical historian. I'll never forget that wonderful reach in the Pactolus under the lee of the Long Island shore. She was a trim and lofty vessel, lean and graceful on the water; a cloud of canvas aloft, she heeled at a constant angle, as if moving through a picture, while the long curl of a wave rolled out steadily from her lee quarter, as she swept like a bird over the smooth sea.

At three in the afternoon, a steamer was reported dead ahead, some ten or a dozen miles away. Within half an hour, it was apparent that we were crawling up on her; and in an hour's time, we could estimate that we had overhauled her by something like five miles. I had a strong suspicion that she was our old friend, the Energie, but said nothing about it just then. Every one aboard was excited over the race, the Santiago's company no less so than my own. In fact, the young British officers could hardly contain themselves, wouldn't for anything have seen us fail to overtake her, kept running to me and suggesting this and that, or asking if the wind would hold.

Another hour of this terrific sailing brought us near enough to read her name. And she was the Energie, sure enough. I thought that handsome young first officer of the Santiago was going to fling his arms around me, when I took my eye from the long glass and told them the news.

"Hurrah for the Pactolus!" he shouted, running forward and waving both his hands "By Gad, they won't have the chance to report us this time! We'll do our own reporting"

"She must be foul—although these freighters don't pretend to any speed" observed Captain Potter, a little concerned, I thought, for the reputation of steam.

"She's making about ten knots" said I "And we are logging fifteen steady, and sixteen by spurts, when the breeze puffs a little"

"You don't tell me!" he exclaimed, glancing over the side. Then he looked up at the clumsy old steamer, ploughing along a quarter of a mile to leeward. "By Jove, Captain, we're passing her as if she were standing still!"

Indeed, we were; the spectacle, from a romantic point of view, was an inspiring one, although it must have been a jealous sight for the German captain. But now we were drawing in toward the approaches to New York harbour; our race had been with daylight as well as with steam. For I'd promised myself that, by hook or crook, we would arrive that night. I scanned the horizon anxiously for a pilot boat—in those days the New York pilot boats were small but exceptionally sea-worthy two-masted schooners; and at seven o'clock in the evening, with half an hour of daylight still remaining, caught sight of one standing toward us on the weather bow. We came together rapidly. By this time we had left the Energie a couple of miles astern.