'Don't feel it so much, chickabiddy,' said her husband.
'I can't help it,' sobbed Connie. 'I hate your cousin. Oh Will, if you'd only let me entice those two men from him. Bagge was sure that Gribbs and Tidewell would have come.'
'It wouldn't have been fair,' said Ryder.
'I—I w—wanted to win,' replied Connie, 'and it'll be calm directly, and you know what that means.'
It was calm directly, and very soon every one knew what it meant. For it was a real fat streak of a calm that both vessels ran into. And as luck would have it, the Battle-Axe, which was by now almost hull down to the nor'ard, got into it first. The Star of the South carried the wind with her till she was within a mile of her rival. For a whole day they pointed their jibbooms alternately at Africa and South America, to the North Pole and the South. What little breeze there was after that day took them further still into an absolute area of no wind at all.
'This is the flattest calm I ever saw,' said Ryder. 'In such a calm as this he has no advantage.'
They boxed the compass for the best part of a week, and lay and cooked in a sun that made the deck seams bubble. At night the air was as hot as it had been by day. The men lay on deck, on the deck-house, on the fo'c'sle-head.
'This is a bally scorcher,' said the crews of both ships. 'Let's whistle!'
They whistled feebly, but the god of the winds had gone a journey, or was as fast asleep as Dagon. And day by day the two vessels drifted together. At last they had to lower the boats and tow them apart. Watchett was very sick with the whole meteorology of the universe, and being a whole-souled man incapable of more than one animosity at a time, he found no time to spare from damning a heaven of brass to damn Ryder. At the end of the week he even hailed the Star and offered to come on board and bring his wife.
'I don't want him,' said Connie Ryder. 'I won't have him.'