“Keep her to it, then,” said the man at the helm. “Hold on to that sheet, no matter how much water she ships.”
“If I don’t let it out a little, she’ll sink!”
“Let her sink, then,” growled the chief officer. “I’d rather upset than be caught.”
The people on the shore and on the judges’ boat appreciated the situation fully as well as the racers. They had seen, for some time, how slowly the boats responded to their rudders and how deeply they were sunk in the water.
All the manœuvring for the past ten minutes had been off the Chadwick dock, and the Atlantic House people, in order to get a better view of the finish, were racing along the bank on foot and in carriages, cheering their champions as they came.
The Rover was pointed to cross an imaginary line between the judges’ steam-launch and Chadwick’s dock. Behind her, not three boat-lengths in the rear, so close that her wash impeded their headway, came the revenue officers, their white caps gone, their hair flying in the wind, and every muscle strained.
Both crews were hanging far over the sides of the boats, while each wave washed the water into the already half-filled cockpits.
“Look out!” shouted the younger Prescott, “here comes another flaw!”
“Don’t let that sail out!” shouted back his brother, and as the full force of the flaw struck her, the boat’s rail buried itself in the water and her sail swept along the surface of the river.
For an instant it looked as if the boat was swamped, but as the force of the flaw passed over her, she slowly righted again, and with her sail dripping and heavy, and rolling like a log, she plunged forward on her way to the goal.