THE WINNER OF THE JUNIOR CUP

They took the Admiral’s advice the next day, and rested. Dorothy and Bess were anxious to look over the shells and specimens the girls had found during the summer, and helped arrange them for the home going the end of the week. The two shell curtains that Kate and Isabel had made were completed, and ready to be shipped by express, with some of the heavier shells.

Crullers had surprised everybody by finding out a new way to use the small shells in decoration. She had had quite a taste for drawing and applied design at school, and now had glued the shells to heavy cardboard, after first tracing out a decorative design. The effect was surprisingly unique and attractive. Ted had looked at the result with a speculative eye, but she was generous with her praise, and frank spoken.

“I never thought old Crullers had such a knack in her fingertips,” she said.

“Didn’t you?” Polly asked, smiling. “I always knew that she loved beautiful things, and when you do you’ll generally make something beautiful yourself to add to it, don’t you know?”

“I know what you mean,” Ted agreed, pushing back her red curls restlessly. “Fraulein called it the personal quality in art, the gift of expression. What was that old painter’s name who used such a wonderful red in his pictures, and when he died they found it was his heart’s blood he had been painting with. I guess that’s personal expression, isn’t it? I haven’t any, Miss Calvert says. I haven’t any artistic sense.”

“We all have it,” Polly insisted. “You cannot help but have it, because it’s the gift of yourself. What do you like to do more than anything else in the world?”

Ted meditated, then her face brightened.

“Travel,” she said. “Walk, ride, swim, run, sail, do anything as long as I’m going some place.”

Polly laughed heartily.

“That’s what the Captain says about you, that you won’t stay put,” she said.

The Captain had come down to the island in the afternoon and gone over the racing boats carefully with Tom and the Admiral. Finally they had pronounced everything “fit,” as the Captain said, and started to go when Polly asked for an opinion as to which one stood the best chance of winning the race.

“With a fair wind and tide, anyone of them is liable to win,” the Captain declared flatly. “They’re the knowingest lot of boats on the bay, anyhow. Start them properly, and lash their tillers, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t start and race by themselves.”

There were light appetites at breakfast the next morning.

“Mah sakes alive,” protested Aunty, “how you spec you going to win any race and old silver cup an’ saucer, lessen you get good inside linings so your ribs don’t stick together, honeys?”

But it was no use. Chocolate and toast was the repast, and then they dressed for the race. The start was to be at ten from the Orienta. Bess and Dorothy crossed the bay on the Tidy Jane with Polly, then took their own yacht. The girls had precious little to say to each other. Just before the moment of starting, Commodore Vaughan made them a little speech from the deck of the committee launch, commending them highly for their ardor in outdoor sport, and the spirit of good fellowship that existed among them all.

“There is a double emulation in all this,” he remarked. “This is a race between two clubs, and a race between individuals as well. You may beat the Juniors, or the Juniors may beat the Polly Page Club, but besides that you will win or lose from each other, even as members of the same club. I wish you a fair wind and all success.” He glanced at his watch, hesitated, and just on the touch of the hands at ten, gave the signal for the start.

Sue was the first to gain. For some reason Polly and Nancy blundered in the get-away. It looked as if each had tried to give the other one the advantage in the start, but as they all slipped down the bay they looked like a flock of white winged sea birds, flying low.

South they sailed towards Lost Island and Aunty Welcome came out on the porch and waved a tablecloth at them excitedly, so they would feel encouraged. The committee boat puffed behind, and picked up two of the Juniors at the end of the first mile, when they became confused over tacking around the small islands. Nancy was ahead now with the Pirate, and Kate’s Witch Cat second, with the Nixie pushing her way steadily towards them. When they passed Smugglers’ Island, the Doctor was waiting for them in his motor boat, and the Natica joined the committee yacht as a sort of marine rear guard.

To Polly the first five miles seemed like a dream. She could feel the Tidy Jane spring to the touch of the waves, and her heart seemed to leap with it. When they neared the Point, she saw the white-clad crew come down from the station, and caught the hearty cheer they sent ringing over the water to the girl sailors.

Nancy hardly stopped long enough to wave back at them. The turn in the course came at the end of the Point, and she hardly thought about it, so intent was she on speed, until all at once Polly came steadily up behind her, passed Ted and Sue, Kate, and the others, and made the tack with hardly any pause.

“That’s Polly’s best trick in yachting,” Ted thought, with a big throb of admiration. “She sees it coming, and is ready to let go her main sheet on the instant, and come about. And then she goes after the cup a-flying.”

It was true. In that last joyous spurt ahead, all thought of Nancy left her. There was only the beautiful stretch of sky, and wind and waves calling to her. Her cap fell off in the bottom of the cock pit, and she lost her hair ribbon. The wind caught her long curls and blew them about as it pleased, as she leaned forward, keen eyed, intent on every point that needed watching. And finally, away down the bay, she caught the sound of cheers and wondered what the matter was.

“It must be Nancy catching up with me,” she thought, but one name on the wind caught her ear, one name shouted over and over and over.

“The Tidy Jane, the Tidy Jane, the Tidy Ja-a-ane!”

How they shouted it, and dwelt on it, and hung to it, until the echoes flung it back from the big bluffs above the shore, but all at once something happened. Polly did not realize it herself, until she caught sight of Nancy’s face, brave and sweet, but deadly white.

Not twenty feet away from the Tidy Jane, the prow of the knockabout came about, as Nancy tried her best to overtake her rival. Down on the shore they could hear Tom’s voice shouting,

“Come along, Nance, come along in.”

To Nancy it was the final touch of the spur. She forgot Polly, forgot everything, except the fame of the Pirate, and the Junior Cup. She measured the end of the course with a steady, practiced eye, and her distance from the Tidy Jane. Nobody but Polly saw how she did it, and even she did not understand the craft of it. It had been a fragment of the Captain’s teaching long ago.

“When the wind and the tide’s agin your making a certain point, jam her down hard into the teeth of it, and give your tiller two sharp turns, hard to port then hard to starboard, and she’ll come up handsomely.”

Straight for the pier the Pirate turned, and then came about, and made for the end of the course.

The other yachts were strung out behind, Dorothy beating up closely, Connie Evans and Sue last of all, and the rest dotting the bay between the Pirate and the Tidy Jane.

Polly saw the way Nancy had caught up to her, and for the minute she held her breath. All at once she knew that she was going to lose the race, and the strangest part of it was, she could see Nancy win, and feel a great wave of joy over it. As the Pirate’s boom passed her, she slackened her own main sheet, turned her head and smiled at Nancy, and the first cheer that went up for the winner of the Junior Cup, was when Polly stood up, and waved her hand with a clear,

“Hurrah! Hurrah!”

Tom promptly stood on his head, as the shouts rang out over the bay, and shore. The Admiral himself helped Nancy out as if she had been a queen.

“You did handsomely, little girl, handsomely,” he said.

Polly was hardly a minute behind her, and as she too reached the Orienta pier, and tossed her rope up to the willing hands, she threw her arms around the victor.

“I am so glad you’ve won, Nancy,” she said. “You don’t know how glad.”

“So am I,” answered Nancy, softly, her glance seeking one face out of all the crowd. “Where’s father?”

“Here I be, mate!” called the old skipper, joyously, and right there before the crowd, he swung Nancy up in his arms, and kissed her proudly.

Just then the Commodore himself appeared, and he bore the fateful cup. Blushing, and with downcast lashes, Nancy listened to the presentation speech. She couldn’t quite catch it all, but there was one expression that lingered. He called her a daughter of the old Pine Tree State, who had borne off a trophy that should remind her not only of a deserved victory but also of the friendship and fellowship of the sister club, the Orienta Juniors.

“Neatly put,” said the old Admiral, as they journeyed back home, and for the first time he was a guest on the Tidy Jane. “Nancy, you’re a conquering heroine, my dear, like your namesake, Nancy Lee, and the Captain, and Polly and I are proud of you.”

When they reached Lost Island, the Doctor detained Polly a moment at the landing, while the others went on to the house. “I have a trophy for the second in the race, one that is given jointly by Father Neptune and myself,” he said, as he reached his hand into his pocket mysteriously, then held it out to Polly. On the open palm lay one of the pearls from Ceylon.

“Just in memory of many happy days and many jars of marmalade,” he smiled, as Polly took it, speechless and radiant. “And I want to tell you a secret. You accused me, Miss Polly, of using marmalade as bait. But I never did anything of the kind. Don’t laugh, now. What I did do was to eat it and imbibe courage and peace and a settled happiness from the atmosphere of Lost Island, so that I have triumphed. I am going back to Washington this week myself. I have found the polypi!”

Two days remained to the girls, but they were so taken up in packing, and preparing Aunty Welcome for the trip back South, that they passed swiftly. Saturday morning the carry-all bore them over to Eastport, but it had to make two trips, and each time it stopped at Fair Havens, where Mrs. Carey and Nancy said goodbye to the girls, and the Captain waved them a salute.

“It has been the best summer I ever had,” Nancy cried, as she shook hands with them all, and kissed the girls and Aunty too. “You’ve been so good to me, and given me such a happy time, that I just can’t thank you.”

“We’ve got the Junior Cup up on the parlor mantel,” added Tom proudly, “right under mother’s framed marriage certificate, and father’s model of his first schooner. And Nancy sticks a bouquet of fresh posies in it every morning, girls.”

Nancy blushed radiantly, and kissed Polly a second time.

“Sometimes I wonder if you let me win,” she whispered. “You held up a little I thought, there at the very last.”

“Did I?” laughed Polly. “It was because I was so glad and surprised when I saw the old Pirate nosing her way past me, that was all. Goodbye, dear. Don’t forget us.”

“Fair wind and tide to you wherever you sail, mates,” the Captain called; and there were tears in the girls’ eyes as they watched the last view of the little shore cottage, and the two figures there at the garden gate, the Captain with the wind blowing back his curly hair, as sturdy, as tall, and as storm-proof as one of the pines up on Bald Mountain.

“Girls, it’s been the happiest summer I’ve ever had,” cried Ruth as she put her head on Polly’s shoulder, and wept.

But Polly laughed in her old cheery way.

“Cheer up,” she said. “It won’t be the last. Turn around, like a good fellow, and wave a salute back at the old flag pole, and to Nancy, bless her.”

So they all stood up in the old carry-all at that last turn in the old shore road, and solemnly, hopefully, lovingly saluted the last glimpse of Lost Island, and the winner of the Junior Cup.