It was dawn of a heavy, dark day. There was a mighty sea rolling and a forty-mile wind off the Cape shore that promised a three-day ruction. The Charming Lass at her anchor reared and plunged like a nervous horse.

Weighty with fish, she struggled heroically up the great walls of water, only to plump her sharp bows into the hollow with a force that half buried her. Between times she wriggled and capered like a dancing elephant and jerked at her cable until it seemed as though she would take her windlass out.

In the midst of all this Code Schofield struggled aft and began hauling forth the mains’l that at the first edge of the Bank had been relegated in favor of the triangular riding sail.

Pete Ellinwood saw him, and in a great voice bawled down the hatchway to the fo’c’s’le.

“Salt’s wet, boys; the skipper’s haulin’ out the mains’l!” At which there broke forth the most extravagant sounds of jubilation and all hands tumbled up to help bend it on.

The crew of the Lass did not know it, but Bijonah Tanner and the Rosan had actually been gone twelve hours, having stolen away from the fleet before dressing down the night before when darkness had fallen. And so successfully had Jed Martin stolen Bijonah’s thunder that he had left but three hours later––when the fish had been dressed.

Schofield was honest with himself, and he waited until morning to see if the great stacks of fish would not settle enough to allow of another day’s work to be crowded in. But when he saw that space above the fish was very small he waited no longer.

Four men heaved on the windlass brakes, and the others got sail on her as fast as they could haul halyards. She started under jib, jumbo, fore and mains’l, with the wind a little on her port quarter and every fiber of her yearning to go.

When the sails were apparently flat as boards Schofield made Ellinwood rig pulleys leading to the middle of the halyards so that the men could sway on them. She was fit as a racing yacht; her load was perfectly distributed and she trimmed to a hairbreadth.

An hour later they snored down upon the Night Hawk, the last vessel at the edge of the fleet.

“Better hurry!” megaphoned Stetson, tickled with himself. “Burns cleared six hours ago for 264 Freekirk Head with a thousand quintal. He’s got Boughton sewed up to buy ’em, too.”

“Bring her to!” snarled Code, and the Lass, groaning and complaining at the brutality, whirled up into the wind enough to take her sticks out. “Burns’s going home, you say? And with fish? Where’d he get ’em?”

“From me. I sold him my whole load at a better price than I would have got if I had waited to fill the Hawk’s belly and then gone home. Gave me cash and threw in a lot of bait, so I’ll stay right out here and get another load. Petty good for a Jonah––what? Ha, ha!” The man roared exasperatingly.

“Damnation!” rapped out Schofield. “Lively now! Tops’ls on her, and two of you stay aloft to shift tacks if we should need to come about.”

“Hey, you!” bawled Stetson as the Lass began to heel to the great sweep of the wind. “There’s two ahead of him, Bijonah Tanner an’ Jed Martin! Better hurry if you’re going to catch the market!”

“Hurry, is it?” growled Code to himself. “I’ll hurry so some people won’t know who it is.”

It was the first time that Code had had occasion to drive the Lass, for the Mignon fishermen heretofore had confined their labor to the shoals near home or, at farthest, on the Nova Scotia coast. The present occasion was different.

Between where he lay and the friendly sight of Swallowtail Light was more than eight hundred and fifty miles of wallowing, tumbling ocean. Treacherous shoals underran it, biting rocks pierced up in saw-toothed reefs, the bitterest gales of all the seas swept in leaden wastes.

It was a cutthroat business, this mighty pull for the market; but upon it not only depended the practical consideration of the highest market prices, but the honor and glory of owning the fastest schooner out of Freekirk Head. The task of the Charming Lass was delightful in its simplicity, but fearful in its arduousness.

Jimmie Thomas came aft and stood by the wheel on the port side. It took two men to handle her now, for the vast, dead weight in her hold flung her forward and sidewise, despite the muscular clutch on the wheel, and when she rolled down she came up sluggishly.

“Isn’t she a dog, though, Code?” exclaimed Jimmie in admiration. “Look at that now! Rose to it like a duck. See her now jest a-playin’ with them waves! Jest a-playin’! Oh, she’s a dog, skipper––a dog, I tell ye! Drive her! She loves it!”

“I’ll drive her, Jimmie; don’t you worry. Before I get through some fellers I know’ll wish they’d never heard of driving.” He motioned Pete Ellinwood aft with a free hand.

“Tell the boys,” said Code, “that what sleepin’ they do between here and home will be on their feet, for I want all hands ready to jump to orders. They can mug-up day and night, but let nobody get his boots off.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” replied Pete involuntarily. This bright-eyed, firm-mouthed skipper was a different being from the cheerful, careless boy he had been familiar with for years. There was the ring of confidence and command in his voice that inspired respect. “Look out there! Jump for it!”

The head of the Lass went down with a sickening swoop and the sound of thunder. A great, gray-and-white wall boiled and raced over her bows. Ellinwood leaped for the weather-rigging and the other two clutched the wheel as they stood waist-deep in the surge that roared over the taffrail and to leeward.

“Pass the life-lines, Pete,” ordered Code, and all hands passed stout ropes from rigging to house to rail, forward and astern, so that there might be something to leap for when the Lass was boarded by a Niagara.

Ellinwood got out two stout lines and made one fast around Code’s waist, leading it to the starboard bitt. The other fastened Jimmie to the port bitt, so that if they were washed overboard they might be hauled back to safety and life again.

“Looks like she was blowin’ up a little!” remarked Pete later in the day as the Lass rolled down to her sheerpoles in a sudden rain squall. “Better take in them tops’ls, hadn’t ye, skipper?”

“Take in nothing!” snapped Code across the cabin table. “Any canvas that comes off this vessel between here and Freekirk Head blows off, unless we have passed all those schooners ahead of us. Haven’t raised any of ’em, have you?”

“Not yet, skipper; but we ought to by night,” said Ellinwood as though he felt he was personally to blame. “But let me tell you somethin’, skipper. It’s all right to carry sail, but if you get your sticks ripped out you won’t be able to get anywhere at all.”

“If my sticks go, let ’em go, I’ll take my medicine; but I’ll tell you this much, Pete, that nobody is going to beat me home while I’ve got a stick to carry canvas, unless they have a better packet than the Charming Lass––which I know well they haven’t.”

“That’s the spirit, skipper!” yelled Ellinwood, secretly pleased.

There is no telling exactly what speed certain fishing schooners have made on their great drives from the Banks. Some men go so far as to claim that the old China tea clippers have lost their laurels both for daily runs and for passages up to four thousand miles.

One ambitious man hazards his opinion (and he is one who ought to know) that a fishing schooner has done her eighteen knots or upward for numerous individual hours, for fishermen, even on record passages, fail to haul the log sometimes for half a day at a time.

Schofield, however, took occasion to have the log hauled for one especially squally mile, and the figures showed that the Lass had covered fifteen knots in the hour––seventeen and a half land miles.

She was booming along now, seeming to leap from one great crest to the next like a giant projectile driven by some irresistible force. She was canted at such an angle that her lee rail was invisible under the boiling white, and her deck planks seemed a part of the sea.

The course was almost exactly southwest, and that first day the Lass roared down the Atlantic, passing the wide mouth of Cabot Strait that leads between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They passed one of the Quebec and Montreal liners, and took pleasure shooting the schooner under her flaring bows.

The next morning at seven, twenty-four hours out, found them three hundred and fifty miles on their course, but what was better than all, showed three sails ahead. Then did the crew of the Charming Lass rejoice, climbing into the spray-lashed rigging, 269 and yelling wildly against the tumult of the waters.

Nor did the wind subside. It had gone to forty-five miles an hour over night, and in landlocked harbors the skippers of big steel passenger vessels shook their heads and refused to venture out into the gale.

As well as could be judged, the Nettie B., Rosan, and Herring Bone were nearly on even terms twenty miles ahead, all with every stitch set and flying like leaves before a wind.

“Bend on balloon jib!” snapped Schofield when he had considered the task before him. Pete ran joyfully to execute the order, but some of the men hesitated.

“Up with her!” roared Pete, and up she went, a great concave hollow of white like the half of a pear. The Lass’s head went down, and now, instead of attempting to go over the waves, she went through them without argument.

Tons of divided water crashed down upon her decks and roared off over the rails, the men at the wheel were never less than knee-deep. The sheets strained, the timbers creaked, and the sails roared, and back of all were the wind and the North Atlantic in hot pursuit.

By noon it could be seen that the three vessels ahead were commencing to come back, but with terrible slowness. Code, lashed in the weather-rigging, 270 studied them for more than an hour through his glasses. Then he leaped to the deck.

“Hell’s bells! No wonder we can’t catch ’em! Burns has got stays’l set, and I think Tanner has, too. Couldn’t see Martin. Set stays’l, all hands!”

Under the driving of Ellinwood the staysail was set, and from then on the Charming Lass sailed on her side.

At every roll her sheerpoles were buried, and it seemed an open question whether she would ever come up or not. It was at this time that Tip O’Neill, a daring young buck of Freekirk Head, performed the highly dangerous feat of walking from her main to her forerigging along the weather run, which fact shows there was foothold on her uppermost side for a man crazy enough to desire it.

That Ellinwood and the daring Jimmie Thomas were thoroughly in accord with Schofield’s preposterous sail-carrying was a foregone conclusion. But others of the crew were not of the same mind. An hour more here or there seemed a small matter to them as compared to the chance of drowning and leaving a family unprotected and unprovided for.

Schofield sensed this feeling immediately it had manifested itself, and he called his lieutenants to him. He wished to provide against interference.

“House the halyards aloft!” he commanded, and at this even those two daring souls stood aghast, 271 for it meant that whatever the emergency no sail could be taken off the Charming Lass. With the end of the halyards aloft no man could reach them in time to avert a catastrophe.

“You’re sure drivin’ her, skipper!” roared Pete in amazed admiration. “Up them halyards go. Oh, Lord, but she’s a dog, an’ she’ll stand it.”

So up the halyards went, and with them went a warning that whoever jumped to loosen them would get a gaff-hook in his breeches and be hauled down ignominiously.

This time when the log was hauled for the hour from three to four in the afternoon it showed a total of seventeen knots, or a fraction under twenty miles for the hour. And best of all, the three flying schooners had come back five miles. By ten o’clock that night Code judged they had come back five more, and knew that the next day would bring the test.

They were not in over-deep water here, for the coast of Nova Scotia is extended for miles out under the sea in excellent fishing shoals and banks.

At Artimon Bank they switched their course to westward so as to pass inside of Sable Island and round Cape Sable in the shoalest water possible. Down across Western they roared, and almost to Le Have before midnight came.

Now it is one thing to sail like the Flying Dutchman 272 with the sun up and one’s eyes to use, but it is another to career through the night without taking in a stitch of canvas, trusting to luck and the Providence that watches over fishermen that the compass is good and that no blundering coasters will get in the way.

When dawn broke wild and dirty, the Charming Lass was reeling through the water less than a quarter of a mile astern of the Rosan and the Herring Bone. Through the murk Code could see the Nettie B. three miles ahead.

An hour and she had drawn abreast of her two rivals; another hour and she had left them astern. Day had fully broken now, and Code, grinning over his shoulder at the defeated schooners, gave a cry of surprise. For no longer were there two only. Another, plunging through the mist, had come into view; far back she was, but carrying a spread of canvas that gave indications enough of her speed.

But Code spent little time looking back. He gripped the wheel, set his teeth, and urged the Lass forward after the Nettie with every faculty of his power. After that terrible night the crew had lost their fear and worked with enthusiasm.

Some hands were always at the pumps, when they could be worked, for besides the brine from the fish gathering below, Code feared the vessel had spewed some oakum and was taking a little water forward. 273 Now, too, the horrible stench of riled bilge-water floated over all––compared to which an aged egg is a bouquet of roses.

At eight o’clock that morning they rounded Cape Sable at the tip of Nova Scotia, and laid a course a trifle west of north for the final beat home. There was a hundred miles to go, and Burns still held his three-mile lead.

By herself and loaded only with ballast, the Nettie was a better sailor in a beating game, for she was older and heavier than the Charming Lass. But now she had but a thousand quintal of fish compared to the sixteen hundred of her rival. This difference gave the Lass much needed stability without which she could never have hoped to win from the Burns schooner.

The two were, therefore, about equally matched, and it was evident that the contest would resolve itself into one of sail-carrying, seamanship, and nerve.

“That other feller’s comin’ up fast!” said Pete Ellinwood, and Code looked back to see the strange schooner looming larger and larger in his wake. He knew that no vessel in the Grande Mignon fleet could ever have caught the Lass the way he had been driving her, and yet she was not near enough for him to get a good view of her.

“If she’s a fisherman,” said Code, “I’ll pull the Lass out of water before she beats us in.”

It was killing work, the last beat home.

“Hard a-lee!” would come the command, and some men would go down into the smother of the lee rail and haul in or slack away sheets, while others at the mastheads would shift top- and staysail tacks.

Her head would swing, there would be a minute of thrashing and roaring of gear, and the gale would leap into her sails and bend her down on her side again. Then away she would go.

The station of those on deck was a good two-handed grip on the ringbolts under the weather-rail, where, so great was the slope of the deck, they clung desperately for fear of sliding down and into the swirling torrent.

Hour after hour the Nettie and the Lass fought it out, and hour after hour the gale increased. Hurricane warnings had been issued all along the coast, and not a vessel ventured out, but these stanch fishing vessels cared not a whit.

It was evident, however, that something must give. Human ingenuity had not constructed a vessel that could stand such driving. Even Pete Ellinwood began to lose his heartiness as the Lass went down and stayed down longer with each vicious squall.

“Shut up, Pete!” said Code, when the mate started to speak. “No sail comes off but what blows off, and while there’s all sail on the Nettie I 275 carry all sail if I heave her down for it. Watch him, he’ll break. Burns is yellow.”

The words were a prophecy. He had hardly uttered them when down came the great balloon jib of the Nettie B. At once the Lass began to gain in great leaps and bounds. They were fifty miles from home and two miles only separated them.

But fortune had not finished with Code. Half an hour later there came a great sound of tearing like the volley of small arms, and the Lass’s balloon jib ripped loose and soared to heaven like some gigantic wounded bird.

“Let it go, curse it,” growled Code. “Anyway, I didn’t take it down.”

The loss of her big jib was the only thing that saved the Lass from being hove down completely, for two hours later the gale had reached its height, and she was laboring like a drunken man under her staysail, topsail, and four lowers.

Twenty miles from home and the two schooners were abreast, tacking together on the long leeward reaches and the short windward ones, as they made across the Bay of Fundy.

“Look at her comin’ like a racehorse!” cried Ellinwood again, and this time Code recognized the vessel that was pursuing them. It was the mystery schooner, and in all his life at sea Code had never seen a ship fly as that one was flying then.

“Wonder what she’s up to now?” he asked vaguely. But he gave no further thought to the matter, for the Nettie B. claimed all his attention. Suddenly from between the masts of the Burns schooner a great flutter of white appeared as though some one had hung a huge sheet from her stay.

“Ha, I told you he was yellow!” shouted Code in glee. “Somebody’s cut away one edge of the stays’l. Now we’ve got ’em!”

And they had; for within a quarter of an hour they left the Nettie B. astern, finally defeated, Nat Burns’s last act of treachery gone for nothing.

But the mystery schooner would not be denied. Though the Lass made her seventeen knots, the wonderful Mallaby schooner did her twenty, with everything spread in that gale; and when the white lighthouse of Swallowtail Point was in plain sight through the murk, she swept by like a magnificent racer and beat the Charming Lass to moorings by twenty minutes.

Half an hour behind Schofield came the Burns boat, but in that time Code Schofield had already hurried ashore in his dory and clinched his sale price with Bill Boughton, who also assured him of the bonus offered for the first vessel in.

Like Code, the first thing Nat did, when his schooner had come up into the wind with jib and foresail on the run, was to take a dory ashore. In 277 it, besides himself, was a man. These two encountered Code just as he came out of Boughton’s store.

The second, who was tall and broad-shouldered, threw back his coat and displayed a government shield. Then he laid his hand on Code’s arm.

“Captain Schofield,” he said, “you are under arrest!”