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Updated: June 18, 2025
The rumble and bellow of the reply denoted Pete Ellinwood where he sat on a cracker-box, his six and a half feet of length sprawled halfway from one counter to the other. "There's Nat Burns's Hettie B. She'll carry sixteen, and so will Code Schofield's Laughing Lass mebbe more." "Huh! Yes, if he can git 'em," sneered a voice. "Git 'em! O' course he'll git 'em.
This time he himself detected a faint acrid odor quite different from the usual clean, salty smell. Again he dipped to make sure the whole tub was ruined. Then he looked at Ellinwood in despair. "It's acid, Pete," he said. "My father told me about this sort of thing being done sometimes in a close race among bankers for the last load of fish.
"Hey!" yelled some hungry member of the second half. "If you fellers eat any more you'll sink the ship. Get up out o' there an' give yer betters a chance!" Ellinwood rolled a forbidding eye toward the companionway. "Some clam-splitter on deck don't seem to know that in this here packet the youth an' beauty is allus considered fust," he rumbled ominously.
"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.
"God bless you," he said, taking her hand; "you are the best friend a man ever had." Pete Ellinwood, alone except for the cook, who sat peeling potatoes just outside the galley, paced the quarter-deck of the Charming Lass.
But, regardless of watching eyes and public opinion, she walked all the way to the jail with him and went inside; and the two were absolutely oblivious to their surroundings, so overjoyed were they to see each other and so intimate was their companionship. Along the edge of the crowd great Pete Ellinwood slouched, looking with dimmed eyes at mother and son.
He had never seen her equal for traveling, and he knew that she must be making a good fourteen knots, for the cutter was capable of twelve. She had reached her closest point of contact with Code's vessel and had begun to bear away when Pete leveled his glasses. It was on Schofield's tongue to reveal the identity of the pursued when Ellinwood yelled: "Good Heavens! Skipper!
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!"
"Wonder who she is?" asked Code, pointing her out to Ellinwood. "Don't know. Thought perhaps you'd seen her before, skipper. I've had my eye on her for an hour. Fisherman, likely; you'll see 'em in all directions every day afore we're through." The explanation was simple and obvious, and it satisfied Schofield. He promptly forgot her, as did every one else aboard the Lass. And reason enough.
They circled around a moment and again the Frenchman came, this time in one great leap. On the instant Ellinwood jumped in to meet him. There was a swift flying of arms, a pounding of the great fists, and Pete suddenly shot back from the mêlée and landed on his back in the dirt. One of the Frenchman's great swings had landed. But he was up in an instant and went after his opponent again.
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