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. When the flaw struck the _Wave_, her crew let their sheet go free, saving themselves the inundation of water which had almost swamped the _Rover_, but losing the headway, which the _Rover_ had kept. Before the _Wave_ regained it, the pirate craft had increased her lead, though it was only for a moment. “We can’t make it,” shouted the younger Prescott, turning his face toward his brother so that the wind might not drown his voice. “They’re almost upon us, and we’re settling fast.” “So are they,” shouted his brother. “We can’t be far from the line now, and as soon as we cross that, it doesn’t matter what happens to us!” As he spoke another heavy gust of wind came sweeping toward them, turning the surface of the river dark blue as it passed over, and flattening out the waves. “Look at that!” groaned the pirate-king, “we’re gone now, surely!” But before the flaw reached them, and almost before the prophetic words were uttered, the cannon on the judges’ boat banged forth merrily, and the crowds on the Chadwick dock answered its signal with an unearthly yell of triumph. “We’re across, we’re across!” shouted the younger Prescott, jumping up to his knees in the water in the bottom of the boat and letting the wet sheet-rope run freely through his blistered fingers. But the movement was an unfortunate one. The flaw struck the boat with her heavy sail dragging in the water, and with young Prescott’s weight removed from the rail. She reeled under the gust as a tree bows in a storm, bent gracefully before it, and then turned over slowly on her side. [Illustration: As the two Prescotts scrambled up on the gunwale of their boat, the defeated crew saluted them with cheers.] The next instant the _Wave_ swept by her, and as the two Prescotts scrambled up on the gunwale of their boat, the defeated crew saluted them with cheers, in response to which the victors bowed as gracefully as their uncertain position would permit.