“I say, Jerry, but did ever y’ see annything scoot like her--hardly a breath and she goin’ along like she is. It’s not right, Jerry--hardly a ripple in her wake.” “Oh, you’ve been so long in the old _Maggie_, Skipper----” “The _old Maggie_, is it? She’s not too old--ten year.” “I know. Ten year is nothing in a good vessel, but they been improving them so fast. Last fall, the trip you didn’t wait for me, you know, I went in the _Jennie and Katie_. Y’oughter seen her skipper. Handle? Like a little naphtha launch to pick up dories. And sail? Man, but she could sail!” “That so? And how’d she behave in heavy weather?” “Well, we didn’t have any heavy weather that trip.” “No breeze at all?” “Well, one day it did breeze up. We had her under a balanced reef mains’l. She did slap around a bit. ’Twas the devil and all to stay in your bunk, but she did pretty well. But you mustn’t get ’em out of trim. The first two doryloads of fish that came aboard that trip was pitched into her after-pens and, man, she reared right up in the air--right straight up on her hind legs and began to claw out with her fore feet like she was trying to climb up a wall----” “You’d think ’twas a horse you were talkin’ about, Jerry. But she could sail, you say?” “Sail? Like a plank on edge--and greased.” “Well, this one can sail, too. Look at her. Not a blessed hop out of her--just smoochin’ along like a girl slidin’ on ice ashore, isn’t she?” Off the lightship they found the _Bonita_. “There he is,” announced Coleman, “with his rings in his ears. Keep her as she is till the pair of us come together. Trip afore last he sailed a couple of rings around the _Maggie_ by way of amusin’ himself, but I’ll amuse him now or I’ll tear the sail off this one.” In a freshening breeze and both vessels soon swinging all they had, it was a good chance for a try-out. Four hours of that and the victory went to the handsome _Celestine_, for off Cape Cod, after a run of fifty miles, Coleman had the _Bonita_ two miles to leeward. For an hour after that Coleman could hardly be coaxed down to eat. Standing on the _Celestine’s_ quarter, he chuckled, and chuckled, and chuckled. Even after taking his place at the table, he had to climb up the companionway to have one more look at the beaten _Bonita_. “A good vessel for rip-fishin’ the Portugee’s got--she drifts well,” he said, “and maybe ’tis me won’t tell him next time we meet.” And yet in the middle of the meal he suddenly set down his mug of coffee and leaned across the table. “Don’t it strike you, Jerry, that for a vessel of her model this one is the divil for stiffness?” “We were saying among ourselves a little while ago, Skipper, that we never before saw a vessel that barely wet her scuppers in a breeze like this.”