In obedience to the warning gun, the twenty-ton yachts had drawn up in line near their starting buoys. For a moment their mainsails flapped idly in the breeze as they wore gracefully round. Another gun, and up went jibs and gaff-top-sails, as they began to move in one cluster of snowy canvass. At first they seemed scarcely to stir through the water that lazily rippled around their bows; but as the breeze began to be felt, they got under weigh, and the waves were broken into foam by the dividing stem. Sally was seated in the well-cushioned stern of her father’s four-oared family gig, which was steered by that worthy individual himself; she wore a Leghorn bonnet with smart pink ribbons; and as she sat near her bluff, broad-shouldered, honest old parent, she looked as handsome a maiden as ever lent willing ear to a lover’s vows. She was now all anxiety, as the time for William’s race was near at hand. Duggin’s crew were on the course; and if one might judge from the perfect appointment of the gig, the lively strokes pulled on her, and the rapidity with which she was turned, one should seem to run no risk in betting on her certain success. The Norah Creenah--for such was her name--was painted on the outside a delicate buff, and on the inside pink. One of the best and most fortunate cockswains in the harbour steered her; and as he glanced on the powerful limbs and the muscular chests of his men, and saw the exquisite regularity with which the blades were dipped into the wave, his heart swelled with anticipated triumph. “Sally, my dear,” said old Jerry Sullivan to his daughter, “take the _ropes_ for a minute, and mind what you’re about, child.” Jerry stood up in the boat to have a peep at the preparations for the race; but hardly had he time to satisfy his curiosity, when the bow of the gig came slap against the side of a large yawl, and he was laid sprawling in the bottom from the concussion; and to mend the matter, Sally began to scream most energetically at the mischief she herself had occasioned. The truth was, she had mechanically obeyed her father’s directions, by taking the tiller-ropes, but that was all, for her thoughts were far otherwise engaged. “Back water, ye infarnal ould lubber! Do you want to stave the side of us in? Where’s yer eyes, ye ould fool?” Such were the pleasing queries which the parties in the assaulted boat levelled at the innocent Jerry. “Why don’t you look out yourselves, and be hanged to ye!” said the choleric builder, as he replied in the true Irish fashion by putting another question. After plentifully heaping the choicest epithets on each other, the belligerent parties at last separated, the victory being equally divided. “Come, boys,” said Jerry to his crew, “heave ahead, and let us see are they getting all ready for the start.” In a few moments the boat reached that part of the strand where William Collins and his companions were busily employed in rubbing black lead on the bottom of the new gig.