"We could leave him with a bit of wind and sea, but this sort of thing is just his weather. Wait, though. The race is not always to the swift!" Which was lucky for the _Shark_. At midnight the wind dropped to almost a calm. Daylight showed the _Daffodil_ wallowing drowsily on the long, oily rollers, almost in the same position as of the evening before. She was under her mainsail and forestaysail only, the jib and mizzen being dropped. Captain Bell's language would be barred by the censor. "It's an insult!" he raved. "Shortenin' sail to keep from leavin' us! Just you wait, you peroxide blondine! I'll make you wish you were in the Adirondacks!" As if to help him to fulfil his threat the breeze sprang up freshly from sou'west, with the promise of plenty to follow. Bell tacked inshore. The Pilot-fish stood out to sea. "Now, what is the chump doin' that for?" Bell demanded of Heldstrom. "He t'inks der vind vill back into der sout'-east ... und I am not sure but he vas r'right. It iss late of der season, und der vind iss a little crazy." "It's more apt to come nor'west ... and hard, with this risin' glass!" Bell retorted. But before the following morning the wind was southeast, thus putting the _Daffodil_ well to windward. Bell's prophecy was true, though a trifle belated, and a hard nor'wester gave the _Shark_ the weather gauge for the finish of the run. Early one morning the old schooner pushed in sluggishly against the four-knot tide racing out between Old Point and the Rip-Raps, and came to anchor just beyond the can buoy opposite the hotel, on the far side of the swash-channel leading to Hampton. There was no sign of the _Daffodil_, and Captain Bell was anticipating a pleasant, if unhygienic, sojourn with certain whiskey-drinking, poker-playing friends from the cruisers and battleships lying in the port when, to his intense disgust, he received a letter from his lawyers, requesting an interview for the current week. "Marblehead!" he snapped to Heldstrom. "I've got to be in Boston the end of this week or early the next." So the _Shark_ got her anchor, scarcely wet, hoisted sails still unfurled, and slipped out with the same tide which had so stubbornly contested her entry. Saddened eyes from the men-o'-war followed her departure. An old crony, with three lovely daughters and a taste for vintage wines, is a serious loss to his friends. "Never mind," Bell observed, philosophically, to Huntington Wood. "I never got off so easily in all my life. That gang would have got me tanked at my expense, drunk up all of my brandy, smoked all of my good cigars, cleaned me out at poker, and finished the job by telling me that if it wasn't for the nose-pole on the old _Shark_, they'd make bets on which way she was going! I know 'em! Rotters all! My only revenge is that Cécile usually leaves three or four bayin' at the moon!"