The _Bertha_ took the seas cleaner and headed up higher. She was evidently gaining slowly but steadily. Moreover, although she carried an enormous club-topsail and a mainsail of big area, she heeled over the least of any of the boats. She had been built for heavy weather, and this was exactly the breeze she sailed best in. The _Surprise_ and _Sally_ were, however, holding their own remarkably well, and it would not be clear for some time which would come out the winner. “Hello!” exclaimed Jack Harvey, suddenly, in a tone of evident surprise. “What on earth—or, rather, on water—is Cap’n Silas doing? Look where he is standing. I’ve been looking for the last few minutes to see him tack, but there he keeps on away off toward shore.” The _Anna Maud_ had, strange to say, gone way off the course, apparently heading well over to the westward. “Why, Jack, don’t you know,” said Joe Hinman, “how we’ve noticed the tide over along that shore? It makes a swing in there and runs like a mill-sluice. Don’t you remember one night how we tried to row against it, and what a time we had?” “That’s true,” responded Jack Harvey, “and Cap’n Sile Tucker is clever enough to take advantage of it. He knows more about sailing in one minute than that captain of the _Bertha_ does in a week. But there must be something more in it than the tide alone. I’ll tell you, the wind is changing. It’s heading more and more from the westward, and Captain Sile will get the full benefit of the slant when he gets down about a mile further. He knows what he’s doing. We’ll just head over and follow him.” “Seems to me it’s taking long chances to go so much off the course,” remarked George Baker. “Of course it is taking chances,” responded Harvey, quickly. “You have got to take chances in a contest of this kind. The fellows that take the chances are the ones that win. But it isn’t taking any great chances, following Cap’n Tucker. I tell you he knows these waters better than any man in the bay. He wouldn’t go over there unless he knew he was going to make something by it. Why, he has sailed that big catboat of his up and down along this coast for the last twenty years and more, that and other boats. The skipper in the _Bertha_ comes from away up beyond Millville. He can sail his boat all right, but he don’t know this coast like Captain Sile.” Harvey, accordingly, stood over to the westward, in the wake of the _Anna Maud_. Only one other boat followed him. That was the _Sally_. “I don’t know what they are standing away over there for,” said Willie Grimes to his companions. “I don’t know whether it is the best thing to do or not. It may be that they know something about the tide over there. But I know one thing, and that is, wherever Jack Harvey goes I’m going to follow. I wouldn’t care if every other yacht here beat me if I could only beat him. You never can tell, you know. Something may happen to him yet.”