In crossing the line there was no attempt at jockeying such as one often sees in yacht racing. There was no disposition on the part of any skipper to do anything that would set anybody else back. Of course, everybody wanted to be in a good berth and to cross between the guns; but the idea was to give the vessels such a try out as they would get out to sea--as if they were making a passage in a breeze. The course--forty-two miles or so--was very short for a fisherman, for one great thing in a fisherman is her power to stand a long drag. Day and night in and day and night out and driving all the time is the way a fisherman wants it. Any sort of racing machine could be built to stand a little hard going for a while. But that wouldn't be living through a long hard winter's gale on the Banks--one of those blows where wind and sea--and in shoal water at that--have a chance to do their worst. Fishermen are built for that sort of work and on their sea-worthiness depends not only the fortunes of owners but the lives of men--of real men--and the happiness and comfort of wives and children ashore. And so the idea in everybody's mind that day was to make this test as nearly fair as could be and see who had the fastest and most weatherly boat in the fleet. There were men to the wheel that day who could handle big fishermen as if they were cat-boats, who would have dared and did, later, dare to sail their vessels as close to a mark in this sea as men sail a twenty-foot knockabout in the smoothest of waters inshore--only with the fishermen a slip-up meant the loss of a vessel, maybe other vessels too, and twenty-five or fifty lives perhaps. And so the skill of these men was not used to give anybody the worst of it. A fair start and give everybody his chance was the idea. Thus Tommie Ohlsen could have forced the Withrow outside the starting boat and compelled her to come about and maybe lose a few minutes, but he did not. He held up and let her squeeze through. O'Donnell in his turn could have crowded Ohlsen when he let up on the Withrow, but he did not. He, too, held up in turn and let Ohlsen have his swing going across.