It was a Monday morning when Clancy and I reached Gloucester. The race was to be sailed on Friday of that same week. For several days before this, we were told, Wesley Marrs, Sam Hollis, Tommie Ohlsen, and the rest of them had been out in the Bay tuning up their vessels like a lot of cup defenders. Never before had fishermen given so much attention to the little details before a race. The same day that we got home they were up on the ways for a final polishing and primping up. They were smooth as porcelain when they came off. And coming off their skippers thought they had better take some of the ballast out of them. "'Tisn't as if it was winter weather"--it was the middle of September then--"with big seas and driving gales," was the way Wesley Marrs put it, and they all agreed that the chances were ten to one that the wind would not be strong enough to call for the heavy ballast they carried. Fishermen, of course, are built to be at their best when wind and sea are doing their worst, and so the taking out of ballast for a September race looked like good judgment. So about forty tons of ballast were taken out of most of them--the Lucy Foster, the Withrow, the Nannie O, and half a dozen others. That looked all right, but on Tuesday night an easterly gale set in, the wind blowing forty-odd miles an hour. All day Wednesday it blew, and all day Thursday even harder, with a promise of blowing harder still on Friday, which was to be the day of the race. The people of Gloucester who had been praying for wind, "Wind for a fisherman's race--wind--wind," seemed likely to get what they wanted. On Thursday I saw Tommie Ohlsen and Wesley Marrs in conference on the street. Wesley had his nose up in the air, sniffing the breeze. He shook his head with, "Tommie, I ought to've let the ballast stay in the Lucy. It looks like it's going to be the devil's own breeze for vessels that ain't prepared for it." "Yes," said Ohlsen, "wind fifty-two mile an hour the weather man says, and still making. That's bad for light ballast and whole sail. If we could only put the ballast back----" "Yes--if we could. But we can't put it back now--there ain't time to do it right and everybody would laugh at us too. And besides, if we did, all the others would put it back, and where's the difference?" "Of course," said Tommie, "but if all of us would put it back it would make a better race."